Red Desert

Guardian“Perplexing and exasperating, but fascinating as well...” The landscape is a grim, sludgy mass of churned soil and dark satanic mills, belching out smoke and flame: Antonioni boldly counters the picturesque view of sunny, happy Italy...

The Observer“Simultaneously dazzling and dull...” This flawed masterpiece is a political film, anger seething beneath the seductively beautiful surface...

The Independent“Antonioni at his most infuriating...” As an experimental film about the effect of industrialization on a sensitive woman, Red Desert works well enough, but as a piece of storytelling, it's stark and impenetrable...

Total Film “Non-fans may find it all a bit slow and pretentious...” Michelangelo Antonioni's first film in colour, dating from 1964, has his regular muse Monica Vitti as a mentally disturbed woman traipsing through a bleak industrial wasteland with young son in tow...

Empire“A stunningly beautiful and evocative use of colour and setting...” Antonioni's 1964 modern-life-is-rubbish treatise sees Monica Vitti mope around a grim industrial landscape, misunderstood by her husband (Carlo Chionetti), courted by his colleague (Richard Harris). A tough gig, but beautiful...

Time Out“A prophetic vision of modernity unlike any other...” It has a breathtaking, otherworldly beauty – this is a landscape of steam-shrouded factories and metal giants looming from the mist. But the film hasn’t entirely escaped the ravages of time...