Last night I watched Michelangelo Antonioni‘s Red Desert (’64) for the third time, partly because (a) Antonioni films always gain after repeated viewings and (b) despite having seen it twice in the mid teens I couldn’t recall how it ends and wanted to be firmly clear of mind in this regard.
Well, I watched all 120 minutes’ worth, and I still don’t know how it ends. It just kind of evaporates or trails off into enervation and despair.
I know that Richard Harris finally fucks the red-haired, no-day-at-the-beach Monica Vitti near the end, but with neither party finding much in the way of blissful satisfaction.
What’s great about this film is that the yellowish-gray renderings of massive industrial pollution are unrelentingly sullen, and yet nobody ever says “my God, the ugliness is so suffocating…so overwhelming and intravenous.”
On top of which I’ve been feeling a bit gloomy about Antonioni’s cultural status since my two-day stay at the spacious Milan apartment of Thea Scognamiglio and her gracious husband Francesco Battigelli, and particularly since attending a dinner party that they threw on Tuesday, 9.9, and listening to thoughts and feelings about Antonioni from their sophisticated, somewhat older friends.
Having revered Antonioni all my life, I asked these obviously bright, well-educated Milanese if his legendary status is as strong and secure today as it was in the ’60s. Not one of them said a damn thing of any passion or substance. None expressed the slightest enthusiasm for his films. Okay, one of them mentioned Zabriskie Point, passingly, but that was all. I was shocked at how blandly and unthinkingly they shared their lack of regard for the man, much less respect for his once-legendary output.