After The Last Emperor and its cast of thousands, Bertolucci turned away from historical sweep to focus instead on the emotional devastation of a crumbling marriage in his adaptation of Paul Bowles's beloved 1949 novel The Sheltering Sky. “Maybe we're both afraid of loving too much,” Port and Kit Moresby conclude, watching as shadows overtake the desert below them. This is not a sudden revelation but a weary admission of defeat for the couple, who fled the bustle of postwar New York to search for something intangible in the vast Sahara. John Malkovich brings a wild, unsettling energy to the role of the alienated composer Port, while Debra Winger (Kit) and Campbell Scott each do excellent work, the latter as Tunner, the cheerful playboy who has accompanied the lovers on their ill-fated journey. Featuring gorgeous photography of the North African landscape, the film is “a long, beautifully modulated cry of despair” (Vincent Canby).