Red Desert: The Criterion Collection

Red Desert: The Criterion Collection

Michelangelo Antonioni's 1960s panoramas of contemporary alienation were decade-defining artistic events, and Red Desert, his first color film, remains one of his greatest. This provocative look at the spiritual desolation of the technological age - about a disaffected woman, brilliantly portrayed by Antonioni muse Monica Vitti (L'avventura), wandering through a bleak industrial landscape beset by power plants and environmental toxins, and tentatively flirting with her husband's coworker, played by Richard Harris (This Sporting Life) - continues to exert f-rce over viewers. With one startling, painterly composition after another - of abandoned fishing cottages, electrical towers, overwhelming docked ships - Red Desert creates a nearly apocalyptic image of its time, and confirms Antonioni as cinema's preeminent poet of the modern age.