The Criterion Collection‘s website recently release a beautiful series of stills extracted from four movies by Michelangelo Antonioni: Red Desert (1964), L’Eclisse (1962), Identification of a Woman (1982) and L’Avventura (1960). Those stolen cinematic moments reveals Antonioni’s construction of a very dexterous mix between material and atmospheric environments all along his films. Red Desert, as I had the occasion to write before, can probably be said to embody the paroxysm of such dialogue. Nevertheless, his materialism finds its essence in the presence of the human female body who, by its posture contrasts and challenges this environment. One of the introductory scenes of Red Desert in which Monica Vitti’s elegant character walk through a toxic mud field in an industrial context is exemplary in this regard.
RED DESERT
L’ECLISSE
IDENTIFICATION OF A WOMAN
L’AVVENTURA