Few words are exchanged by rival bounty hunters Manco and Colonel Douglas Mortimer when they finally come face to face in the rural settlement of El Paso. For the first fifty minutes of For a Few Dollars More, Sergio Leone has been intertwining their paths in search of escaped bank robber El Indio, each scoping out their common target while remaining largely ignorant of each other’s presence. From their raised vantage points on either side of the main road, they spy on the outlaw’s gang gathering outside a bank, before incidentally turning their telescope and binoculars on each other. That evening, Manco sends the porter to packed Mortimer’s belongings and bring them outside where he is waiting, consequently leading to the pivotal confrontation that will ultimately decide the fate of both their quests.
Ennio Morricone’s score is sparse here, though the few notes he does play unite a pair of musical motifs. When we cut to Manco, a flute skims through a terse, cautionary phrase, while the Jew’s harp we have come to associate with Mortimer reverberates a piercing twang. The Colonel is framed in the classic Leone shot between Manco’s spread legs, before they take turns scuffing each other’s shoes. As much as this peacocking is an attempt to mark their territory, the prospect of either backing off seems increasingly unlikely, especially when they begin shooting at each other’s hats to prove who is the better gunslinger. The editing is taut, but with Morricone’s majestic score largely absent, we recognise that this sequence is not building to one of his deadly quick draws. From this rivalry, a begrudging respect is born between Manco and Mortimer, who soon begin negotiating the terms of their professional partnership over drinks.
Rival bounty hunters spy each other, their paths colliding in this POV shot.The classic Leone low angle, foregrounding the feet and framing the opposition.
This willingness to cooperate may be the greatest virtue which our heroes possess in For a Few Dollars More, contrasting heavily against the villain’s treacherous manipulation of his own gang. El Indio acts purely on greed and self-preservation, stoking mistrust among his henchmen in the hopes that they all end up murdering each other. If he and his lieutenant’s plans work out, then he need only split the loot they have stolen from the bank two ways.
Unfortunately, El Indio’s shrewdness is not so forward-thinking. The fracturing of his gang drastically weakens his position against Manco and Mortimer, placing him in a precarious position by the time their final showdown arrives. In the Old West, this choice between unity and division is the only shot anyone has at finding order in anarchy, and may be all that stands in the way of life and death.
Treachery runs rampant within El Indio’s gang, stoking divisions and distinctlysetting them apart from our protagonists.
After the extraordinary hit that was A Fistful of Dollars, it was only natural that Leone should continue probing these blurred binaries of Americana. With twice the budget, he is no longer restricted to a single location, but rather sprawls his narrative scope across multiple settings and expands his ensemble. The only point of continuity to carry over between films is Clint Eastwood as The Man With no Name, informally recognised here as Manco, and this time sharing the lead role with Lee van Cleef. Together, they form a stoic duo as they infiltrate, outsmart, and outshoot El Indio’s gang, seeking to claim the bounty that has been placed on the bandit’s head.
Clint Eastwood and Lee van Cleef make for a compelling screen duo, reluctantly cooperating in their efforts to infiltrate, outsmart, and outshoot El Indio’s gang.
Despite this narrow character link between A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More, there is no doubt that both films inhabit the same dusty, lawless world of Leone’s American frontier. Far from the polished black-and-white cinematography or the blazing Technicolor beauty of classical Hollywood Westerns, this sequel maintains the faded colours and coarse textures of its precursor, using the natural rugged terrains of the Spanish desert to stand in for the harsh Texan wilderness. The only moisture to be found in this environment is that which drips down the faces of Leone’s actors, pressed up against the camera lens in deep focus close-ups that simultaneously track the action unfolding in the background.
For a Few Dollars more has a larger scope than A Fistful of Dollars, giving Leone many opportunities to bask in these natural, rugged terrains.Rural Spanish settlements stand in for the Old West, setting the stage for meetings and skirmishes.A mastery of deep focus on display, pressing faces up against the lens while action unfolds in the background.
There is much tension to be drawn from such lively staging, layering shots with dynamic motion and nervous stillness, though it is once again Leone’s editing which most crucially navigates each moving part of his staggering set pieces. Beyond even his John Ford or Akira Kurosawa influence, Leone’s montages call all the way back to Sergei Eisenstein, patiently cutting between twitching hands, holstered pistols, and apprehensive faces as they anticipate an outburst of action. Suspense is also rife in his constant cutaways to the safe that the gang is planning to steal from the bank, while the rapid cutting between Mortimer’s eyes and El Indio’s wanted poster when the bounty hunter first learns of his prison break lands like bullets, binding their destinies together in a cacophony of gunshots.
Rapid-fire cutting volleys between these shots, viciously binding Mortimer and El Indio’s destinies.
After all, the Colonel is not merely in this for the payout, as handsome as it is. His stakes are personal, and although we don’t learn the details until Leone’s climactic conclusion, the foundations of this grand reveal are woven throughout El Indio’s backstory. Most prominently, flashbacks to the time he raped a woman, murdered her family, and stole her musical pocket watch as a memento sit like a pit in his stomach, hinting at a shred of guilt. Whenever it is opened, memories of that tragedy return in its delicate, tinkling melody, effortlessly weaving a haunting sadness into Morricone’s otherwise majestic score of electric guitars, percussive chants, and piercing whistles. This is the melancholy which resides in all these characters, his motif reminds us, feeding the vengeful sorrow which has transformed the frontier into a battlefield of personal vendettas. On a more sadistic level, so too is it a cruel countdown that El Indio frequently uses in duels, challenging his opponents to only draw their pistols when its wind-up tune has run out.
