Cinema: Antonioni in Color

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Fascinated by his vivid experiment with style, Antonioni does not venture far in subject from the ideas he has already expressed eloquently—and at immoderate length—in L'Avventura, La Notte and Eclipse. His is a world alive with the muffled cries of human beings struggling to live without resenting it, and to communicate with other survivors in prosperous, increasingly complex societies that fill the stomach but starve the spirit. Paradoxically, Red Desert fails as drama because Antonioni, with scrupulous care, makes places and things so much more interesting than his people that an audience cannot always tell the Christians from the lions. The film nonetheless fails magnificently, with a kaleidoscopic splash sure to alter the complexion of art cinema, and in some measure to redefine it.