Session Two: Sound, Space, and the Emotional Architecture of Film

Red Desert (1964)

Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni

Antonioni’s first color film uses sound, color, and industrial landscape to externalize psychological unease. Factories, fog, machinery, and ambient noise form an oppressive sensory environment that mirrors the inner turmoil of its protagonist. Rather than explaining emotion through dialogue or plot, Red Desert immerses the viewer in a disorienting world where sound and visual texture carry the emotional weight. The film offers a powerful example of how cinema can translate interior states into atmosphere.

Tuesday, January 27th · 7:30 PM (PT) · Live on Zoom

Our second session examines how filmmakers use sound, space, and visual environment to express emotional dislocation and inner experience. Focusing on landscape, atmosphere, and restraint, we’ll explore how sound design, music, silence, and pacing shape mood and meaning—often in the absence of explicit dialogue or action.

The discussion centers on the viewer’s experience: how films use sensory elements and spatial design to convey psychological states, guide attention, and allow emotion to emerge through tone, rhythm, and atmosphere rather than narrative explanation.

Paris, Texas (1984)

Directed by Wim Wenders

Set against vast American landscapes, Paris, Texas explores emotional distance through restraint and silence. Sparse dialogue, long takes, and Ry Cooder’s minimalist slide-guitar score shape a mood of longing and disconnection. The film allows sound, music, and empty space to speak where characters cannot, creating an intimate portrait of loss and tentative reconciliation. Through its measured pacing and careful sound design, Paris, Texas demonstrates how absence itself can become expressive.