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Federico Fellini: Miracles and Masquerades

“I’m just a storyteller, and the cinema happens to be my medium. I like it because it recreates life in movement, enlarges it, enhances it, distills it. For me, it’s far closer to the miraculous creation of life than, say, a painting or music or even literature. It’s not just an art form; it’s actually a new form of life, with its own rhythms, cadences, perspectives and transparencies. It’s my way of telling a story.”
Federico Fellini

Top 10 Ranking

Film	Year
1. 8 1/2	1963
2. La Dolce Vita	1960
3. Juliet of the Spirits	1965
4. Amarcord	1973
5. La Strada	1954
6. Fellini Satyricon	1969
7. I Vitelloni	1953
8. Nights of Cabiria	1957
9. Fellini’s Casanova	1976
10. Fellini’s Roma	1972

The Trevi Fountain scene from La Dolce Vita may be the single most recognised image of Fellini’s career, permeating pop culture as Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg wade through its waters – but so too is it a beautifully shot sequence loaded with theological symbolism.

Best Film

8 ½. It’s a race between this surreal, self-reflexive examination of filmmaking and La Dolce Vita’s spiritual autopsy of modern-day Rome at the top. 8 ½ just gets the edge for its pure cinematic inventiveness – a complex culmination of Federico Fellini’s insecurities, ambitions, beliefs, desires, and relationships, all chaotically bleeding into each other through dreams and memories. This is also the point in his career where he moves further away from his neorealist roots than ever before, and so it is not difficult to imagine himself in the position of his protagonist Guido, trying to create a piece of art grounded in real world issues while facing a culture of excessive fame and materialism. The result is a psychological dive into his own self-critical mind, picking apart this exact struggle in lavishly designed sets that don’t even bother trying to conceal his own abundant wealth and privilege.

There are few stronger opening scenes than Guido’s surreal dream from 8 1/2, expressing his insecurities, desires, and frustrations through unsettling, nightmarish imagery – a smog-filled traffic jam, a desperate escape, and an attempt to fly away thwarted by those attempting to pull us back down to Earth.

Most Overrated.

La Strada. Its #73 ranking on the TSPDT top 1000 may be about 150 places too high, but this is still an incredibly accomplished masterpiece. Federico Fellini lightly engages with commedia dell’arte archetypes to craft a fable of travelling performers in post-war Italy, and gives his wife Giulietta Masina her first starring role in one of cinema’s all-time great performances – a tragic beacon of innocence in destitute towns and barren countrysides.

*La Strada is Fellini’s fable of lost innocence in post-war Europe, weaving a simple musical leitmotif into its form that resonates a nostalgic longing for brighter days.*

Most Underrated

Juliet of the Spirits. TSPDT’s ranking at #888 on its all-time list a miss from the critical consensus, especially for a film that belongs closer to the top 100. This is Federico Fellini’s first venture into Technicolor filmmaking, and easily possesses some of his most astounding cinematography, holding up a feminine mirror to 8 ½ as he contemplates the other side of his unfaithful yet persevering marriage. His trademark surrealism carries over too, haunting the titular housewife Juliet with visions of sexual desire, Catholic guilt, and mystical salvation, all while she seeks an inner peace free from the expectations of others.

*Fellini’s use of the colour red throughout his later career is striking, but never more so than in Juliet of the Spirits, shrouding his wife in sensual, lustful warmth.*

Gem to Spotlight

I Vitelloni. Federico Fellini’s first resounding success is a good place to start for those easing into his filmography. The hangout narrative breezes by, revelling with a group of male friends in the day-to-day minutia of a coastal town, and essentially becoming the blueprint for Martin Scorsese’s own breakthrough twenty years later in Mean Streets. Even if it diverges from Roberto Rossellini’s examinations of post-war destitution, I Vitelloni is a film to make Fellini’s neorealist mentor proud, resourcefully shooting on location in small Italian villages to craft tremendous visuals from their historic stonework and his own masterful blocking.

*A fine arrangement of alternating bodies in the frame and extending into the background – quite literally layabouts, which is what I Vitelloni translates to.*

Key Collaborator

Giulietta Masina. Vying for this spot as well are Federico Fellini’s cinematographers Giuseppe Rotunno and Gianni di Venanzo, as well his actor Marcello Mastroianni, but his wife inevitably wins out. Even when Masina is taking minor roles in films like Variety Lights and Il Bidone, she is stealing scenes right from under everyone’s noses. Her case rests with three all-time great achievements of film acting in La Strada, Nights of Cabiria, and Juliet of the Spirits, respectively exploring the division between innocence and corruption as a travelling entertainer, a prostitute, and a housewife. Her round, dark eyes are among cinema’s most expressive, conveying naivety, tragedy, and wisdom, while her diminutive stature often puts her on the back foot against an overwhelming world.

Giulietta Masina is one of history’s finest actresses married to one of history’s finest directors. She embodies tragic innocence, often spurned by men and society, yet still holding onto hope until the end.

Key Influence

Roberto Rossellini. Federico Fellini got his foot in the door of the film industry through his success as a writer on Rossellini’s films. He inherited a similar concern for the lower classes of post-war Italy and a loathing of its fascist culture, and also mastered the art of shooting on location in both urban and rural environments. He would later diverge from this style completely, exploring surrealism, spirituality, and theatrics throughout the latter half of his career, though his neorealist mentor’s influence was nevertheless crucial to his cinematic foundations.

The final shot of Rome, Open City, using the real city as a backdrop to its tragic ending. This may be Rossellini’s film, but Fellini’s writing was nominated for an Oscar, binding him closely to his neorealist roots.

*Echoes of Rossellini’s visual compositions in Fellini’s earliest work, blocking actors within real locations around Rome.*

Cultural Context and Artistic Innovations

Neorealist Origins (1950 – 1957)

Working his way up through the Italian film industry as an ambitious young screenwriter, Federico Fellini found great fortune in his collaborations with neorealist filmmaker Roberto Rossellini, even receiving an Oscar nomination for his work on Rome, Open City. As such, he was in an advantageous position in 1950 when made his debut co-directing Variety Lights with Alberto Lattuada. The results are fine, if not terribly impressive, though with the context of his entire career it is possible to see the start of multiple trends that would continue to resonate in his filmmaking for years to come.

Fellini was not a neorealist in the purest sense, yet his hard-hitting examinations of post-war poverty nevertheless placed him in that cinematic lineage, seeing him lead the first generation of Italian filmmakers to emerge after the movement’s peak. His dedication to shooting on location persisted through all his 1950s films, whether he was using Italy’s coastal towns in I Vitelloni, its barren countryside in La Strada, or the historical architecture of Rome to make a grander point about the city’s class inequality in Nights of Cabiria. Each set the scene for comedy-dramas, tragedies, and allegories of suffering and salvation, frequently casting his wife Giulietta Masina as tragic victims, and thematically tying together La Strada, Il Bidone, and Nights of Cabiria in his ‘Loneliness’ trilogy. Within this period though, I Vitelloni most significantly broke the neorealist mould with its loose, episodic narrative – something he would pick up again a few years down the track.

*Gelsomina traverses Italy’s countryside in La Strada, its poverty and barrenness a reflection of her own misfortune.*

A wealth of meaning packed into the staging of bodies along the edge of a pier in I Vitelloni, staggered into the background as the men passively gaze out at the ocean – the sheer edge of the only society they have ever known.

*One of the greatest compositions of Fellini’s early career from Nights of Cabiria, cleanly imprinting geometric shapes against a dark, rainy street.*

Perhaps even more central to Fellini’s interests as a filmmaker though was his adoration of entertainment in all its forms. The travelling performers of La Strada individually represent the clownish stock characters of commedia dell’arte, while an acting troupe takes centre stage in Variety Lights, and a soap opera photo strip entices our leading woman in The White Sheik. As we see in the joyous festivities of I Vitelloni, exhibitionist spectacle often brings communities together in celebration too, but Fellini does not shy away from studying its darker side either.

Fellini designs festivals like Josef von Sternberg before him, cluttering the mise-en-scène with extravagant, maximalist detail and streamers. Even during his realist period, spectacle is key to his visual style.

In Il Bidone, he considers con artists as nefarious cousins to actors, using their skills of deception to taking advantage of rather than entertain their audiences. Their fraudulent impersonations of Catholic clergymen specifically target those whose blind faith is already being exploited by the church, setting up a larger attack on religion in Nights of Cabiria where Christian iconography gives literal form to the Madonna-whore complex. Still, this was only the beginning of Fellini’s reflective considerations of the Catholic Church, as he entered a new period of filmmaking in the 60s.

