red desert (1964)

following my previous foray into the world of michelangelo antonioni with the wonderful blow-up, i decided to follow it up with the newly released (on dvd) 'red desert', which incidently was antonioni's first colour film. i havent yet seen any of his black and white work, a situation hopefully soon rectified, so cant really comment on the difference between the colour and the black and white films, but i would like to point out just how beautiful the film looks. his use of colour has many connotations, with the use of red being symbolic of our protaganists state of mind amongst other things. the bold backgrounds, especially the earlier scenes set within the compound of industry gives the feeling of an otherworldy nature, which leads to my next point -

the film is almost like a science fiction piece. the environment and use of sound reminiscent of the worlds later created in films such as stanley kubrick's "a clockwork orange" and andre tarkovsky's "stalker''. ''red desert'' has a very unique electronic score, that adds to the mechanical and otherworldy feel of the picture, and the use of industrial change as a metaphor is similiar to those of those seen in later science fiction work.

i enjoyed red desert wholeheartedly, and look forward to my next antonioni, the passenger (1975).