Slow Moving Pictures
@lewisbeerblog.bsky.social
Relentlessly blogging about a single film - currently Red Desert. www.slowmovingpictures.org
Pinned
Everything That Happens in Red Desert (1)
Loss of focus
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Every Saturday in 2025, I will be blogging about Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert, a film that (for me) perfectly encapsulates how it feels to be at odds with the reality you live in. All content is free and all comments are welcome.
Monica Vitti (in L’avventura) is suddenly surrounded by gawping men – it is like a scene from The Birds. The men look at her with frank desire and equally frank hostility, as if to say, ‘How beautiful she is, and how dare she exist.’ She treats this like a bad dream that just needs to be shaken off.
November 25, 2025 at 6:16 AM
Monica Vitti (in L’avventura) is suddenly surrounded by gawping men – it is like a scene from The Birds. The men look at her with frank desire and equally frank hostility, as if to say, ‘How beautiful she is, and how dare she exist.’ She treats this like a bad dream that just needs to be shaken off.
Antonioni made charismatic actors look like idiots: in The Passenger, Jack Nicholson repeatedly struggles to improvise his way through conversations with strangers. The languages and contexts are alien to him; with a new identity and a new life come all-too-familiar communication barriers.
November 23, 2025 at 7:06 AM
Antonioni made charismatic actors look like idiots: in The Passenger, Jack Nicholson repeatedly struggles to improvise his way through conversations with strangers. The languages and contexts are alien to him; with a new identity and a new life come all-too-familiar communication barriers.
‘If you prick us, do we not bleed?’ said Shylock. ‘If you prick me, you don’t suffer,’ says Giuliana. How better to express incommunicability than through a halting dialogue with someone who cannot understand your language? The spectral fog is rolling in again, but only you can see it… #filmsky
Everything That Happens in Red Desert (47)
Giuliana's explanation
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November 22, 2025 at 8:58 AM
‘If you prick us, do we not bleed?’ said Shylock. ‘If you prick me, you don’t suffer,’ says Giuliana. How better to express incommunicability than through a halting dialogue with someone who cannot understand your language? The spectral fog is rolling in again, but only you can see it… #filmsky
Reposted by Slow Moving Pictures
Wonder which side of the volcano she is going to go : no return to the tuna killers and gossipy women seems possible, but an escape with the bare footed fair eyed lighthouse watchman seems dreamy ; maybe she'll stay up there with the gods and the fumes
November 20, 2025 at 7:04 AM
Wonder which side of the volcano she is going to go : no return to the tuna killers and gossipy women seems possible, but an escape with the bare footed fair eyed lighthouse watchman seems dreamy ; maybe she'll stay up there with the gods and the fumes
Stromboli's ending is transcendent, but it also entails a sweeping renunciation. Ingrid Bergman looks down with contempt at her husband's village, and looks at herself with equal contempt. Like Anna in L’avventura, she finds that her relationship with reality has curdled, and she cries ‘Enough!’
November 20, 2025 at 6:38 AM
Stromboli's ending is transcendent, but it also entails a sweeping renunciation. Ingrid Bergman looks down with contempt at her husband's village, and looks at herself with equal contempt. Like Anna in L’avventura, she finds that her relationship with reality has curdled, and she cries ‘Enough!’
Ingrid Bergman wakes up after her long dark night of the soul on Stromboli. White flecks sparkle in the volcanic desert beneath her, as if the stars she gazed at the night before had descended to earth. She faces the morning sun with both awe and fear; it re-energises her, but also overwhelms her.
November 18, 2025 at 7:08 AM
Ingrid Bergman wakes up after her long dark night of the soul on Stromboli. White flecks sparkle in the volcanic desert beneath her, as if the stars she gazed at the night before had descended to earth. She faces the morning sun with both awe and fear; it re-energises her, but also overwhelms her.
A disturbing scene from La notte: Marcello Mastroianni inspects a young woman in her hospital room. In this moment, he is a hollow man who casts no shadow; her shadow seems an integral part of her, an extension of the darkness in (and behind) her eyes, and a commentary on the surrounding white void.
November 17, 2025 at 5:55 AM
A disturbing scene from La notte: Marcello Mastroianni inspects a young woman in her hospital room. In this moment, he is a hollow man who casts no shadow; her shadow seems an integral part of her, an extension of the darkness in (and behind) her eyes, and a commentary on the surrounding white void.
The shipyard sequence in Red Desert finds Giuliana at her most isolated and imperilled, but it is also the moment when she exercises the most agency. Navigating this treacherous landscape with a sense of purpose, she seeks out the origins of those unearthly noises that echo and groan all around her.
November 16, 2025 at 2:08 PM
The shipyard sequence in Red Desert finds Giuliana at her most isolated and imperilled, but it is also the moment when she exercises the most agency. Navigating this treacherous landscape with a sense of purpose, she seeks out the origins of those unearthly noises that echo and groan all around her.
If you’re Ingrid Bergman, you resolve your existential crisis by climbing a volcano, standing amidst quasi-biblical smoke and flames, and screaming out to God as the scene fades to black. If you’re Monica Vitti, you meet a bemused sailor who offers you a hot beverage. Then you go home. #filmsky
Everything That Happens in Red Desert (46)
Does this ship take people?