El Indio’s flashbacks arrive as dreamy, disconnected montages, giving ambiguous background to the pocket watch motif.
This pocket watch thus makes for a fitting accompaniment to his and Mortimer’s eventual showdown, staged within the circular boundaries of a low stone wall. As its melody slows to a halt though, an identical tune suddenly starts up elsewhere, and Leone cuts to a magnificent wide shot of both men on either side of the frame with Manco’s hand in the centre. There, a second pocket watch he pilfered earlier from Mortimer is flipped open, and the historic connection between hero and villain comes to light. El Indio’s eyes move between the pocket watch’s photo of his victim and his adversary, and recognition of a family resemblance crosses his face – yet this is not his story to see through to its completion. For the first time in his life, he is the slowest to draw, and Mortimer chooses not to claim the monetary reward, but rather the inner peace he has long pursued.
Flawless editing matched by meticulous framing during the final shootout, brought to a standstill by Manco’s reveal – a second, identical pocket watch raised in the foreground between both men.
With set pieces as awe-inspiring as these, it is virtually impossible to separate Leone’s cinematic style and mythic storytelling. Character emerges from action, which is in turn born from a flawless synthesis of staging, music, and editing, revitalising the Western genre with the countercultural vigour of the 1960s. Manco is not a classical hero serving righteous ideals for the betterment of society, but a killer who sees death as little more than a commodity to be traded, though at the very least there is some grace to be found in Mortimer’s consideration of murder as an act of moral justice – however bloody it may be. In the absence of men living by virtuous principles, For a Few Dollars More gives us gunslingers choosing to wield their darkness as weapons, and strengthened by the coalition they form against greater, far more rotten evils.
For a Few Dollars More is currently streaming on SBS On Demand, and is available to rent or buy on YouTube and Amazon Video.
When the Stranger first arrives in the rural border town of San Miguel, the reception from its locals is foreboding. A noose hangs from a withered tree, warning visitors away from the lawless justice that runs rampant. From a distance, he observes a small child trying to sneak into a building, only to be kicked out and shot at as he runs back to his mother. As he rides down the street, the civilians aren’t much friendlier to him either. “I reckon he picked the wrong trail,” one mouthy bandit scoffs. “Or he could have picked the wrong town,” his companion retorts, before their small gang sends the Stranger’s galloping off in a panic.
It only takes a couple of minutes for our hero to deliver fierce retribution. With four swift gunshots, he wins the quick draw against their entire crew, and sends them to early graves. It is also in this moment that we see three separate artists make their first major step towards culture-defining excellence.
Leone works magnificently in scenes with minimal dialogue, stretching out the silence of this opening scene with taut suspense, and offering nothing but a few signifiers of the danger that lurks ahead.
As the Stranger stands alone in his poncho against a daunting arrangement of outlaws along a wooden fence, Sergio Leone’s fine orchestration of his editing and staging ominously build their interaction to an impasse, before shattering the tension with an angry, violent bloodbath. This sequence was not only a resounding artistic breakthrough, but also marked the beginning of the Western genre’s most significant shake-up to date. Where America sought to define its own national mythology through fables of good vs evil, Leone’s importation of these archetypes into Italy infused them with a harsher, grittier edge, cynically leaning into the moral grey areas of history that never found easy resolutions. Perhaps even more impactful on his style though was the cinematic nihilism of Akira Kurosawa, with samurai film Yojimbo providing the narrative template upon which A Fistful of Dollars is based.
Superb blocking of faces in the frame, inventively using the full horizontal scope of the widescreen format for something other than a landscape.Leone was a huge admirer of Kurosawa’s action and editing, though where his idol often drew out the cinematic brilliance of sword fights, Leone built scenes towards sudden, jarring shootouts that explode with violence.
Also key to this pivotal scene are the distinctive musical cues of Ennio Morricone – and of course the accompanying silence that he wields with solemn purpose. A sharp, short series of descending notes on a flute accompanies the Stranger’s slight head raise, matching his piercing glare as it emerges from beneath his hat brim, and a high-pitched whining on strings carries us all the way to the inevitable gunfire. From there, Morricone continues weaving textured layers all through his score for A Fistful of Dollars, creating a sound which in decades to come would be recognised as the quintessential ‘sound’ of the Western genre. Whips crack, bells toll, and male voices chant in robust unison, while underscoring the bold, silent presence of the Stranger with blaring trumpets as he daringly strides into hostile territory.
Clint Eastwood was not yet a star in 1964, but his breakout role here would ensure he would be one for many decades to come, defining the new image of a Western hero for a generation.
It is impossible to imagine A Fistful of Dollars without either Leone or Morricone at the helm, but the final part of their trio would in time become the face of Spaghetti Westerns, and eventually transcend even that niche. Clint Eastwood’s screen presence is undeniable as the Stranger, squinting into glary landscapes and mumbling past a cigar that sits in the corner of his mouth. Faced with a town that is split between two rival families vying for control, he uses his sharp mind and sharpshooting skills to orchestrate their downfalls, though it is also the mystery that shrouds his stoic demeanour which turns him into such a compelling figure. After all, he is the Man with No Name, unbeholden to any title, status, or allegiance. When asked by the captive Marisol why he is helping her escaping the factions she has been traded between, his response is vague, yet hints at a past that has hardened him into an aggrieved, avenging angel.
“Because I knew someone like you once. There was no one there to help.”