Fellini evokes Christ’s torture and sacrifice in Augusto’s death, cherishing the purification of his soul at the tragic expense of his life – Il Bidone’s ending is loaded with symbolism of suffering and salvation.

*The Madonna and the whore have more in common than the people of Rome believe in Nights of Cabiria, both being paragons of goodness and innocence – a striking formal comparison.*

Fellini’s Ascension (1960 – 1965)

The rising quality of Federico Fellini’s films throughout the 1950s was fairly linear, establishing him as an incredibly talented director with at least one full masterpiece under his belt. Still, his magnificent run in the early 60s belongs on another level, delivering three of the best films of all time and cementing his status as a cinematic virtuoso. La Dolce Vita, 8 ½, and Juliet of the Spirits are all deeply philosophical works of cinema, each following characters who search for meaning in their chaotic lives, and desperately trying to unite their competing priorities, insecurities, and desires.

On top of that, the cinematic stylisations of these films are simply sublime, with Fellini’s mise-en-scène and camerawork edging closer to maximalist extravagance. Given his focus shifting away from the plight of the poor and towards the empty lives of the wealthy, it is a fitting choice too. His control over visual and narrative chaos is never stronger than it is in this period, disorientating us with camera movements that drift through scenes of unruly mayhem, and abruptly readjusting long shots into close-ups as new faces enter the frame. Starting with Juliet of the Spirits, Technicolor photography also becomes the norm from here on, as his collaboration with cinematographer Gianni Di Venanzo showcases one of the most stunningly vivid uses of colour put to film.

Fellini effortlessly transitions to a widescreen format in La Dolce Vita, using its full horizontal scope to block his actors in luxurious arrangements, and a rich depth of field to layer his opulent compositions.

*Fellini’s surrealism in 8 1/2 is deeply disorientating, filling this opening dream with bodies hanging out of a bus window, their faces concealed from this angle in the middle of a traffic jam.*

Few directors can capture chaos with the control and beauty that Fellini brings to his mise-en-scène in Juliet of the Spirits. Josef von Sternberg comes to mind as a fair comparison, but he largely shot his films in black-and-white – the patterns and colours of Fellini’s scenery are distinctive and gorgeous.

Fellini’s love of theatre hasn’t faded in this era either. If anything, the cinema screen is merely an evolution of the stage, with both artforms representing joyful celebration in the face of despair. Nino Rota’s festive music scores often capitalise on that too, composing whimsical marches and dynamic melodies that could easily underscore circus shows.

Fellini is nevertheless wary of lifestyles that are consumed solely by shallow entertainment, as the line between faith and self-gratifying exhibitionism grows ever thinner in this era, aiming a critical lens towards religious icons hypocritically stripped of their substance and reduced to false idols. Film director Guido has virtually no relationship with God in 8 ½, and yet still he seeks approval from the church to absolve the Catholic guilt was beaten into him as a child. In Juliet of the Spirits, the school pageant play that sacrifices a young, martyred Juliet upon a fake pyre additionally draws a formal likeness to flamboyant circuses that exist solely to entertain the masses.

*Daunting religious imagery as we slip back into Guido’s childhood in 8 1/2, with Catholic priests asserting their dominance and setting him on a path of guilt.*

A pair of theatrical performances united in the red-and-white colour palette, but diametrically opposed in morality – a circus spectacle, and a religious pageant play. Even the composition of these shots echo each other, surrounding women in white with red outlines.

It is La Dolce Vita though that stands as his greatest condemnation of organised religion, following a gossip reporter through a series of parables that take him ever deeper into modern-day Rome’s moral corruption. Religion is still very much alive in the global capital of Catholicism, but only in its scantest form, whipping the masses into hysterical frenzies over apparent sightings of the Madonna while children perish in the pandemonium. Fellini is effectively subverting Christian symbolism all through this film, flying a statue of Christ over the city, dredging up a demonic sea monster from its waters, and worshipping an angelic beauty in the Trevi Fountain.

*Religion mixes with mass media in La Dolce Vita, and the consequences are devastating, stripping faith of its dignity and twisting it into a violent, grotesque competition.*

*Fellini is dedicated to designing the frame through Rome’s magnificent architecture, using this walkway to funnel through his shot and connect foreground, midground, and background.*

*Fellini’s cinematography constantly highlights the astounding geometry of Roman architecture, here gazing up at a stairway to the heavens – a wall art quality shot.*

If there were any lingering traces of neorealism in La Dolce Vita, then they are completely gone by 8 ½, where Fellini fully transitions into the surrealism that would define the rest of his career. Named after the number of films he had directed up until this point, 8 ½ takes a particularly self-reflexive perspective on the creative processes of filmmaking, using its main character Guido as a surrogate for Fellini himself.

Even in his less metatextual works, characters can still be found breaking the fourth wall with silent smiles in the closing shots, continuing the trend from Nights of Cabiria into La Dolce Vita and Juliet of the Spirits. The connection that these close-ups forge with the audience are valuable, particularly given the miscommunication that encompasses his ensembles – formally rendered as voices being drowned out by voices in the opening and closing scenes of La Dolce Vita, and speaking without the movement of lips in 8 ½.

*Hopeful looks towards the camera bring Nights of Cabiria, La Dolce Vita, and Juliet of the Spirits to fourth wall breaking ends.*

Dreams of Rome and Beyond (1969 – 1990)

Purely in terms of visual style, the Federico Fellini who emerged from Italy’s neorealist scene looks entirely different to the man who ventured deep into vibrant, surreal expressionism in the late 1960s. Only on rare occasions here did he shoot on location, using the lively streets of Rome for Fellini’s Roma for instance. Instead, his preference for studio soundstages dominated this era, even seeing him artificially recreate his childhood town of Rimini in Amarcord. This allowed him a greater level of stylistic control, crafting idiosyncratic visions of Italy’s past and present that are populated by equally absurd caricatures. He was clearly not afraid of embracing artifice, manifesting it in imposing theatrical sets that bore no resemblance to reality, and replacing oceans with vast, billowing tarps in Fellini’s Casanova and And the Ship Sails On.

*This town’s distinctive character in Amarcord comes together in scenes of communal celebration and tradition, the camera gliding breezily through the detailed mise-en-scène.*

Fellini’s mise-en-scène in Satyricon stands with some of his best, using his ludicrously theatrical set designs and blocking to compose off-kilter landscapes of moral debauchery and suffering. In effect, this is an ancient apocalypse – the downward slide of the once-powerful Roman Empire.

*Framed photos of one man’s sexual conquests adorn a long, narrow hallway in City of Women, as Fellini’s uses its angular architecture to visually impose on a wandering guest.*

*Aggressively theatrical mise-en-scène, floating boats atop oceans of billowing tarp in both Casanova and And the Ship Sails On.*

Bright red hues often violently mark his magnificently cluttered mise-en-scène with lust and aggression too, both being taken to their extremes by pleasure-seeking occupants of nihilistic hellscapes. Fellini’s Satyricon particularly captures this amoral chaos, bringing a psychotic twist to La Dolce Vita’s odyssey through a modern-day Rome void of Christian virtue. In this feverish nightmare of ancient Rome, it seems as if the pagan gods who once lived among humans have grown disillusioned with their creations, and chosen to leave them to their own unscrupulous devices.

This era is where Fellini’s trend of naming films after himself began, due to a twin production of the ancient Roman text ‘Satyricon’ taking place at the same time as his own. The title Fellini’s Satyricon was thus born to distinguish the film from that of his rivals, though it also serves to underscore Fellini’s unique interpretation of Petronius’ Menippean satire. Equally, Fellini’s Roma is his extravagant dream of the Italian capital in all its contradictions and wonders, and Fellini’s Casanova is his take on the titular 18^th-century explorer’s far-flung adventures.

*Satyricon signals a shift in Fellini’s surrealism, moving away from depictions of dreams and fully bombarding us with maddening, expressionistic landscapes without narrative explanation.*

Fellini’s location shooting soaks in the sights of the Festa de Noantri in Roma – the lights, the food, the community, everything comes together to form a lively picture of Roman celebration and joy.

*A dazzling composition of chandeliers hanging above Casanova at the opera – with his bigger budgets, Fellini does not half-commit to his production design.*

Satyricon and Casanova in particular are films in direct conversation with Italian literature and history, thus becoming metatextual studies of storytelling itself. Fellini’s intellectual pursuits can’t be accused of keeping an emotional distance from the subject matter though, as the autobiographical lens he applies to the films of this era further builds on the self-reflective subjectivity of 8 ½. He identifies strongly with many of his lead characters, particularly when it comes to their less-than-favourable traits. Pieces of his adolescence are also directly recreated in Amarcord and Roma, with the latter even joining Intervista and I Clowns on the shortlist of Fellini films featuring the director playing himself.

