Monica Vitti as Giuliana Richard Harris as Corrado Zeller Carlo Chionetti as Ugo Xenia Valderi as Linda Rita Renoir as Emilia Lili Rheims as telescope operator's wife Aldo Grotti as Max Valerio Bartoleschi as Giuliana's son Emanuela Paola Carboni as girl in fable Giuliano Missirini as radio telescope operator Production The working title of the film was Celeste e verde (Sky blue and green). Shooting took place in the following locations: Incir De Paolis Studios, Rome, Lazio, Italy (studio) Ravenna, Emilia-Romagna, Italy Sardinia, Italy Budelli, in northern Sardinia, Italy The film is set in the industrial area of 1960s Ravenna with sprawling new post World War Two factories, industrial machinery and a much polluted river valley. The cinematography is highlighted by pastel colors with flowing white smoke and fog. The sound design blends a foley of industrial and urban sounds with ghostly ship horns and an abstract electronic music score by Gelmetti. This was Antonioni's first colour film, which the director said he wanted to shoot like a painting on a canvas: 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. Andrew Sarris called the red hued pipes and railings "the architecture of anxiety: the reds and blues exclaim as much as they explain". Another of Red Desert innovating technical effect 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." Themes Antonioni dismissed simple interpretations of the film as a condemnation of industrialism, saying: Critical reception 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". In 1990, Jonathan Rosenbaum praised the director's "eerie, memorable work with the industrial shapes and colors that surround [Giuliana]; she walks through a