This is a man driven by an internal sense of right and wrong, and Leone holds no regard for whether we believe he goes too far in certain instances. His quick anger and readiness to kill mars the image of the classic Western hero upheld by Hollywood throughout its Golden Age, yet he is nevertheless the closest thing to a saviour that San Miguel has. Even after being brutally beaten by his enemies, still he refuses to yield, instead recuperating in a cave and eventually being reborn from it as a Christ figure destined to deliver the town from evil.
Only when the Stranger is brought to his lowest can he rise again to claim victory – it is the story of Christ and so many other mythological figures of history.Only with his wide-angle lenses and wide aspect ratio can Leone achieve shots like these, essentially capturing both a wide and close-up in one.
After all, the feud which divides San Miguel is deeply entwined with matters of prejudice, greed, and corruption. On one side, the Mexican Rojo brothers control the flow of liquor, while the white American Baxter family smuggle guns across the nearby border. Outside of both, the Stranger proves his wits in outsmarting them equally, spreading a rumour in the wake of a recent assault from the Rojos that two survivors escaped and are willing to testify against their attackers. After he props a pair of exhumed corpses against a gravestone outside town to appear alive, both families race to the cemetery and engage in a gunfight, shooting the ‘survivors’ in the process.
The distraction couldn’t have worked better for the Stranger. This is the opportunity he needed to empty the town and poke around the Rojos’ base, which Leone deftly intercuts with the battle he instigated unfolding several miles away.
Perhaps the Stranger’s most ingenious trick, setting up two dead bodies as survivors from a recent massacre, and forcing both rival families to meet at the graveyard.
It is ultimately this mutual, self-destructive hostility between the clans of San Miguel which sets in motion their own demise. Falsely believing that the Baxters helped the Stranger free Marisol from their grip, the Rojos retaliate with unrelenting fury, setting their house on fire and mercilessly massacring those who try to escape. If it weren’t for this display of utter cruelty, perhaps the Stranger’s attempt to dismantle these corrupt power structures might have been a little more forgiving. Now as they sadistically torture his closest ally Silvanito out in the open though, Eastwood projects a ferocity unlike anything we have seen from him before, commanding a wide shot that establishes him as the true law and order of this town.
Low angle, centre frame, dust swirling in the air – the Stranger’s return is an image of indomitable power.
Bullets cannot harm him as he fearlessly strides down the main road to face his would-be killers, instead lodging in the handmade plate armour protecting his torso. The rhythmic, accelerating pace of Leone’s montage, Morricone’s score, and the magnificent blocking of actors once again drive up the tension, though with a few added camera zooms and extreme close-ups studying each bead of sweat, the suspense also becomes unflinchingly visceral. With six gunshots, the Stranger disarms the leader Ramón, and dispatches his band of cronies. With a seventh, he severs the rope binding Silvanito’s wrists, and after challenging Ramón to a quick draw, the eighth takes his life.
Leone plays the final shootout to perfection, using every cinematic tool as his disposal – including his trademark extreme close-ups which study every bead of sweat glistening on these brows.
In using every cinematic element at his disposal to craft suspense and set pieces, Leone stands right next to a select few elite filmmakers in cinema history, including both Hitchcock and Kurosawa. Even outside of these gripping sequences though, A Fistful of Dollars also reveals his magnificent command of establishing shots, particularly using Techniscope technology to stretch vast, dusty landscapes across a wide canvas and draw dynamic compositions from beautifully designed interiors. When the arresting majesty of his crane shots is considered next to his creative framing of faces, Leone can’t help but reveal the influence of D.W. Griffith in his camerawork as well, proving his similarly extraordinary mastery in capturing both the epic and the intimate.
Three layers to Leone’s depth of field, pressing faces up against the camera while others linger in the background.An arrangement of bodies in the frame to rival the masters of Old Hollywood.Horizons stretch far across Leone’s long shots, revelling in dusty, desaturated landscapes.
The cumulative result of such varied techniques is operatic, serving a narrative that carries a far greater scope than its 100-minute runtime would suggest. Next to such grand achievements, the awful voice dubbing in A Fistful of Dollars barely warrants a mention, besides an appreciation for Leone and his crew’s perseverance through such a trying production. It seems that all it took to push the genre forward was the voice of an outsider who had never stepped foot in America, yet nevertheless had the talent and vision to cynically undermine its revered mythology, delivering a portrait of the Old West drenched in blood, sweat, and violent anarchy.
The perfect crane shot to end this Western fable, lifting us far above the carnage that litters the main road.
A Fistful of Dollars is available to rent or buy on Apple TV, YouTube, and Amazon Video.
Marriage within the Kohayagawa family takes on multiple meanings throughout The End of Summer, always dependent on the individual in question. For younger daughter Noriko it is an aspiration hindered by her sweetheart Teramoto’s decision to move away for work, while her elder sister Fumiko performs her duty loyally, raising a son with her husband Hisao. The pressure for their widowed sister-in-law Akiko to remarry is also quietly mounting, even as she quietly resists with the sincere acknowledgement that her youth is long gone – not that patriarch Manbei sees this as an issue when he controversially tries to reconnect with his old mistress. A widower of his age should not be considering the prospect of marriage, his family proclaims, lest he should embarrass them all.
As is the case in most Yasujirō Ozu films, Japanese tradition is at the forefront here, merging The End of Summer’s rigorous form, style, and content into a gentle meditation on those longstanding cultural values that have ensured stability across generations. Where his penultimate film sets itself apart is in the astounding elegance of the execution, even by his own standards. In terms of pure visual storytelling, this competes with only a handful of his greatest works, while pushing his geometrically precise style forward through rejuvenating colour photography.