By nature of these dreamlike settings, Fellini was shifting the focus away from plot more than ever before, instead structuring his films around episodic vignettes and the characters which inhabit them. This was something he was exploring as early as I Vitelloni in 1953, evoking a breezy nostalgia which he recaptures in Amarcord as he explores a year in the life of a small town. In films like Satyricon and Roma, this formal structure is a little shakier, while in decidedly weaker films like And the Ship Sails On and Intervista it is prone to falling apart at inopportune times.

*One of Amarcord’s strongest compositions arrives at the Victory Monument, baring the backside of an angel who draws the lustful gaze of visitors venturing out into the rain.*

Fellini delivers one excellent set piece after another in Amarcord, mocking the obsessive, fascist pageantry of the 1940s with a giant papier-mâché face of Mussolini who springs to life and weds a pair of young school students.

As much as Fellini’s style shifted across four decades of active filmmaking, still he never quite escaped the love of theatre and clownish archetypes which enraptured him in the first place, drawing a common theme through his early realism and late surrealism. When he created an explicit tribute to the circus in I Clowns, he ended up with one of his few truly bad films, though this is also a testament to the power of his symbolism in much greater works.

Among Fellini’s subtler recurring motifs is the stock character of Giudzio, the town fool, first seen in I Vitelloni as a simpleton who is easily duped into accepting a stolen angel statue. He returns again in I Clowns, and then in Roma as a homeless madman, before finally appearing in Amarcord stranded atop a pyre at the village festival. There, he is taunted by fellow townsfolk who steal the ladder, jokingly threaten to burn him alive, and poke fun at his panic.

*Giudzio the fool is a recurring minor character in multiple Fellini films, though each time bearing symbolic significance in relation to his surroundings.*

In Italian, the name Giudzio translates to ‘judgement’, which is somewhat ironic given how little of it he deals out. Perhaps then this more accurately suggests a reckoning being cast down from God or Fellini himself upon those who mistreat him, using him as a gauge against which their souls are evaluated. The only exception here may be the instance in which he becomes a crude embodiment of judgement himself, reciting vulgar rhymes about Caesar, Mussolini, and Italy’s history of fascism in Roma.

“This fascist shit, his head is split,

Half the head they say,

Crossed the Rubicon one day,

And lost his balls along the way.”

In April 1993, Fellini received a lifetime achievement Oscar, before passing away six months later in October from a heart attack. Quite fittingly, his memorial service was held at Cinecittà Studios, where most of his films were shot. There, his life was commemorated by the playing of Nino Rota’s main theme from La Strada on trumpet, echoing the notes which once represented the whimsical, innocent character of Gelsomina long after her own death.

*Intervista is Fellini’s homage to his greatest passion, cinema, still wielding a self-reflexive camera as he once did in 8 1/2 albeit more clumsily.*

Director Archives

Year	Film	Grade
1950	Variety Lights	R
1952	The White Sheik	R
1953	I Vitelloni	MS/MP
1954	La Strada	MP
1955	Il Bidone	HR
1957	Nights of Cabiria	MS
1960	La Dolce Vita	MP
1963	8 1/2	MP
1965	Juliet of the Spirits	MP
1969	Fellini Satyricon	MS/MP
1972	Fellini’s Roma	HR
1973	Amarcord	MP
1976	Fellini’s Casanova	HR/MS
1980	City of Women	R/HR
1983	And the Ship Sails On	R/HR
1987	Intervista	R

The Essential Fellini Blu-ray collection is available to buy on Amazon.

All Federico Fellini Reviews

The Devils (1971)

Ken Russell | 1hr 51min

The French Wars of Religion had long since passed by the time the fortified town of Loudon became the epicentre of lingering tension between Catholics and Protestants in the 17^th century, setting the scene in The Devils for a battle fought not with weapons, but political and religious manipulation. Urbain Grandier, the outspoken priest charged with defending the statehood of Loudon, is popular among the people for standing firmly with its high Protestant population, while making enemies of those Catholic authorities who deem him a threat. If Loudon is to be demolished and subjected to the rule of the Catholic Church though, then it would take more than an assassination to undermine Grandier’s influence. The priest must be so thoroughly discredited to the point of humiliation that no one can stand by his side without suffering the same ostracisation, thus bringing the rest of the town to its knees in feeble surrender.

It is incredibly good timing then that Sister Jeanne des Anges should come forward with baseless accusations of witchcraft aimed squarely at Grandier right as the Church begins conspiring against him. Though she is the abbess of the local Ursuline convent in Loudon, she is an outsider among her own nuns, tormented by sexual desire for Grandier and filled with self-loathing over her hunchback. “Take away my hump!” she prays in screaming agony, longing to be seen for once as beautiful. As such, when she discovers that Grandier has married another local woman, her furious, vindictive jealousy is unleashed.

A magnificently unsettling performance from Vanessa Redgrave as the villainous Sister Jeanne des Agnes, weaponising the blind faith and fear of the city, but also carrying her own insecurities as she struggles with sexual temptation.

Ken Russell’s narrative and characters here are rooted heavily in recorded history, yet the parallels shared between The Devils and Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible are extremely visible. Both storytellers are heavily concerned with humanity’s natural tendency towards irrational fear, and how it drove the discrimination against individuals in a pair of 17^th century settings. Where Miller sought to write an allegory for 1950s McCarthyism by studying the infectious hysteria of the Salem witch trials though, Russell feverishly opposes 1970s religious conservatism in The Devils, treading far more explicit ground with violence and nudity that triggered the censors to come down hard with an X rating.

*Sacrilege and blasphemy – Ken Russell pushes the boundaries of censorship in 70s Britain with the ‘Rape of Christ,’ violently subverting theological symbolism.*

From Russell’s perspective though, the outrage that surrounded The Devils would have been far more justified had it been directed at the harsh subject matter it is depicting. He particularly expressed frustration over the deletion of the scene he called the “Rape of Christ,” in which Sister Jeanne masturbates using the charred femur of the deceased Grandier following his execution. Even without this though, Christianity’s perversion of its own spiritual icons rings loudly throughout The Devils, framing Grandier as a persecuted saviour being punished for the sins of the world. Vanessa Redgrave may steal every one of her scenes with Sister Jeanne’s hunched posture and seething contempt, but Oliver Reed’s commanding presence is a steady, unwavering force among Russell’s visual chaos, taking to the screen with the booming confidence of a seasoned theatre actor. As he is cruelly interrogated by the Church, he delivers monologues with resounding gravitas, shamefully confessing his flaws as a prideful, even lecherous man while meeting Sister Jeanne’s accusations of sneaking into her bed with righteous indignation.

“Call me vain and proud, the greatest sinner to ever walk in God’s Earth! But Satan’s boy I could never be! I haven’t the humility. I know what I have done, and I am prepared for what I shall reap. But do you, Reverend Mother, know what you must give to have your wish about me fulfilled? I will tell you. Your immortal soul to eternal damnation. May God have mercy on you.”

*A magnificent close-up of Reed’s profile facing the light of heaven, yet shrouded in darkness.*

*Russell’s eye for composition when it comes to blocking his ensemble is astounding, filling out the height of his frame on both sides and enclosing a vulnerable Grandier in the centre.*

*Reed delivers a career-best performance as Grandier, facing unjust persecution yet standing firm by his principles.*

Grandier is far from sinless, but what man living at this time of religious corruption and violence isn’t? In their monochrome garments, Russell’s characters often blend in seamlessly with the clean white masonry and darkened rooms of Loudon, becoming one with the dominant palette that tangibly manifests their harsh moral binaries. The town of perfectly rounded arches and geometric skyline makes for a remarkable feat of production design too, combining the stark minimalism of The Passion of Joan of Arc with the architectural ambition of Metropolis, and formally drawing this austerity through rigorously blocked scenes of black-and-white crowds.

*Russell’s brutalist, black-and-white architecture is a triumph of production design, his geometric shapes towering over ensembles who carry through that palette of harsh moral binaries.*

It is no coincidence that the one figure who doesn’t conform to Russell’s sparse visual design is the puppeteer of Loudon’s witch hunt, sitting high above the fray. Dressed in his blood-red robes and wheeled around by servants, Cardinal Richelieu appears to be the only true demon in this town’s vicinity, determined to destroy the man who stands between him and the demolition of Loudon’s walls. Where Sister Jeanne acts impulsively on a wounded ego and even attempts to hang herself late in the film, Richelieu carefully orchestrates Loudon’s descent into madness, chaotically underscored by a writhing, discordant cacophony of pipe organs, trumpets, and percussion. In this period setting, the anachronistic jazz of Peter Maxwell Davies does not seem so unholy as it does viciously anarchic, matching confronting scenes of nuns playing up their fake possession with an equally disturbing soundscape.