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November 15, 2025 at 1:20 PM
If you’re Ingrid Bergman, you resolve your existential crisis by climbing a volcano, standing amidst quasi-biblical smoke and flames, and screaming out to God as the scene fades to black. If you’re Monica Vitti, you meet a bemused sailor who offers you a hot beverage. Then you go home. #filmsky
Reposted by Slow Moving Pictures
Those times when filmmakers (Antonioni, Godard, Truffaut...) sowed (meaningful) books like pebbles in their films so that careful watchers could find their way (but sometimes it was a trap and designed to lose them in the woods)
In L’avventura, Anna has been reading Tender is the Night. On the cover is a painting by Matisse: a woman reclines languidly beside an empty chair (she does not want company), her features blank as though she has effaced herself. The image is both eloquent and opaque, like Anna's disappearance.
November 9, 2025 at 8:25 AM
Those times when filmmakers (Antonioni, Godard, Truffaut...) sowed (meaningful) books like pebbles in their films so that careful watchers could find their way (but sometimes it was a trap and designed to lose them in the woods)
In L’avventura, Anna has been reading Tender is the Night. On the cover is a painting by Matisse: a woman reclines languidly beside an empty chair (she does not want company), her features blank as though she has effaced herself. The image is both eloquent and opaque, like Anna's disappearance.
November 9, 2025 at 7:33 AM
In L’avventura, Anna has been reading Tender is the Night. On the cover is a painting by Matisse: a woman reclines languidly beside an empty chair (she does not want company), her features blank as though she has effaced herself. The image is both eloquent and opaque, like Anna's disappearance.
What do you do when one of your lead actors storms off set and ruins the ending of your movie? You wander around the Ravenna docks and invent a weirdly anti-climactic sequence that will haunt people’s dreams forever. Anti-fouling paint and toxic sludge have never been so mesmerising. #filmsky
Everything That Happens in Red Desert (45)
The harbour
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November 8, 2025 at 12:15 PM
What do you do when one of your lead actors storms off set and ruins the ending of your movie? You wander around the Ravenna docks and invent a weirdly anti-climactic sequence that will haunt people’s dreams forever. Anti-fouling paint and toxic sludge have never been so mesmerising. #filmsky
Reposted by Slow Moving Pictures
I think I’ve discovered the origin of the title ‘Red Desert’: it’s in the novel Homo Faber by Max Frisch, which can be seen on Corrado’s bedside table in the hotel room scene. (This is the 1959 Italian edition.)
January 12, 2025 at 7:46 AM
I think I’ve discovered the origin of the title ‘Red Desert’: it’s in the novel Homo Faber by Max Frisch, which can be seen on Corrado’s bedside table in the hotel room scene. (This is the 1959 Italian edition.)
‘Even you haven’t helped me,’ says Giuliana to Corrado, in their final scene together. Red Desert’s screenplay states that he interprets this as an accusation, but Richard Harris’s face is more inscrutable: besides a mild sadness, it communicates almost nothing.
November 6, 2025 at 6:31 AM
‘Even you haven’t helped me,’ says Giuliana to Corrado, in their final scene together. Red Desert’s screenplay states that he interprets this as an accusation, but Richard Harris’s face is more inscrutable: besides a mild sadness, it communicates almost nothing.
Jeanne Moreau, in La notte, gives a masterclass in non-verbal ennui. Soaked with rainwater, at what should be a moment of liberated passion, she looks at Roberto as if to say, ‘This too would amount to nothing.’ Her eyes express a profound inner sadness.
November 4, 2025 at 6:10 AM
Jeanne Moreau, in La notte, gives a masterclass in non-verbal ennui. Soaked with rainwater, at what should be a moment of liberated passion, she looks at Roberto as if to say, ‘This too would amount to nothing.’ Her eyes express a profound inner sadness.
This is the most beautiful sequence in La notte: the camera tracks alongside Roberto's car as it passes beneath street-lamps, alternately lost in darkness and half-illuminated. Rain dominates the soundtrack and distorts the characters' features; there are no fully legible surfaces here.
November 3, 2025 at 6:29 AM
This is the most beautiful sequence in La notte: the camera tracks alongside Roberto's car as it passes beneath street-lamps, alternately lost in darkness and half-illuminated. Rain dominates the soundtrack and distorts the characters' features; there are no fully legible surfaces here.