Ozu rpresents the entire Kohayagawa family through the brown, earthy tones of their home and sake bar – dark wooden flooring, furniture, and panelling are the dominant aesthetic in The End of Summer.An elegant frame beyond the crowded angles of the family home, gently imposing the tree trunk and branches on these characters as we join their conversation.
Ozu’s layering of frames through corridors and doorways remains one of his most potent visual devices here, often containing his characters within the spaces of work, leisure, and domestic duty which define their day-to-day routines. There is often an extraordinary graphic harmony between people and their surrounding décor, symmetrically dividing a table at one of Noriko’s work lunches by gender, while running a pattern of brightly coloured bottles beneath them parallel to their staging.
Extraordinary graphic harmony in Ozu’s mise-en-scène, symmetrically dividing a table at one of Noriko’s work lunches by gender while running a pattern of brightly coloured bottles beneath them.
The End of Summer’s mise-en-scène also transcends conventional blocking choices, often suggesting the presence of specific characters despite their physical absence. When we transition into a scene with Akiko at an art gallery for instance, Ozu gently delivers a montage of floral paintings in an art gallery, while on a broader level he represents the entire Kohayagawa family through the brown, earthy tones that encompass them. Within their home, dark wooden flooring, furniture, and panelling are the dominant aesthetic, complementing their light bamboo drapes and striking an extraordinary contrast against their exquisitely patterned wallpaper and textiles.
Ozu uses mise-en-scène to suggest the presence of specific characters despite their physical absence, delivering a montage of floral paintings in an art gallery when we transition into a scene with Akiko at an art gallery.Patterned wallpaper becomes a trend towards the end of Ozu’s career, delicately framing his immaculately blocked ensemble.Bamboo drapes weave light, organic textures through domestic spaces, complementing the dark wooden décor.
As for Manbei himself, his personality and power are most strongly signified in the family sake brewery, often seen with barrels leaning obliquely against its wall in Ozu’s pillow shots. Their contents are the foundation of his small business, though in this modern era its future is looking frighteningly uncertain, as the need to merge into a larger corporation seems more inevitable with each passing week.
Marvellous pillow shots set around the family brewery, leaning rounded barrels up against the outside wall when business is prospering.
When Manbei suffers a heart attack, these shots consequently draw a parallel between the health of his body and his company. As Noriko rushes to call an ambulance, Ozu cuts through a series of familiar locations in their home that are now gloomily dimmed and emptied, before returning to the brewery’s exterior where the absence of barrels is poignantly noted. The graveyard shot that is additionally inserted here isn’t to be passed over either – Ozu’s careful editing weaves a mournful foreboding in the wake of this sudden illness, quietly hinting at the tragedy that has already taken the family’s beloved mother, and which will soon claim their patriarch and business as well.
Immediately following Manbei’s heart attack, Ozu lingers in this melancholy montage of the empty doctor’s office and family home, now void of life.The family business’ health is tied directly to Manbei’s – no more barrels after he is struck down by illness.
Throughout Ozu’s career, the encroachment of the modern world into traditional Japanese spaces has steadily become more central to his narrative conflicts, even as he maintains a nuanced standpoint on the issue. With a piece of the Kohayagawa family’s identity at stake, the threat of post-war industrialism is felt especially deeply here, yet at the same time Ozu savours the incongruence of this cultural clash. The blinking neon lights of Kyoto’s cityscapes are searingly beautiful, while views of temples through Venetian blinds and pagodas peeking over tiled roofs further develop the uneasy interactions between Japan’s past and present.
Kyoto’s dazzling cityscapes look to Japan’s future, stripped of those family businesses which were once the economy’s lifeblood.Ancient temples framed through office windows, depicting a clash of eras and values.
Quite unusually though, it is not just the younger generations subverting cultural customs in The End of Summer, but even Manbei himself. Every so often Ozu dismisses his characters’ polite reservations with glimpses of spirited humour, watching the elderly sake brewer play hide and seek with his grandchild, and elsewhere try to shake his employee’s tail while running off to his mistress’ home. His children’s concerns about this rekindled romance are understandable given its history, though now that their mother has passed, so too can we understand Manbei’s renewed desire for companionship.
Moments of levity in Manbei’s games with his grandson.Light comedy in Manbei’s sly escape to his mistress’ home, shaking the tail of his younger employee – even here, Ozu repeats shots to establish a sense of geography.
It is obvious upon meeting Tsune that we realise she is no wily seductress, but just another lonely parent seeking love, and ultimately proving her dedication to Manbei as she nurses him through his sickness. Happiness and fulfilment can clearly be found outside the family unit in The End of Summer, even if certain relationships are left ambiguous, such as the question of whether he fathered her daughter Yuriko. The rebellious streak that he and Yuriko both share only supports this speculation, particularly manifesting in her as a rejection of Japanese culture and adoption of a heavily Westernised lifestyle. Rather than the loose-fitting and slimming garb worn by Manbei’s daughters, she wears bright, eye-catching dresses that accentuate her curved figure, and her dating life primarily revolves around white American men.
Japan’s youth are adopting a Westernised culture, typified in Yuriko who dresses in bright dresses and dates primarily American men.
The two sequences where Ozu takes the Kohayagawa family outside the city and into the countryside thus mark a reprieve from this modern cultural conflict, even if it is exchanged for profound mourning in both instances. In the first instance, they hold a memorial service for their late mother in Arashiyama, where Ozu’s pillow shots turn their focus to forests and hills that have barely been touched by human civilisation. The second time they venture beyond their home though, the grief is far more potent, commemorating the passing of their beloved father.
