FEMININITY AND NEUROSIS IN MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI’S RED DESERT

Abstract

This paper deals with the study of Red Desert (Il deserto rosso, 1964) by Michelangelo Antonioni, one of the most recognised filmmakers of European modern cinema of the 1960s. The essay addresses a hermeneutic approach to the film from the principles of Feminist Film Theory focusing on the modern reformulation of the conventions of Melodrama with a special attention to the study of the mise-en-scène of the urban landscape as a privileged site for the representation and tension of gender categories. As an existential Melodrama about the feminine condition and its neurosis within the context of the patriarchal bourgeois family during the Italian economic boom of the 1960s, the film authorises a feminist approach centered on the conventions of a cinematic genre linked to the tensions and contradictions of modern ideals of masculinity and femininity.