*The Cardinal aggressively breaks through the monochrome palette with his bright red robes, symbolically drenched in blood of innocents.*

*Russell stages chaos with hysterical fervour, as if adopting the anarchy of a late-career Fellini film and possessing it with something demonic.*

Only when Grandier has perished through fiery injustice at the stake does silence settle over the town again, albeit one that is despairingly lifeless. His refusal to confess to the false charges may be the only solace to be taken from this, as it is with his last breath that the walls of Loudon come crumbling down in chilling synchronicity, ushering in apocalyptic scenes of ruin and suffering. Right to the final frame, Russell’s theological symbolism continues to inform his magnificent visuals and narrative, as his camera sits on a long shot of Grandier’s wife Madeleine approach an opening in the town’s demolished fortifications.

No longer drawing a clean divide between its shades of black and white, The Devils’ bleak scenery sinks into a dirty greyscale, as the widow trudges over a mountain of debris and exits what was once a vice-ridden yet relatively sheltered Garden of Eden. No longer do the strings and woodwinds clash in fervent rhythms, yet still they whine and wander through dissonant harmonies as Madeleine shuffles forward into an uncertain future. The Devils may be set in 17^th century France, and yet with his final note Russell’s mourning of what religious tyranny has destroyed continues to escape a narrow relegation to the distant past, infusing his cautionary tale with a bitter, anachronistic timelessness.

A bitter, solemn ending, shifting away from the stark black-and-white palette and shifting into a medium greyscale as Grandier’s widow leaves a ruined city now totally dominated by religious tyranny.

The Devils is available to purchase from Amazon.

Intervista (1987)

Federico Fellini | 1hr 45min

At Cinecittà Studios where Federico Fellini shot his most famous films, the ageing Italian director is preparing for his next endeavour. This is to be his adaptation of Franz Kafka’s novel ‘Amerika’, though on the outer, self-aware layer of Intervista which recognises this whole enterprise as fiction, the substance of the source material barely matters. While buxom actresses desperately compete for the coveted role of Brunelda, Fellini entreats a Japanese television crew looking to report back home on his production, and old friends unexpectedly reunite to reminisce on their glory days. There is work to be done in this bustling film studio, but over the decades it has also become a second home for him to relax and play in, like “a fortress, or perhaps an alibi” he slyly remarks.

Just as Fellini inserts himself as the main character, so too are the soundstages and backlots of Cinecittà depicted authentically for perhaps the first time in its long history. Intervista careens almost directly into documentary territory here, pulling the curtain back even further than 8 ½ or Roma, only to intermittently expose the surrealism which has bled from his art into his life. These blurred lines are where he is most comfortable as a filmmaker, though as Fellini’s illustrious career begins to wind down into more modest projects, it is clear that his once-tight grasp on cinematic and narrative chaos has slackened.

There is not a whole let of sense to the structure of this piece, gliding aimlessly between scenes of movie productions and reconstructed memories without great formal purpose. Echoes of 8 ½ manifest in dreams of flying above the studio, but Intervista is far more compelling when it is paving new ground, casting actor Sergio Rubini as a vague blend of himself and a younger Fellini first coming to the studio in 1940. The pink dressing room where he interviews matinee idol Katya is a stunningly uniform set piece of roses, drapes, and chaise lounges, though he is far more entranced by the chaos of the studio itself, watching giant sets roll through showers of white petals and sparkling dancers take centre stage in a gaudy historical epic. Suddenly, a trunk falls off the head of a fake elephant, sending the director into a hysterical argument with his crew who begin toppling all the other cut-outs – until the older Fellini cuts them off. “You were supposed to knock over the first elephant, not the third,” he proclaims, revealing this entire sequence to be yet another layer of fiction within a film he is making about his first visit to Cinecittà.

It is a seamless transition he conducts here, not so much forcing us to question where the line is between Fellini’s life and stories than to accept them as one. Especially when Marcello Mastroianni drops in with a dramatic entrance as Mandrake the Magician, Fellini pays sentimental tribute to the cherished relationships he has built over the years through film, gathering up his old collaborator and Rubini into a car to visit Anita Ekberg at her mansion.

The Swedish actress only ever featured in one Fellini film, but as shown here, the impact that her famous Trevi Fountain scene with Mastroianni in La Dolce Vita has had on their lives may be equal to its high standing in Italian culture. When Mastroianni magically summons a white sheet at her house party, the two wistfully recreate their old dance as shadows against its surface, accompanied by Nino Rota’s instantly recognisable score. Afterwards, their eyes turn to a projection of the original Trevi Fountain scene itself, smiling and tearing up with unspoken nostalgia. All at once, we bear witness to the chemistry they shared as attractive young film stars, and how it has strengthened through years of mutual respect and adoration.

That this is the moment from Fellini’s career which he chooses to directly evoke in Intervista doesn’t just speak to his pride in its artistic brilliance. Above all else, the relationships that formed behind the scenes hold a timeless value to these artists, justifying all the pains and struggles that come with their profession. It is dismaying to see modern apartments buildings encroach on this studio lot that once hosted the grand sets of Ben-Hur and Cleopatra, yet the sad state of the industry does little to dampen the spirits of cast and crew who band together for the sake of entertainment.

This is the true joy of filmmaking, Fellini posits, and it is on full display in the absurd final scenes of Intervista when Amerika finally enters production. Out in a muddy backlot of scaffolding and cardboard cutouts, an actress complains about her cemetery scene being cut, while a crewmember sheepishly gathers up the lightweight gravestones. Suddenly, mounted stage lights begin to explode from the drizzling rain, which soon escalates into a storm and sends everyone running beneath a small tarp shelter. As a jazz band in the back of a truck plays cheery tunes into the night, cast and crew entertain themselves with games, songs, and conversation, before falling asleep in cramped, uncomfortable positions.

Unbeknownst to them, standing atop a nearby hill the next morning is a tribe of Native Americans on horseback, carrying television antennae as weapons. Their attack on the makeshift shelter suddenly transforms the scene into a Western, only to be halted by Fellini’s call to cut. “We’re wrapped it!” the crew yells. “The film’s over!”

Once again, Intervista completely blindsides us with its invisible layers of metafiction, dwelling so long in what we assume to be reality that we fail to spot the illusion. At this point at least, Fellini is done hiding his intentions from us. “The film should end here,” his voiceover considers. “In fact, it’s over.” But not before reflecting on a criticism that he has often heard levelled at his stories.

“I hear the words of an old producer of mine. ‘What? Without the faintest hope or ray of sunshine? Give me at least a day of sunshine,’ he would beg when viewing my films. A ray of sunshine? Well, I don’t know. Let’s try.”

Fellini’s films were far from the bleakest of his contemporaries, especially with Ingmar Bergman’s oeuvre in contention, though these ambiguous final words are justified to an extent. Just as he revelled in entertainment and spectacle, so too did their cynical hollowness often rise to the surface in his films. The ambiguity of this ending sees Intervista dissipate without much gravity, but within it there is at least a sense of hope. “Take one,” a clapper loader announces in the final shot, commencing a new project. Perhaps it is Fellini’s, finally delivering that ray of sunshine he never quite mustered, or perhaps it belongs to another director carrying on his legacy. Either way, the lively spirit of Cinecittà Studios and the Italian film industry it houses lives on, long past their historic, illustrious golden age.

Intervista is now streaming on The Criterion Channel.

Trap (2024)

M. Night Shyamalan | 1hr 45min

The premise of a pop concert being one enormous setup to catch a serial killer is inherently absurd, but M. Night Shyamalan is nothing if not bold with his high-concept thrillers. Even more importantly, Trap strings together its set pieces with taut, suspenseful purpose, even overcoming some stilted dialogue and pacing issues with a refreshing creativity that his weakest films fail to properly develop. Here, the thrill isn’t just in navigating the narrative through the eyes of the murderer, now rendered a vulnerable target. It is that this man’s secret identity as a dorky, affable dad is so credible that we too find ourselves believing in the complete sincerity of the love he holds for his family.

Trap does not follow the template of multiple personalities like Psycho, and yet we fully believe that there are two minds who reside within one body, both working in unison. On one side we have Cooper Adams the father and firefighter, enthusiastically taking his teenage daughter Riley to a Lady Raven concert, cracking dad jokes, and defending her against bullies. On the other, there is the Butcher, a sadistic serial killer who imprisons his victims in the basements of empty houses and tortures them. It is eerie watching this sort of cognitive dissonance in play as Josh Harnett smoothly switches between both personas, forcing us to constantly question our own desire to see him either succeed or fail in his escape mission.