Pillow shots as we transition to the countryside – note the formal rigour of these compositions, flooding the frame with greenery while running a brown, vertical beam through each shot.Foreground and background detail in Ozu’s compositions, running a line of gravestones diagonally across the frame while two lonely figures in mourning clothes keep their distance.
The small appearance of Ozu regular Chishû Ryû as a farmer observing the crematorium chimney with his wife is notable here, despite there being no direct interaction between them and our main characters. Judging by the crows gathering along the river where they work, they surmise that someone has died, and soon their suspicions are confirmed when smoke from that giant pillar begins rising into the air. “It’s not a big deal if an elderly person were to have died, but it would be tragic if it were somebody young,” the woman ponders, while the man takes a more positive spin on her indifference.
“Yes, but no matter how many die, new lives will be born to take their place.”
Chishû Ryû cameos as a farmer commenting on Manbei’s death from afar, bringing Ozu’s musings on mortality to a close.The crematory chimney is a poignant visual motif, marking Manbei’s final departure from the world.
It is merely the cycle of life, his wife acknowledges – a comforting assertion given the confirmation in these final scenes that the Kohayagawa brewery will indeed be sold off, ending an era in this family’s history. No longer do these adult children wear light colours and delicate patterns, but instead exchange them for pitch-black, funereal garments. Even after they leave the graveyard, the severe imprints they cast against the pale blue sky poetically resonate into Ozu’s sombre final shot, revealing two crows cawing upon a pair of headstones. They are the grief of the living that lingers with the deceased, but so too are they the souls of husband and wife joined in death, marking the resting spot where their bodies lay. Perhaps the celebrated traditions of marriage and family can secure a longstanding stability through this loss, yet The End of Summer does not underestimate the sorrow that it entails, composing wistful lamentations of life’s transient, bittersweet joys.
Manbei’s adult children no longer wear light colours and delicate patterns, but instead exchange them for pitch-black, funereal garments, imprinted against a light blue sky.Crows gather at the cemetery, and Ozu nails his final shot – these birds are the grief of the living that lingers with the deceased, but so too are they the souls of husband and wife joined in death, marking the resting spot where their bodies lay.
The End of Summer is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.
Through the lens of our contemporary world, the past often looks like an alien civilisation, abiding by absurd customs and exotic fashions conceptualised by some bizarre foreign entity. Though Federico Fellini acutely identifies traces of modern decadence in his distorted refraction of Ancient Rome, this is the position he maintains throughout Fellini Satyricon, while slowly revealing an even more audacious statement at the heart of its manic weirdness. It is not merely our distant ancestors who are aliens to an impartial outsider, but humanity itself, bound to the same trivial obsessions and primal impulses across history. This age of decadence we live through today is merely an echo of many others that have come before, Fellini posits, each time heralding a socioeconomic decline brought about by gluttonous appetites and egos.
This landscape of widespread moral corruption is of course not unique in his filmography, especially given that Satyricon and La Dolce Vita both trace the journey of two lone men through episodes exposing Rome’s shameless depravity. Where Catholic iconography and ethics guided the narrative of Fellini’s 1960 masterpiece though, Satyricon’s tales draw directly from ancient pagan beliefs, and specifically the eponymous novel penned by Roman writer Petronius as a satire of Greco-Roman mythology. More specifically, this text directly parodied the majestic heroism and fantastical adventures of Homer’s Odyssey, which by the 1st century AD was several hundred years old. While its lost segments somewhat hinder Fellini’s interpretation from mustering up much formal rigour, there is still an immense dedication to epic storytelling on display within the picaresque narrative chaos, reassembling the remains of a decaying world that is only barely hanging together.
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.
In place of the brave, charismatic hero that Odysseus typified in the Epic Cycle, Encolpius represents a far more ambiguous protagonist in Satyricon, motivated more by epicurean pleasure than love or honour. This is a man who will slaughter a temple of worshippers and kidnap a hermaphroditic demigod in hope of a obtaining a ransom, and yet who is also incompetent enough to carelessly let them die of dehydration in a scorching desert. He does not stand out from this moral cesspool, but rather blends in with its depraved surroundings, feebly falling into the off-kilter orbit of egocentric patricians, lecherous merchants, and bloodthirsty spectators who seek nothing but their own gratification. Given the self-indulgent behaviour of the Roman gods, it is fitting that their followers should celebrate them with such blatant acts of hedonism, transforming their once-glorious empire into a carnival of violence and debauchery.
Murals and graffiti become stunning backdrops to Encolpius’ journey, rendering him as another two-dimensional figure next to those painted on walls.
Now fully consumed by his love of Technicolour photography, Fellini doesn’t hold back either in his frenetic visual recreation of Satyricon’s Rome, especially with genius cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno joining his troupe. This is expressionistic world building at its most imposing, based around colossal, anachronistic sets that might almost belong in a theatre were it not for their vast expansion in all directions. The giant ziggurat of apartments where Encolpius lives with his slave and lover Gitón towers menacingly in the darkness above a grey courtyard, and of course to reach it from the other side of the city one must pass through a brothel where strange sexual acts unfold in full view of the public. Where 8 ½ and Juliet of the Spirits once blended reality and surrealism in fragmented dreams, Fellini immerses Satyricon in a feverish hallucination that has taken over the lives of the Roman people, and even infected the skies with a deep red that casts the land below as an infernal underworld.
