I wanted to talk about the use of sound in Red Desert. I wanted to highlight 3 different classes of sound that are used to significant effect in the film. The first, which I found most interesting, is the solo female singing voice that opens the film. It is overlaid on the sound of factories (the second class I will talk about) as pictures of factories play visually against the title cards at first; the factory sound then fades out and leaves just the female singing voice, before it is abruptly cut off by a shot of flames spurting out of a factory chimney. The only other place this sound cue recurs is in a crucial point later in the play, during the story Giuliana tells her son, when the rocks start singing to the girl on the island. This sequence, set in idyllic, pastel colors in opposition to the rest of the film’s bleak color palette, represents a space and time removed from the reality of the rest of the film. As opposed to the other 2 sound classes, I see this solo female singing voice as a symbol for the pure, yet wavering voice of nature, that is rudely interrupted by the brute force of industrialism. The second is the jarring clatter of industrial machinery, primarily in the first 15 minutes or so of the film, but also the softer whirring hums of industrial activity that occur in other scenes throughout the film. They represent how industrialism has become an inescapable backdrop to the film’s reality, that also contributes to the inability of the characters to connect. For example, at around the 12:30 mark, loud banging sounds interrupt Ugo and Carrada’s conversation, where Carrada never learns the reason Ugo believes Giuliani to be ill. The third is the electronic music that plays, which I see as a nod to the psychological impact of industrialism, represented by the second class of sounds, on the humans that live within it, distorting a pure sound of nature, as represented by the first class, into something tinny, synthetic, and ultimately uncanny. This third class particularly functions as a motif for Giuliani’s isolation, as it plays during key moments in Giuliani’s emotional arc; particularly, it plays after Giuliani discovers the falsity of her son’s paralysis, underscoring her relapse into isolation.
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