Following Shyamalan’s similar success last year with Knock at the Cabin, it appears that he is not only developing his skills as a writer, but also as a visual storyteller bearing closer resemblance to Alfred Hitchcock and Brian de Palma than ever before. Deep focus and split diopter lenses often divide the frame right down the middle, staging Hartnett in the distance as he eyes off the FBI profiler leading the manhunt, while the editing between his point-of-view and reaction shots silently key us into each plan unfolding in his mind.

Carrying over from Knock at the Cabin as well is his penchant for shallow focus close-ups – a technique too often abused by lazy filmmakers, yet which have enormous impact when wielded with the uncomfortable intimacy that Shyamalan does here. The fourth wall breaking stares are right out of the Jonathan Demme playbook, studying every worry line and strained smile that crosses Hartnett’s visage, while Shyamalan’s zooms and low angles alternately turn him into a warped, sinister figure. Most inventive of all though is the framing which slices his face right down the middle, displaying only half of it onscreen as a visual representation of his hidden dual identities.

Just as Trap is starting to grow stagnant, the unexpected perspective shift which moves to Lady Raven picks the pacing back up. Here, the Ariana Grande-inspired popstar starts earning Shyamalan’s close-ups instead, highlighting a fine film debut from his daughter Saleka whose enormous, expressive eyes dominate the screen. As she takes charge, our alliance begins to shift, and the walls finally begin to close in on Cooper – though we have learned by now he is not one to be underestimated. Even when he is cornered in the tightest of spaces, his ability to stealth his way out is equivalent to that of an escape artist, straining credulity by the final act.

It is during these last few scenes that Shyamalan shifts our perspective again to a third character, though one who enters the film far too late to earn its climactic payoff. This also coincides with the sudden disappearance of Lady Raven from the narrative – another significant formal misstep that denies her arc a proper resolution. That Shyamalan fumbles the landing is no great surprise, but it is nevertheless disappointing given the relative strength of his storytelling throughout the rest of the film. As much as its tantalising final seconds somewhat make up for this, Trap works best when it is drawing a captivating divide down the middle of Cooper Adams and the Butcher, grappling with the internal, antagonistic pairing of a father and murderer as unlikely partners in crime.

Trap is currently playing in cinemas.

Senso (1954)

Luchino Visconti | 1hr 57min

“I dislike people behaving like characters in some melodrama,” Contessa Livia Serpieri hypocritically proclaims in the opening minutes of Senso, particularly needling those “with no regard for the serious consequences of a gesture dictated by impulse or by unforgivable thoughtlessness.” Luchino Visconti does not merely underscore the irony of such a grand indictment – over the course of this film, her life becomes an opera itself, appropriately beginning with one fateful encounter at a theatrical production of Il Trovatore. There are few men in Venice more shameful for Livia to fall for than Lieutenant Franz Mahler, whose loyalty to the Austrian Empire during its occupation of Italy is directly at odds with her cousin Roberto’s nationalistic insubordination, as well as the old-fashioned aristocracy she has married into. Still, what do these taboos really amount to when that rare breed of star-crossed love is at stake?

Livia is not wrong to question the social conventions of her time, though the naivety with which she conducts her secret rebellion dooms her from the start. She falls hard and fast, turning a blind eye to Franz’s exile of Roberto and stubbornly suffering through his tactless womanising. Her lovesick stubbornness may be reminiscent of Scarlett O’Hara, but it is clear in Alida Valli’s taciturn performance that this does not come from the same place of petulance or vanity. Behind her sharp features she conceals an ardent desire to escape her dull, overprivileged lifestyle and uncover hidden passions that she never felt in her claustrophobic marriage to Count Serpieri, while the Third Italian War of Independence complements this rising tension with a similarly volatile backdrop of turmoil and violence.

*Senso is a prime achievement of acting for Alida Valli, who conceals an ardent desire to escape her dull, overprivileged lifestyle behind sharp, taciturn features.*

*A fine arrangement of ornaments through the frame, sinking Livia into a shiny sea of blue.*

On this level, the similarities to Gone with the Wind’s sweeping historical scope and beauty deepens, shrouding the film in a Technicolor opulence that arrived in 1954 as an unexpected shift for a renowned neorealist such as Visconti. Senso’s extravagant studio sets allowed him a level of control that he was never previously afforded, obstructing meticulously arranged compositions with oil lamps, drapes, and fine ornaments laid precisely around rooms of patterned wallpaper and faded frescoes. His staging of actors across the full breadth and depth of his frame makes for some magnificent cinematic paintings too, dressing the men in military uniforms that cut out sharp silhouettes and women in voluminous dresses which fill up entire doorways. The colours and textures of Visconti’s period décor may be worn with age, yet this only speaks to the miraculous survival of Italy’s cultural heritage across many centuries, and its bold perseverance against the newest threat to arrive at their doorstep.

*Visconti uses frescoes to tremendous effect throughout Senso, setting his characters against faded backdrops of high art, history, and wealth.*

*As always, it is Visconti’s staggered blocking that astounds, delivering an array of picturesque compositions that tell their own stories.*

*What starts as a relatively shallow shot deepens very suddenly as Valli flies into the background, throwing open doors to create frames within frames within frames.*

*Visconti’s venture into Technicolor photography is a superb accomplishment, seeming to draw inspiration from painters more than filmmakers.*

As visually sumptuous as these sets are, it is evidently the addition of Visconti’s magnificent location shooting among Venice’s most iconic sites which led to Senso becoming the most expensive Italian film at the time of its release. Aristocrats, soldiers, and activists fill the ornate golden stalls and balconies at La Fenice opera house where the film opens, setting the scene of civil unrest as green and red protest leaflets are scattered through the air, while outside the moonlight bounces off the Cannaregio Canal and dimly illuminates the surrounding stonework. As Livia wanders down the archaic city streets with her secret lover, her voiceover romantically ponders what she believes to be true companionship, submitting to the same melodramatic weaknesses she derided in others only a few scenes prior.

“There existed only a secret and unspoken pleasure I experienced in hearing him speak and laugh, and in hearing the echo of our footsteps in that silent city.”

*Visconti shoots in La Fenice opera house, filling the ornate golden balconies with extras as leaflets patriotically stealing the colours of the Italian flag rain down from above.*

*Venice has rarely looked as a beautiful as it does here, its mise-en-scène filled in with painterly, historic detail.*

It would be reasonable to suggest that Visconti can’t entirely shake his neorealist tendencies given his dedication to the authenticity of each setting, but by the time he is staging immense battles between Italian and Austrian forces, it is abundantly clear that his cinematic ambitions have also expanded to crafting breathtaking action and spectacle. His camera pans and crane shots may be simple in their execution, yet they are enormously effective in tracking the coordinated movement of rigorous military formations through wheat fields, while capturing the menacing accumulation of opposing forces atop a hill in the background. Visconti scenery is consistently layered with a remarkable level of detail here, letting fires burn across distant pastures while horse-drawn carriages pass right by the camera, and consequently breathing life into Italy’s epic, historic stand against their Austrian oppressors.

*In place of fast cuts, Visconti lets his camera drift and pan across scenes of largescale conflict, soaking in the remarkable scenery and blocking across all layers of the frame.*

*Visconti uses the full depth of his shot – fires burning across hills in the background, armed forces approaching each other in the midground, and carriages passing by in the foreground.*

The purpose of these imposing battle scenes in Senso is twofold – not only do they vividly paint out the visceral violence which Livia remains happily ignorant to, but they also directly embody the tragic consequences of her irresponsible actions. So besotted is she with her Austrian Lieutenant that she doesn’t see the cowardice in his antiwar monologue, and when he asks for money to bribe his way out of fighting, she impulsively decides to give him funds that Roberto intended for the Italian war effort. The results are catastrophic, leaving the Italians severely under-resourced in the Battle of Custoza, and incidentally guaranteeing their defeat.

*The Battle of Custoza is a humiliating defeat for the Italians, expanding the scope of Visconti’s narrative to reveal the impact of Livia’s selfishness upon the entire nation.*

For a woman who considers herself above the whims of melodrama, Livia is evidently prone to spontaneous bouts of recklessness and depression, even seeing her don a black mourning dress when she is separated from Franz. Delusions of exotic romance that exist to cover deeper insecurities can only sustain themselves for so long though, and once Franz has accomplished his goal of bribing his way out of the army, Livia’s finally come crashing down. Along with losing his social status and military rank, so too has Franz lost all dignity. Now spending his days and nights with the prostitutes of Verona, he considers himself nothing but a “drunken deserter,” and doesn’t hold back in inflicting his spiteful self-loathing upon Livia when she finally tracks him down.