The giant ziggurat where Encolpius lives with Gitón towers menacingly above a grey courtyard, appearing strikingly apocalyptic with its darkness and crowds.Red skies shed a hellish glow over the infernal underworld of Ancient Rome, damning its lost souls to endless torment and suffering.Fellini indulges in the artifice of his lighting, sets, and costuming. This is not an authentic recreation of Ancient Rome, but an anachronistic refraction of a satirical text, underlining the hypocrisies which led to its downfall.
It is no coincidence that some of Fellini’s most demented imagery arrives with the novel’s most famous episode, set at a banquet held by wealthy freeman Trimalchio for the entertainment of the commonfolk. Encolpius has been invited by his new friend, the eccentric poet Eumolpus, and as they venture towards the meeting place they come across an absurdly confronting sight – a hundred nude men and women waiting outside in a giant, steamy bath, surrounded by an even greater number of candles. The erotic of nature of Fellini’s blocking here is crucial to the carnal madness of Satyricon, bringing together bare bodies in uncomfortably intimate arrangements which simultaneously satiate and disturb the senses.
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.
Inside Trimalchio’s gaudy manor, he continues this staging as guests lounge around the edges of the room in extravagant costumes and makeup, imprinted against red walls and enveloped in thick clouds of steam. Insanity reigns when the crowd frenetic dances to dissonant live music and organs spill across the floor from a giant roast hog, yet Fellini’s focus never wavers from the codependent relationship between the narcissistic host and his guests. Supposedly based on Emperor Nero, the insecure Trimalchio holds these lavish parties for no other purpose than to be adored by the commonfolk. He is evidently little more than a talentless, egotistic fraud using his wealth to gain respect, though his patience is short when they do not play according to his rules, even having Eumolpus tortured in the furnace for calling out his plagiarised poetry.
“In my house, I’m the poet!”
Insanity reigns in Trimalchio’s gaudy manor, where Fellini stages guests lounge around the edges of the room in extravagant costumes and makeup, imprinted against red walls and enveloped in thick clouds of steam. This is the novel’s most famous episode, and is given a bold cinematic treatment.
These characters are not actively engaged with the political climate of Ancient Rome, yet at every turn Fellini is placing Encolpius’ fate in the hands of more powerful men. The few times he does take an active role in his own story, his efforts are rapidly undercut by the turmoil of a crumbling world, whether depicted literally in the earthquake that violently tears down his home or the insurgents who install a usurper as their new emperor.
That Encolpius is the closest thing to a Greek hero that Imperial Rome has to offer is pathetic indeed, making for a comparison that only cuts deeper in Fellini’s bastardised recreation of King Minos’ Labyrinth and its fearsome Minotaur, seeing our protagonist escape only by begging for his life and confessing that he is no Theseus. Through Satyricon’s retelling of the Widow of Ephesus myth, Christian doctrine does not entirely escape Fellini’s scathing satire here either, though his most direct parody is reserved for the final minutes where Eumolpus requests for his body to be devoured by the beneficiaries of his will.
Bloodthirsty crowds recreate the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur for their own cheap entertainment – Fellini draws on powerful iconography in these myths and legends.A pair of moral fables further embed the notion of storytelling and its rich history into this tale, and even take aim at the still-nascent form of Christianity in the 1st century AD.
True to the source material which records this as the final scene, missing segments notwithstanding, Fellini abandons his narrative mid-sentence with Encolpius leaving on Eumolpus’ ship to Africa. It is difficult to label this an anticlimax when we were never promised a great catharsis to begin with, though by taking a step back to reveal Satyricon‘s characters painted in frescoes upon ancient ruins, Fellini breaks the immersion to acknowledge that plot was never paramount in this absurd dreamscape. Cinematic surrealists like David Lynch and Alejandro Jodorowsky would later centralise this tenet in their own filmmaking too, adapting archetypes and allegories with a subversive, Felliniesque irreverence that believes greater truth lies in the fanciful stories we fashion from skewed perceptions of our past rather than history itself. Through its surreal blend of modern art and classical antiquity, Fellini Satyricon not only examines this grand paradox of truth and fiction – it becomes a direct embodiment of our most maddening psychological conflict, farcically recognising the indelibly primal self-contradictions of humanity across all ages.
Fellini ends his narrative exactly where the text finishes – mid-sentence – before revealing the film’s characters painted in frescoes upon ancient ruins. If Satyricon is a surreal interrogation of historical legends, then we must look to their artifice and limitations to understand the true nature of the people who composed them.
Fellini Satyricon is currently available to purchase on Amazon.
Given how notoriously private Yasujirō Ozu was as a public figure, it is impossible to speculate with any certainty the reason why he never married. Considering that he was supposedly expelled from his boarding school for writing love letters to another boy, it is conceivable that he was a queer man living in conservative times. Alternatively, perhaps he simply valued his relationship with his mother over any romantic attachment, seeing as how he lived with her throughout his adulthood. His films never featured any surrogate characters explicitly representing him, and yet they were nevertheless a medium through which he deeply pondered those cultural Japanese traditions that he simultaneously was at odds with and adored.
With this context in mind, An Autumn Afternoon becomes all the more fascinating as Ozu’s last film in an incredibly vast career – not that he necessarily knew it would be at the time. His decline from throat cancer was sudden, seeing him pass away only a few months after his mother on his sixtieth birthday, leaving this as his final testament to the enduring purpose, duties, and conflicts of family and marriage. In its observations of a widowed father’s reluctant attempts to marry off his daughter Michiko, Late Spring’s narrative is specifically recaptured here, though the updated setting to 1960s also reveals Ozu’s complex relationship with the advance of Western modernity into Japanese civilisation.
