Landscape Allegory in Cinema Chapter Six (Italian Wasteland Allegory) (original) (raw)

Desert landscapes figure prominently in Italian cinema of the 1960s and ’70s. Accordingly, this culture effectively demonstrates how the wasteland is mythologized both in its specific and larger Western contexts. Several prominent Italian directors from this period such as Michelangelo Antonioni, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Sergio Leone incorporate landscapes of desolation, shot on location, in order to reflect a larger spiritual crisis symptomatic of the increasingly urban, technologized climate of an expanding middle class.