Red Desert ( Il deserto rosso in Italian ) is an Italian film written by Michelangelo Antonioni, directed by Antonioni and Tonino Guerra on 1964. The film was Antonionis first color film. Its working title was Celeste e verde (Sky blue and green).
The film is placed in an commercial area of 1960 Ravenna with a lounging new post World War two factories, manufacturing machinery and much contaminated river valley. Antonioni said that he wanted to film and photograph like a depiction on a canvas. So the cinematography of the film was highlighted by pale, subtle colors with flacciding white smoke and mist. The sound design blends and combines a foley of manufacturing, industrial and townified sounds with ghostlike ship horns and an electronic music score. Antonioni went to considerable extent in attaining his goal ( like he has to colour trees and grass painted in white and grey just to suit his shoot on urban landscape). The red coloured pipes and railings was called the architecture of anxiety the reds and blues exclaim as much as they explain by Andrew Sarris.
Inspite of the fact that on one level, Red Desert might be taken as a narrative concerning a raspy, harsh and strident contemporary industrial civilization and tradition to which only the mentally ill (neurotic) Giuliana (one of the major characters in the story) has into being and awakened, Antonioni subsequently said that he desired to show that manufacturing technology has beauty and pleasingness of its own that he had featured a narrative regarding human adaptability and versatility, in that, Giuliana..
...must confront her social environment. Its too simplistic to say - as many people have done - that I am condemning the inhuman industrial world which oppresses the individuals and leads them to neurosis. My intention... was to translate the poetry of the world, in which even factories can be beautiful. The line and curves of factories and their chimneys can be more beautiful than the outline of trees, which we are already too accustomed to seeing. It is a rich world, alive and serviceable... The neurosis I sought to describe in Red Desert is above all a matter of adjusting. There are people who do adapt, and others who cant manage, perhaps because they are too tied to ways of life that are by now out-of-date.
Michelangelo Antonioni claimed (in his film) to be influenced by Giorgio de Chirico, a pre-Surrealist and then Surrealist Greek-Italian painter. Some juxtaposition and differentiation can be made to the long captures in Antionis feature film from 1960s. In which, the camera persist to stay put on barren, desert cityscape populated by a small amount of distant figures. Or none at all, in the non- appearance and truancy of the movies protagonist.
Comapare to Antonionis work, De Chirico is well known for his dark,shadowy and gloomy quality, presenting a sterile and desolate landscapes through the use of overstated angles and unusual figures. Hes actually one of the originator of Metaphysical art movement.
Concerning about the film cinematography, in my personal perspective, Antioni made a stronger cinematic statements (when he is borrowing from De Chiricos Abstract Art) since Antioni gave emphasize to his own style and goal in the effects. In the first part of the paper, the film was describe, like how and what Antioni wanted to present in the feature. He mixed up his idea and the style influenced by De Chirico having a very good quality of art film. His intension, was to translate the poetry of the world, in which even factories can be beautiful,was successfully achived.
Categories:
0 comments:
Post a Comment