Commercial indulgences are an irrevocable part of these characters’ lives, filling Shūhei and his companions with alcohol to the point of excess.Ozu’s camera adores the colourful nightlife of the urban setting in An Autumn Afternoon, recognising the shift to Westernised market capitalism with flashing signs and vibrant graphics arranged in superb compositions.Visual storytelling in the mise-en-scène details – a set of golf clubs referenced in an earlier argument appear in this corridor, subtly tying off this subplot.
The pillow shots that herald the restaurant where Shūhei drinks with his friends consistently bathe in flashing signs and vibrant graphics that light up storefronts, poignantly recognising the shift to market capitalism that has been imported from America and Europe. Commercial indulgences are an irrevocable part of these characters’ lives, filling Shūhei’s companions with alcohol to the point of excess, and sparking arguments in his son Kōichi’s marriage over a set of golf clubs he desperately desires. Later, those same clubs are integrated into one of Ozu’s trademark hallway shots among other perfectly arranged household items, economically tying off this subplot and signalling a broader shift towards consumerism.
Towards the end of Ozu’s career he began plastering his sets with patterned wallpaper, injecting his mise-en-scène with lively detail and colour.
Above all else though, the colour cinematography which Ozu had begun using four years prior in Equinox Flower may be the strongest stylistic decision made in An Autumn Afternoon, vividly accentuating the organised patterns and contrasts that he had already mastered in black-and-white. While the interior architecture is handsomely captured with patterned wallpaper around shoji doors and geometric frames, it is more frequently the small props and ornaments which inject bursts of primary colours into his muted scenery, each set with absolute precision. At the restaurant, mid-shots of Shūhei and his friends are lined along the bottom with a full rainbow assortment of ceramic cups and saucers, while an impeccably composed wide shot leads a line of yellow bar stools towards an alleyway washed in neon red lighting. Even when there are no humans in sight, every vivid detail points to their presence, quietly littering pillow shots as beautifully simple as embroidered rugs draped over apartment balconies and empty slippers laying outside closed doors.
A simple frame that scatters brown, green, yellow, and blue hues along the bottom with ceramic cups and saucers.Subtle colour schemes developed in shots like these, mirroring the red across the giant lantern outside the window and the slippers, and blue through the slippers and walls.An impeccably composed wide shot leads a line of yellow bar stools towards an alleyway washed in neon red lighting – after many decades of working in black-and-white, Ozu also proved his hand at colour photography.Ozu’s pillow shots are never simply thrown away, contrasting multiple patterns across beautifully embroidered rugs over these balconies.
Most crucially, it is Ozu’s pairing of red and white which suggests a uniformity between Japanese tradition and industry in An Autumn Afternoon, mirrored between the striped smokestacks and steel drums of the very first shot. This palette continues to punctuate the mise-en-scène in sweaters, lanterns, and signs, before boldly arriving in Michiko’s elaborate white wedding gown and headdress accented with notes of crimson.
Perfect formal harmony in Ozu’s colours, with the red-and-white steel drums matching the red-and-white smokestacks. As the pillow shots take us inside an office building, still he continues that palette with the walls and decor.A white wedding dress with flecks of red, continuing to develop Ozu’s striking colour palette.
Visual patterns such as these are important to connecting the public and private lives of Ozu’s characters, further revealing the unity of the two in pillow shots that steadily cut between several frames associated with a new scene, and gradually edge closer to its characters. Quite significantly, this approach maintains a soothing, consistent flow in the editing, rather than falling back on the sort of establishing shots that a more conventional director might turn to. As a result, Ozu can recall these compositions as shorthand whenever he returns to a familiar location – the smokestacks viewed from Shūhei’s office window for example, or the surrounding restaurants outside Tory’s Bar.
After initially introducing Tory’s Bar through pillow shots, Ozu simply refers to this frame as shorthand whenever we return there – astounding formal economy.
Narratively, this formal poetry is also reflected through multiple characters who signal some shift in the status quo, underscored by the two instances of current and former naval officers mockingly sending up patriotic military anthems. Although Japan’s national spirit was broken after losing World War II and replaced with scathing cynicism among younger generations, Shūhei continues to mourn its loss, and sorrowfully responds in private with songs about floating castles guarding the Land of the Rising Sun.
A pair of encounters in the bar confront Shūhei with the reality of Japan’s broken national spirit after its terrible losses – a poignant realisation for the former naval officer.
Through the character of the Gourd, a respected teacher who mentored Shūhei and his friends on Chinese classics, Ozu continues to reckon with Japan’s changing culture by envisioning the future that awaits our protagonist should Michiko never marry. Not only has the Gourd’s middle-aged daughter become a lonely spinster due to his desire to keep her for himself, but his own life has also fallen into disarray by limiting her prospects, condemning him to run a cheap noodle shop and suffer humiliation every day from his customers.
A noticeable shift in location when we move to the Gourd’s noodle shop in a rundown part of town, as Ozu’s pillow shots dwell on piles of debris and steel drums.
The catalyst for the second half of An Autumn Afternoon’s narrative is thus set off, spurring Shūhei to secure a husband for Michiko. The fact that Ozu only dwells on the moments when her wedding finally arrives is telling of what he truly values within these cherished relationships, as a montage moves through the vacant home to dwell on a standing mirror, Venetian blinds, and a red-cushioned stool. These are domestic items that don’t hold dramatic weight on their own, yet peacefully evoke Michiko’s absence, and disappear from view as the camera cuts to a view just outside the window.