Reposted by Slow Moving Pictures
"…we know that beneath the image revealed there is another one, more faithful to reality, and that beneath there is another one, and again a new one under this last one, up to the true image of that absolute and mysterious reality that no one will ever see", - Michelangelo Antonioni
October 31, 2025 at 9:18 AM
"…we know that beneath the image revealed there is another one, more faithful to reality, and that beneath there is another one, and again a new one under this last one, up to the true image of that absolute and mysterious reality that no one will ever see", - Michelangelo Antonioni
This week in Red Desert, it’s a wrap for Corrado Zeller: in his sullen farewell and his hangdog retreat into the darkness, we see a microcosm of his relationship with Giuliana. An epiphany is taking place here, but he refuses to see it, and Giuliana is left to deal with it alone. #filmsky
Everything That Happens in Red Desert (44)
Corrado's exit
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November 1, 2025 at 9:05 AM
This week in Red Desert, it’s a wrap for Corrado Zeller: in his sullen farewell and his hangdog retreat into the darkness, we see a microcosm of his relationship with Giuliana. An epiphany is taking place here, but he refuses to see it, and Giuliana is left to deal with it alone. #filmsky
Monica Vitti in Red Desert: alone with her shadow and a blank wall, she looks at her surroundings with wry disappointment. Earlier, Giuliana pictured blue walls and a green ceiling, but now the swirling white void seems more apt. Though not literally red, it is one manifestation of the red desert.
October 30, 2025 at 5:39 AM
Monica Vitti in Red Desert: alone with her shadow and a blank wall, she looks at her surroundings with wry disappointment. Earlier, Giuliana pictured blue walls and a green ceiling, but now the swirling white void seems more apt. Though not literally red, it is one manifestation of the red desert.
This publicity still for Red Desert hints at an alternate ending, in which Giuliana vandalises the walls of her shop and faces Ugo and Corrado with a mixture of shame and defiance. In black-and-white, the dark paint-streaks look like blood, as though Giuliana has committed an act of violence.
October 29, 2025 at 6:25 AM
This publicity still for Red Desert hints at an alternate ending, in which Giuliana vandalises the walls of her shop and faces Ugo and Corrado with a mixture of shame and defiance. In black-and-white, the dark paint-streaks look like blood, as though Giuliana has committed an act of violence.
‘There is something terrible in reality, and I don’t know what it is.’ This week in Red Desert, we explore what it means to be reinserted into an intolerable reality, and we take a semi-deep dive into Robert Musil’s long, confusing, unfinished masterpiece, The Man Without Qualities. #filmsky
Everything That Happens in Red Desert (43)
Something terrible in reality
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October 25, 2025 at 8:41 AM
‘There is something terrible in reality, and I don’t know what it is.’ This week in Red Desert, we explore what it means to be reinserted into an intolerable reality, and we take a semi-deep dive into Robert Musil’s long, confusing, unfinished masterpiece, The Man Without Qualities. #filmsky
This image from Red Desert may have inspired Lucio Fontana to make his slashed red canvas. On the back, he wrote: ‘I returned from Venice yesterday, I saw Antonioni’s film!!!’
Behind the blood-red surface, infinite shadows. Giuliana inhabits that behind-the-canvas shadow-realm.
Behind the blood-red surface, infinite shadows. Giuliana inhabits that behind-the-canvas shadow-realm.
October 24, 2025 at 12:16 PM
This image from Red Desert may have inspired Lucio Fontana to make his slashed red canvas. On the back, he wrote: ‘I returned from Venice yesterday, I saw Antonioni’s film!!!’
Behind the blood-red surface, infinite shadows. Giuliana inhabits that behind-the-canvas shadow-realm.
Behind the blood-red surface, infinite shadows. Giuliana inhabits that behind-the-canvas shadow-realm.
‘What are you afraid of?’ ‘The factories, streets, colours, people, everything!’ Giuliana’s outburst, at this key moment in Red Desert, begins quietly and rises into a terrified scream. We are asked simply to look into her face as she says this, and to share her fear without understanding it.
October 24, 2025 at 4:46 AM
‘What are you afraid of?’ ‘The factories, streets, colours, people, everything!’ Giuliana’s outburst, at this key moment in Red Desert, begins quietly and rises into a terrified scream. We are asked simply to look into her face as she says this, and to share her fear without understanding it.
Walter McGinn as the recruiter in The Parallax View.
With his wearily sympathetic eyes, he tells you that he understands and doesn’t judge…but he also sees right through you.
If McGinn hadn’t died in a car crash three years later, we would know him as one of the great American character actors.
With his wearily sympathetic eyes, he tells you that he understands and doesn’t judge…but he also sees right through you.
If McGinn hadn’t died in a car crash three years later, we would know him as one of the great American character actors.
October 19, 2025 at 1:40 PM
Walter McGinn as the recruiter in The Parallax View.
With his wearily sympathetic eyes, he tells you that he understands and doesn’t judge…but he also sees right through you.
If McGinn hadn’t died in a car crash three years later, we would know him as one of the great American character actors.
With his wearily sympathetic eyes, he tells you that he understands and doesn’t judge…but he also sees right through you.
If McGinn hadn’t died in a car crash three years later, we would know him as one of the great American character actors.
From a scary pink room to a somehow-even-scarier white one: this week in Red Desert, we plumb new depths of the existential void as we begin our brief but densely disturbing farewell to Corrado. We also learn the true meaning of boredom, courtesy of Alberto Moravia. #filmsky
Everything That Happens in Red Desert (42)
Two failed projects
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October 18, 2025 at 10:42 AM
From a scary pink room to a somehow-even-scarier white one: this week in Red Desert, we plumb new depths of the existential void as we begin our brief but densely disturbing farewell to Corrado. We also learn the true meaning of boredom, courtesy of Alberto Moravia. #filmsky