The wide shots in his apartment of gold-and-crimson wallpaper are handsomely mounted, but it is Visconti’s unusual shift into close-ups which particularly astounds here, studying the mix of despair and exhaustion that unfolds across Valli’s face during her cruel humiliation. “You think the same way I do,” Franz viciously asserts when he notes her shock at his moral debasement. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have given me money to buy yourself an hour of love.”

*Countless frames here could be mounted on a wall – absolutely immaculate production design with the red wallpaper, gold trimming, and fine furniture.*

*A shift into close-ups as Livia is forced to confront Franz’s hateful misanthropy and self-loathing, building Valli’s performance to a heart-wrenching climax.*

It is a dangerous thing to shatter a woman’s heart so completely, and so it is reasonable to assume that Franz similarly recognises the seeds of self-destruction that he is sowing through such a heinous act. After all, Livia still holds proof of his treason, and what greater way for her to end this cinematic opera than with a petty act of revenge? The Austrian authorities she turns him in to see the contempt behind her actions, but there is no shame left in this emotionally ruined woman. Driven mad with anger and betrayal, she screams his name into the empty streets of Verona, poignantly mirroring Senso’s final shot of Austrian soldiers carrying Franz’s body into the darkness following his execution. Her heart may still be beating, but she has suffered an annihilation of the spirit as irrecoverable as any physical death, as Visconti sinks his historical melodrama into the depths of a grave tragedy that was fated from the start.

*Driven mad with anger and betrayal, Livia disappears into the darkness of Verona, and tragedy reigns.*

*Formally mirroring Livia’s exit, so too does Franz disappear into the darkness, killed by her bitter revenge.*

Senso is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to purchase from Amazon.

Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)

Shawn Levy | 2hr 7min

It was only a matter of time before Deadpool’s gimmick of irreverent, self-referential superhero gags would grow thin. For his greatest critics, it happened back in 2016, though at least that first movie injected a fresh burst of cynicism into the genre. The 2018 sequel shook up the stakes with a mission to save a young boy from a villainous future, and hilariously satirised superhero team ups. The greatest development that Deadpool & Wolverine has to offer is a surprisingly sincere examination of Logan’s legacy after Hugh Jackman’s ‘retirement’ of the character, but as a matter of coherent storytelling, this movie jumps between half-baked ideas with all the awkwardness of Marvel’s disjointed multiverse.

In fact, it is this attempt to tread the line between paying homage to Fox-owned Marvel properties and bringing Deadpool into the Marvel Cinematic Universe which keeps Deadpool & Wolverine from focusing its narrative. Its countless cameos may service the franchise’s most loyal fans, but most bear such little impact that they could easily be swapped out for any other retired Marvel character, with only a single exception bearing sizeable weight on Wolverine’s arc. This interaction produces one of the film’s most touching scenes, honouring the character that Jackman has spent over two decades exploring. Even in his repartee with Ryan Reynolds, the two actors hit on a buddy comedy dynamic that carries us through an array of contrived plot beats.

Still, their star-fuelled charisma can only take Deadpool & Wolverine so far. By the time we get to a second hand-to-hand fight between our titular antiheroes, we are left to wonder where the stakes are in a duel where neither superpowered combatant can be properly wounded. Of course, the easy answer to this is that the film cares more about cheap wisecracks and shocking audiences that ‘they went there’ than building a solid story – not that this possesses the subversive edge of The Boys, The Suicide Squad, or even previous Deadpool movies.

In the grand scheme of superhero movies, Deadpool & Wolverine is far too caught up in its throwaway nods to Marvel’s history to escape its own fourth-wall breaking criticisms of the genre, whether those be needless paragraphs of exposition or stale clichés. We only need to look at its development of Wolverine’s legacy to see how digging up old IP does not need to be a mindless, gratuitous exercise in moneymaking, and can enrichen long-established archetypes with fresh perspectives. Within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this alternate Wolverine may be one of the most singularly effective uses of the multiverse conceit. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the rest of Deadpool & Wolverine’s overstuffed narrative.

Deadpool & Wolverine is now playing in cinemas.

MaXXXine (2024)

Ti West | 1hr 44min

Having rolled in the mud of 70s indie horror in X and the probed the underlying darkness of classical Hollywood in Pearl, Ti West suffuses the final part of his trilogy with sensationalist glamour, only barely masking the cutthroat violence of 1980s America. Here, the Satanic panic is rife among conservative Christians who believe the Devil has possessed their youth through modern entertainment, while those who lust for the lifestyle of the rich and famous delight in its hedonistic, consumerist culture. Stoking the flames of this division further are reports of the mysterious Night Stalker, who has infamously been targeting the young people of Los Angeles and branding their faces with occult symbols. Perhaps it is just a coincidence that so many of them have ties to B-grade porn star and aspiring actress Maxine Minx, though the police detectives who are on the case certainly don’t see it that way.

MaXXXine may be West’s take on the 80s slasher movie, but his cinematic homage also transcends that era of cheap kills and thrills. Vibrant lighting, black leather gloves, and the stretched mask worn by the Night Stalker directly call back to Italian Giallo films, while Psycho is held up as a paragon of horror filmmaking by industry professionals, worshipping Alfred Hitchcock’s legacy on their visits to Universal’s Bates Motel set.

The emulation of Brian de Palma’s pulpy, extravagant style from films like Dressed to Kill and Body Double shouldn’t come as surprise then either, given his own reverent adoration of the Master of Suspense. Split screen montages set the scene of Hollywood’s nightlife, teeming with costumed street performers, prostitutes, and vivid neon lights, while wipe transitions between scenes playfully indulge in the dynamic artifice. West’s editing is even sharper in scenes of mounting tension, cross-cutting between Maxine reviewing the screenplay for her debut horror movie and her friend’s brutal murder at the hands of the Night Stalker, while cutaways to gory practical effects revel in his visceral, grotesque torture.

Much like X and Pearl, the relationship between moviemaking and celebrity culture is at the core of MaXXXine, once again granting West the freedom to explore the American Dream through a satirical, metafictional lens. Mia Goth returns as the vessel through which this merciless ambition manifests as well, picking up Maxine’s story five years after her escape from Pearl’s bloody massacre in X, and now standing on the verge of stardom as she prepares for her debut screen performance in slasher sequel The Puritan II.

It is no coincidence that director’s goal of making a “B-movie with A-movie ideas” is also a self-comment on MaXXXine, nor that her description of the lead character as “a killer but not a villain” could just easily apply to Maxine herself. Though the young actress has been deeply traumatised, she is well-equipped to deal with all sorts of danger, as she proves in one violent confrontation with a Buster Keaton street performer in a murky alleyway. On some subconscious level, there is truth to the lurid narratives that the storytellers of Hollywood deliver to their audiences. Desensitised, self-serving cruelty is the only way to get ahead in this industry after all, sacrificing pieces of one’s humanity to stay in the game and beat the equally ruthless competition.

Goth’s acting here is anything but weak, but it is no coincidence that her best performances in this trilogy have been as the older and younger versions of Pearl, embodying a tragic derangement that is a little more diluted in Maxine. The hallucinatory presence of Pearl here only really serves to carry through the series’ formal comparison of their stories – one being of crushed dreams, and the other of dreams coming true at enormous cost – yet this is one of many narrative threads that fail to find its resolution in a messy final act.

By spending so much time on disconnected subplots, West doesn’t entirely earn his eventual subversion of the film’s Satanic horror, which he may have pulled off with greater setup. In true Hitchcockian fashion, his staging of the film’s climax beneath the Hollywood Sign stains an iconic landmark with seedy, bloody corruption, but even here the opportunity to end the story on a relatively strong note is missed with an unnecessary epilogue. Unlike X and Pearl, MaXXXine spreads itself a little too thinly across a large ensemble, setting, and narrative, yet there is nevertheless something amusingly ironic about a film that ambitiously falls prey to the same shortcomings as many of its influences. In spite of these missteps, West adeptly puts his own spin on the pulp and splatter of 80s horror, ending his three-part interrogation of the genre’s bloodstained history with intoxicating, gaudy spectacle.

MaXXXine is currently playing in cinemas.

