Red Desert (1964) - The Criterion Collection - Finally! Arguably Antonioni’s best film, and certainly my favorite of his.
I’ve been hoping for this day since I first saw this film in my Intro to Film class in the fall of 2003. My professor was one Robert Kolker who apologized before he screened it for the then-DVD’s “crudeness.”
I have no doubt Criterion has given Red Desert the care it deserves.
The self-destructive romanticism, the artistic self-consciousness, the frenetically unhinged form, the blend of emotional extravagance and cool self-mocking, the vanished boundaries between irony and sincerity and between symbol and reality, the overt cinematic breakdown and breakup, were all of their moment. Pierrot le fou was the last of Godard’s first films, the herald of even more radical rejections and reconstructions to come—for Godard and for the world around him.
Pierrot le fou: Self-Portrait in a Shattered Lens - From the Current - Buy it while you can. I did.
