Red Desert (Italian: Il deserto rosso)[1] is a 1964 psychological drama film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and starring Monica Vitti and Richard Harris.

Inside the plant, Ugo is speaking with a visiting business associate, Corrado Zeller, who is looking to recruit workers for an industrial operation in Patagonia, Argentina.

They spend time in the shack engaged in trivial small talk filled with jokes, role-playing, and sexual innuendo.

Fearing he has contracted polio, Giuliana tries to comfort him with a story about a young girl who lives on an island and swims off a beach at an isolated cove.

The girl is at home with her surroundings, but after a mysterious sailing ship approaches offshore, all the rocks of the cove seem to come alive and sing to her in one voice.

Valerio notices a nearby smokestack emitting poisonous yellow smoke and wonders if birds are being killed by the toxic emissions.

[3]As he would do in later film productions, Antonioni went to great lengths in reaching this goal, such as having trees and grass painted white or grey to fit his take on an urban landscape.

[3] Another of Red Desert's innovations is extensive use of the telephoto and zoom lenses, even in shots where the actor stands relatively close to the camera.

Antonioni wrote, "I worked a lot in Il deserto rosso with the zoom lens to try and get two dimensional effect, to diminish the distance between people and objects, make them seem flattened against each other.

Such flattening contributes to the sense of psychological oppression: Giuliana in several shots seems pinned against the wall and the bars between couples seem part of their body.

[5][6] In 1965, a reviewer for Time lauded Red Desert as "at once the most beautiful, the most simple and the most daring film yet made by" Antonioni, and stated that the director "shows a painterly approach to each frame".

[7] In 1990, Jonathan Rosenbaum praised the director's "eerie, memorable work with the industrial shapes and colors that surround [Giuliana]; she walks through a science fiction landscape dotted with structures that are both disorienting and full of possibilities.

"[8] In The Daily Telegraph in 2012, Robbie Collin wrote that Antonioni's "bold, modernist angles and thrillingly innovative use of colour (he painted trees and grass to tone with the industrial landscape) make every frame a work of art".