And the Ship Sails On (1983)

Federico Fellini | 2hr 8min

The passengers that gather aboard cruise ship Gloria N. to scatter the ashes of world-renowned opera singer Edmea Tetua are an eclectic mix of European aristocrats. The obese Grand Duke of Harzock is present with his blind sister, a Princess who claims she can see the colour of sounds and voices – besides the General’s, which is drolly described as “a void.” The Count of Bassano is here as well, a reclusive, obsessive fan of Edmea’s who has transformed his chamber into a shrine, and dresses as her ghost to frighten those disrespectfully trying to summon her spirit in a séance. The most dominant demographic by far though are those industry professionals who have come to commemorate their colleague’s passing. Singers, conductors, musicians, and theatre managers have no inhibitions when it comes to showing off their talents on this journey, and consequently expose egos as large as the vessel they travel on.

As for our guide through the vast ensemble of And the Ship Sails On, Federico Fellini gives us Orlando, a jovial Italian journalist with a proud dedication to his role of narrator. In the ship’s dining hall of lavish golden décor and architecture, he addresses the camera as both an outside observer and a passenger, while being pushed to the edge of the room by wait staff demanding he stand out of their way. This is a historic moment, he is sure to inform us, though one that is steeped in the absurdity of a ruling class that is no longer answerable to the conventions of mainland society. Here, they amplify each other’s most obnoxious qualities, the singers jealously competing to win the admiration of the crew in the boiler room while nobles squabble over the trivial semantics of metaphors.

This is an environment of total indulgence and pretence, constructed within an artificial world that Fellini’s narrative bookends expose as his own arbitrary cinematic invention. The recreation of silent cinema which opens And the Ship Sails On mockingly evokes the 1914 setting, using expository intertitles at the docks where characters board the cruise liner, before sound and colour slowly fade in with the reverential boarding of Edmea’s ashes. An even more bombastic shattering of the fourth wall also occurs in the film’s final minutes, where Fellini’s camera tracks behind the scenes of his marvellous set to reveal the crew, technical equipment, and hydraulic jacks rocking the entire ship, stripping away all illusion.

These are Fellini’s attempts to undercut the pomp and circumstance of the voyage, and yet the latter especially comes off as erratic, eroding the formal cohesion of the piece. Where And the Ship Sails On more successfully peels back the layers of this world is in its rich theatrics, revealing the ocean in long shots to be little more than a glittery, blue tarp, and the ship itself to be a miniature model set against painted backdrops. The interiors are equally elaborate, particularly within the golden dining hall where towering candelabras obstruct shots around crowded tables, while even Fellini’s editing resigns his characters to their stations in life. The manic fast-motion of cooks rapidly preparing food decelerates into mechanical slow-motion when it is finally served upon the guests’ plates, whereupon they raise glasses and spoons to their mouths in mindless unison. Without a single line of dialogue, Fellini draws a firm divide between the classes of passengers upon the Gloria N., underscoring the ludicrously dissimilar paces of both lifestyles.

Only when Serbian refugees are rescued and taken aboard in the film’s final act does unity unexpectedly manifest upon this ship, and for some time it would even seem that the optimist in Fellini has won out over the cynic. The blocking here is handsomely staged upon the deck, particularly as celebrations erupt with food and dance shared between passengers from diverse backgrounds. For one blissful night, all pretensions of sophistication are thrown overboard, along with concerns of the very real danger which these shipwrecked outcasts are fleeing from – though the onset of World War I’s geopolitical tensions can only remain at bay for so long.

The arrival of an Austro-Hungarian ship demanding the return of these refugees snaps the passengers of Gloria N. back to reality with jarring whiplash, softened only by Orlando’s hopeful imagining of what might have unfolded had this newfound solidarity also inspired courage. “No, we won’t give them up!” the ship’s singers belt in anthemic unison, using their art to make a bold, powerful statement.

“Death to arrogance,

No monster shall overcome us,

Violence will not conquer us!”

Fellini’s rapid dissolution of this surreal daydream is bleak, and devastatingly inevitable. “The battleship was compelled to arrest the Serbs. It was an order from the Austrian-Hungarian police,” Orlando matter-of-factly informs us, though the conflict does not end here. The Gloria N. was not merely famous for its commemorative voyage, we learn, but for the many lives lost in its catastrophic sinking.

“It’s almost impossible to reconstruct the precise sequence of events,” Orlando continues to monologue as he prepares to evacuate the ship, yet Fellini is not so elusive when it comes to the turning point in this chain of events. In climactic slow-motion, a young Serb refugee lobs a handmade bomb through the porthole of the enemy ship, setting off a chain reaction of events that ends in historic catastrophe. Maybe it was carried in a moment of furious passion, or perhaps it was a premediated terrorist act, Orlando broodingly considers, before his arbitrary musings are swiftly cut off.

All of a sudden, the gentle rocking of the camera which has persisted through the entire film escalates into a formidable lurch, sending fine furniture sliding to the other end of the dining room and effectively destroying these fragile icons of high society. Maestro Albertini conducts the operatic underscore of his own demise upon the upper deck, while The Count of Bassano weeps in his flooded room down below, watching film reels of the deceased opera singer who he will soon join in death.

Still, And the Ship Sails On is far from the mournful tragedy of Titanic, instead drawing a closer comparison to Ruben Östlund’s more recent nautical class satire Triangle of Sadness. Much like his stubbornly upbeat ensemble, Fellini remains cheery right through to the end, his attitude even bordering on careless as he feebly wavers between a few different conclusions without totally committing to any single one. It is quite understandable that he has some fondness for these outrageous caricatures, given that he has essentially instilled them with pieces of his own vanity, though he is also not one to wistfully mourn their losses. After all, within this dreamy microcosm of self-obsessed aristocrats, it is far more enlightening, enjoyable, and enamouring to revel in the macabre absurdity of their splendid misfortune.

And the Ship Sails On is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

Longlegs (2024)

Osgood Perkins | 1hr 41min

For a few eerie minutes in the prologue of Longlegs, Nicolas Cage’s grotesque visage only manifests through a handful of discomforting clues – strange cuckoo noises, a thin, reedy voice, and the bottom half of a partially-concealed face. When he suddenly descends into the frame, we cut away so quickly that we barely register his features, and yet a deep, discomforting terror lingers in its wake. The face of Satanic evil is not easily forgotten, leaving its psychological imprint on both us and the doggedly persistent Detective Lee Harker long after it has faded from view.

The mystery of Cage’s disturbing prosthetic transformation has been so strong in the leadup to Longlegs that it has taken a life of its own online, driving a guerilla marketing campaign inspired by the tactical success of The Blair Witch Project. The creative decision to keep him largely offscreen for roughly half the movie also abides by the found-footage film’s playbook, recognising that implicit horror is far scarier than explicit. As a crime procedural unravelling the mystery of an infamous serial killer though, the influence of David Fincher is far more present, methodically tracing Lee’s investigation on a granular level as she pieces together the patterns of Longlegs’ murders.

Perhaps most intriguing of all is the fact that these homicides would easily be solved if Longlegs wasn’t specifically claiming credit with his calling cards. In each case stretching back thirty years, a seemingly ordinary father snaps and brutally massacres his entire family, usually on or around his daughter’s 9^th birthday. In some cases, they too commit suicide. In others, they survive long enough to be arrested. When the dust has cleared though and investigations have settled, there is nothing else to suggest that Longlegs has ever even met these victims, let alone been present to harm them. So how can one possibly catch a murderer whose guilt cannot be substantiated beyond his cruel taunts?

Perhaps it takes a police officer whose fate is already mystically intertwined with Longlegs’ to capture him, and particularly one such as Lee who exhibits signs of clairvoyance. Maika Monroe is our silent vessel for large portions of the film, fastidiously poring over occult symbols, algorithms, and Zodiac-like ciphers that link him directly to Satan, while seeking to escape his apparent omnipresence in her life. Disturbing visions and memories haunt her deeply, gradually becoming more aggressive in smash cuts that formally deviate from Osgood Perkins’ otherwise measured pacing and long dissolves, and each time returning us to a boxier aspect ratio that drastically narrows our field of vision.

The red tinting that is often attached to these hallucinations make for an admirable stylistic achievement for Perkins as well, echoing the infernal glow of Longlegs’ workshop where he handcrafts sinister, life-sized dolls. Outside of these instances though, he far more frequently returns to dim, yellow light sources that suffuse each setting with its own kind of dread, deepening the Fincher comparison. In Lee’s log cabin home, his camera follows her down warm, wooden corridors, suspensefully waiting for the uncanny presence she feels outside to reveal itself. Golden sunbeams similarly filter through windows of a darkened barn she later investigates with her colleague, while even the police station where she works is saturated with a murky ambience from fluorescent lights.

