The assassination that will finally allow secret lovers Julien and Florence to elope couldn’t be more carefully planned, and yet the fatalistic pull of destiny has other mischievous intentions in Elevator to the Gallows, as Louis Malle intertwines two Parisian tales of love and crime with dark, seductive malice.
Contessa Livia Serpieri’s distaste for melodrama clearly does not extend to her own operatic romance in Senso, as Luchino Visconti stages her reckless affair against the tumultuous backdrop of 19th century Italy with historic grandeur, apprehensively waiting for these delusions of exotic love to unravel and expose the insecurities they conceal.
With Max Ophüls’ dextrous camera manoeuvring the ups and downs of Louise’s affair in The Earrings of Madame de…, it isn’t hard to fall prey to her idealistic belief in romantic destiny, imbuing her precious jewels that miraculously keep finding their way home with a mystical, auspicious significance.
With an intelligent employment of religious and demonic imagery at hand, Federico Fellini and Giulietta Masina craft one of the most indelible cinematic characters of the 1950s, allowing us an empathetic vessel through which we contemplate the religious hypocrisies and class struggles of post-war Italy.
Rocky is the path to redemption in Il Bidone’s modern parable of morality and corruption, but so too is it spiritually purifying, as Federico Fellini strips back the lies of a professional swindler to uncover the grace that lies dormant in even the most dishonest man.
Federico Fellini may hold deep affection for the clowns of commedia dell’arte, but just as integral to La Strada’s tale of survival and wonder is the hardship that haunts a post-war Europe, extinguishing the laughter which only barely lingers in the childlike joy of one tragically naïve circus performer.
The young, juvenile men of I Vitelloni’s coastal town are frozen in an eternal youth of idle recreation, lazily hoping for the day that the world might finally give their lives greater purpose, and playfully pursuing empty pleasures that Federico Fellini strings into nostalgic vignettes of celebration and struggle.
The marriage between flighty romantic Wanda and the overly practical Ivan was never going to be an easy one, though at least the wild romp across Rome that emerges from their odd mismatch brings both newlyweds down to earth, as Federico Fellini offers divine redemption in The White Sheik to those who seek it out in the right places.
Federico Fellini’s love of theatre would take on great symbolic meaning in his later films, but it emerges quite directly here as the setting of his directorial debut Variety Lights, fuelling the drama between the flighty members of a travelling troupe dreaming of fame, money, and love.
There might not be any historical record that the cultural traditions in The Ballad of Narayama existed anywhere outside of Japanese folklore, and yet it is exactly in that heightened, mythical realm where Keisuke Kinoshita’s film dwells, intertwining kabuki theatre, musical storytelling, and vibrant cinematic innovations within a distant dream of forgotten legends.