It is in the interrogation room of that final location where the much-anticipated meeting between Lee and Longlegs finally takes place, borrowing visual cues from The Silence of the Lambs as the camera forges an intimate connection with Cage. Perkins no longer obscures his face, but rather frames it peering right back at us in close-ups, unlocking the mystical connection which binds our protagonist and villain together in spiritual damnation. Evil may dwell in the dark corners of society, but as Longlegs carefully paints out, humanity’s greatest horrors can easily breach the sacred boundaries that we draw around own homes. Maybe it is a freak possession which will one day prompt our loved ones to suddenly destroy us, or perhaps that malice has always lurked under an innocent façade, justifying its existence through a hideous, corrupted sense of self-preservation.

Longlegs is currently playing in cinemas.

Kinds of Kindness (2024)

Yorgos Lanthimos | 2hr 44min

Whatever affection the title Kinds of Kindness promises to explore in its three surreal fables can only be considered ‘kindness’ on its most shallow, depraved level. Given how scarce a resource it is in Yorgos Lanthimos’ bleakly absurdist world of abusers and manipulators, perhaps the provisional security they offer is the best that any individual lost in the senseless void of existence can hope for. After all, when order lapses into anarchy, what is there to cling to but the unyielding directives of one’s employer? Where can love be found outside of one’s spouse, and what is purpose without a divine imperative guiding one’s life?

Gone is the whimsy of Lanthimos’ most recent films The Favourite and Poor Things, and replacing it is a familiar deadpan bleakness that harkens back to the early Lanthimos of Dogtooth and The Lobster. In the absence of his intricate period sets and fisheye lenses, Kinds of Kindness marks a disappointing step down visually, though this is not to say his world-building is any less bizarre. The rules that these characters live by are completely alien, forcing each to submit their agency to powers that we struggle to wrap our minds around, yet which they must never question for fear of greater ramifications.

Kinds of Kindness marks a return to the bleak, muted visuals of Lanthimos’ early films, using a wide-angle lens to stretch out this handsome shot here of Robert standing in the corner of his office, as if about to topple from security into oblivion.

The first chapter in Lanthimos’ anthology may be the clearest rendering of this social critique, observing a toxic relationship that holds corporate businessman Robert under the thumb of his boss, Raymond. Every aspect of his life is minutely controlled, from the books he must read right down to his weight-gaining diet. In return, he is given a large house, a wife, and a collection of valuable sports memorabilia – all handpicked by Raymond of course. Meanwhile, Robert’s comically petty acts of self-harm manifest as small rebellions, giving him a chance to whine for attention and take ownership of something beyond his employer’s grasp. When Raymond demands he commit vehicular homicide by recreating one of his staged car accidents though, Robert expresses doubt for the first time and risks losing everything.

*Cutting social commentary by way of absurdist narratives and settings. Lanthimos is a Samuel Beckett or Eugène Ionesco for modern cinema.*

He shouldn’t feel guilty over this, Raymond assures him, as the intended target has agreed to this proposition. Going by the embroidered monogram on the victim’s shirt, his name is R.M.F – the same initials which appear in the title of all three chapters. He is a passive enigma of a character, barely taking up a few minutes of screentime in each tale, and yet his role is always pivotal. The foreshadowing is apparent here in the first chapter ‘The Death of R.M.F.’, though later when Lanthimos plays out the second and third chapters ‘R.M.F. is Flying’ and ‘R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich’, the relevance grows increasingly oblique.

Those trying to penetrate the deeper symbolism behind R.M.F. will either conjure up some fantastic theory or be left sorely disappointed. Because he is fatefully tied to Lanthimos’ eccentric main characters and even takes precedence over them in chapter titles, we might expect him to represent some grand, metaphysical concept. Ultimately though, he is little more than a mundane peculiarity in this outlandish world – and quite ironically, it is exactly that which makes him stand out, further defining his environment as one of incongruous chaos.

At least when he appears in the second chapter ‘R.M.F. is Flying,’ he takes somewhat of a heroic role, rescuing marine biologist Liz from a desert island after she and her colleagues are shipwrecked. Unfortunately, her husband Daniel is not so ready to welcome her home. This new Liz is different, having apparently been replaced by a doppelganger who smokes, no longer fits her old shoes, and suddenly has a very active libido. Bit by bit, Lanthimos shifts the perspective of this story until Daniel’s role as a delusionally unreliable narrator comes into focus, and we begin to consider whether he is simply unable to comprehend his wife’s sudden psychological trauma.

*Jesse Plemons’ deadpan presence is a perfect fit for Lanthimos’ understated humour, playing outlandish character beats with comical nonchalance.*

Fulfilling her husband’s requests of self-mutilation appears to be the only way that Liz can prove her authentic love, and thus this chapter moves into some of the most viscerally disturbing scenes of the film, revealing its grotesque metaphor of toxic dependence. She has felt the horror of true isolation, and so this abuse seems a small price to pay for the security of marriage, even if it erodes the physical substance of her being.

In one key monologue elucidating a dream she had on the island, we can at least find a partial justification for this in her mind, imagining a world where dogs and humans have swapped places while the rest of society remains unaffected. It is not the first time Lanthimos has likened people to animals, contemplating the narrow divide between civil order and savage chaos, though here the metaphor explicitly pays off in a short epilogue revealing this off-kilter alternate world – dogs relaxing with friends, driving over human roadkill, and hanging themselves to death.

*Black-and-white dreams and flashbacks are where Lanthimos’ surrealism takes off, especially in the closing of the second chapter where we witness Liz’s dream of dogs and humans swapping places.*

There is evidently a prophetic power to dreams throughout Kinds of Kindness, especially given how closely they are bound to characters’ memories, with prescient visions and flashbacks being consistently depicted in black-and-white. These interludes may exist purely inside their minds, and yet they frequently manifest in their lives later on like eerie echoes, sometimes even right down to the identical repetition of shots as we observe in Robert’s dreamed and actual confrontations with his boss in the first chapter. As such, the use of ‘Sweet Dream’s by the Eurythmics makes for a fitting theme song, lyrically contemplating the toxic behaviours of Lanthimos’ characters.

“Some of them want to use you,

Some of them want to be used by you,

Some of theme want to abuse you,

Some of them want to be abused.”

Indeed, “everybody is looking for something” in Kinds of Kindness, and bit by bit we begin to wonder whether their cryptic dreams are the key to finding it. Specifically in the third chapter, devoted cultist Emily is haunted by a nightmare of her hair being caught in a pool drain, until another woman sets her free – a visual metaphor which later manifests in her mission to find a foretold Messiah figure. Believing that bodily fluids hold the essence of human corruption, she and her brainwashed peers fall naively under the sway of their leader Omi, whose twisted, manipulative love holds the ultimate judgement over whether or not they have been “contaminated.” Once we witness the abuse Emily suffered back in her old home life though, we at least come to understand her desperate need to find belonging at whatever humiliating expense, even if it means a complete dedication of one’s soul and body to an unhinged belief system.

*A mission to find a Messiah figure with the ability to perform miracles is tainted by the utter disregard these characters have for true divinity, destroying it to heal their own loneliness.*

As we should expect by now, the divine is not something to be exalted in Lanthimos’ self-serving society, but to be drugged, kidnapped, and traded for the arbitrary approval of others. Its power is transcendent, yet it is ironically degraded by those who hold it up as an icon of spiritual glory, committing sordid acts in its name. Whatever hope or salvation may have been found in religion is lost the moment it is fashioned into a tool for simple, worldly desires.

Emma Stone’s performance as Emily in this final chapter may be the most memorable of the film, leaving a distinct mark in her copper-coloured suit, auburn hair, and flashy purple sportscar. As a totality though, it is the revolving cast through each fable which makes even more impactful formal statement, additionally featuring Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, and Hong Chau in multiple roles. Through the connection of R.M.F., we understand that they all exist within the same world, though perhaps one which is more akin to a Kafkaesque purgatory trapping souls in various forms of psychological torture than a logical, organised civilisation.

*Emma Stone shakes and thrusts to ‘Brand New Bitch’ in her copper-coloured suit, as her drugged victim slumps in the background – she is the clear standout in the third chapter.*

Further lifting Kinds of Kindness beyond the realm of reality is Jerskin Fendrix’s minimalist music score, setting shrill, discordant piano melodies against deep, pounding chords, while acapella male choruses sing ominous Greek hymns and sustained warnings of “No…”. These might as well be vocalisations of our own internal thoughts, watching these poor souls degrade themselves to earn the conditional love of employers, spouses, and religious leaders, yet only ever finding cold, empty embraces at best. For Lanthimos at least, the period to grieve this total loss of self-worth has long passed. By the time each tale in Kinds of Kindness has run its course, we inevitably realise that the only reasonable response to our own inhumanity is pitying, sardonic laughter.

Kinds of Kindness is currently playing in cinemas.