Michiko’s marriage and departure from the family home leaves behind a wistful emptiness, as Ozu’s montage moves through the vacant home to dwell on a standing mirror, Venetian blinds, and a red-cushioned stool. These are domestic items that don’t hold dramatic weight on their own, yet peacefully evoke Michiko’s absence, and disappear from view as the camera cuts to a view just outside the window.
In the closing scene when Shūhei returns as an empty nester, Ozu frames him in a distant, wooden corridor of his last hallway shot, his back turned to the camera and slightly darkened by shadows. Ozu never inserted explicit representations of himself into his films, and yet Shūhei’s poignant resignation to change is one that this ageing director knows too well, having essentially spent the past thirty-five years recording Japan’s enormous cultural shifts on camera. If his life’s work is a cinematic suite testifying to the ongoing tension between tradition and progress, then An Autumn Afternoon makes for a tender final movement, resonating formal harmonies across generations to ultimately savour an undying faith in their shared humanity.
A mournful final shot as Ozu frames Shūhei in a distant, wooden doorway of the corridor, his back turned to the camera and slightly darkened by shadows.
An Autumn Afternoon is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to purchase on Amazon.
Coming off the heels of his widely acclaimed triumph 8 ½, it seemed that Federico Fellini was done with neorealism. By delving into the fantastical dreams of a surrogate character, he had constructed a kaleidoscopic self-portrait of immense depth and ambition, while shamefully exposing his own infidelity to the world. As such, his next project Juliet of the Spirits essentially held up a feminine mirror to 8 ½, contemplating the other side of his marriage to Giulietta Masina and filtering it through an equally surreal lens. It shouldn’t come as a surprise then that he derived Juliet’s name from his wife’s, and additionally cast her as the spurned housewife whose entire identity has been defined by her relationship to men. In fact, it isn’t even until Juliet’s husband Giorgio arrives home in the first scene that her face even appears on camera, having up until then been concealed by camera movements, obstructions, and shadows conveniently rendering her non-existent in his absence.
By the time Juliet of the Spirits was released in 1965, it had been eight years since Masina’s previous collaboration with Fellini, having last starred as jaded prostitute Maria in Nights of Cabiria. Now with a few extra lines on her face, she carries a mellow wisdom in her round, dark eyes as Juliet, saddened but not embittered by her husband’s extramarital affairs. The whispered name “Gabriella” first piques her suspicion one night when he is sleep talking, and the multiple phone calls that come through with no one on the other end only feeds it, sending her to seek out the services of a private detective who might provide answers. None of this can take away from the fact that Giorgio has been her “Husband, lover, father, friend, my home,” but even now as she lists everything she is losing, she does so with a wistful smile.
In the absence of her husband, Juliet’s face is concealed by camera movements, obstructions, and shadows, barely even present on her own terms.Juliet’s house is dominated by clean white tones sharply punctured by the crimson hues of flowers, setting up a visual clash between virginal purity and sexual passion.
Though Juliet tries to explore facets of her suppressed identity through an assortment of vibrant costumes, within her home she is most often garbed in chaste white tones, while guests light up the mise-en-scène with purples, greens, and pinks. Most of all though, it is Fellini’s radiant crimson hues which dominate his palette in Juliet of the Spirits, opposing our protagonist’s virginal neutrality with a sexual passion considered dangerously out-of-bounds. With so many clashing visual elements, his production design is deliriously chaotic, yet also flamboyantly united under an aesthetic that blends circus-like extravagance with regal Baroque architecture in varying proportions. While Juliet’s lavish, upper-class house is adorned with lighter tones, Sylva’s grand manor makes for a magnificent recurring set piece, each time hosting an orgiastic fever dream of wild hedonists revelling in rowdy opulence. Further bringing these extraordinary settings to life is the slow, dollying movement of Fellini’s camera too, peering through the multicoloured gauze curtains draped around Sylva’s bed as it slowly drifts past, and dollying in on actors with dramatic grandeur.
Few directors can capture chaos with the control and beauty that Fellini brings to his mise-en-scène here. 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.This ornate wedding banquet that Juliet stumbles across sets a stark contrast against her lifeless marriage – the hopes and ideals that she once clung to in her youth are beautifully visualised.
This bold venture into Technicolor filmmaking is no doubt a breathtaking visual achievement for cinematographer Gianni Di Venanzo, but even more crucially it commences Fellini’s trajectory into manic expressionism, evocatively painting out his characters’ reminiscences and hallucinations. For Juliet, these only really begin taking over her life following a séance on her fifteenth wedding anniversary, conducted by the gate-crashing friends of her husband who has entirely forgotten the occasion. From there, the spirits Iris and Olaf are summoned into her life as conflicting voices in her mind and surreal visions interrupt her reality with increasing ambiguity, beginning with a dead raft of horses and a sunken tank of studly weirdos dredged up from the ocean.
The first of many explicitly surreal sequences, dredging up a tank of weirdos onto the shoreline.Juliet of the Spirits is a largely maximalist in style, but Fellini’s shot compositions of these stripped back landscapes often astound as well.
With Juliet’s stream-of-consciousness voiceover often running through her life and dreams though, fortunately not all these visions are so impenetrably abstract. Many of these fragments are rooted directly in childhood memories that have become foundational to her identity, unfolding like reveries distorted by decades of distance and Fellini’s purposefully disjointed editing. In particular, her recollections of a circus and a pageant play formally mirror each other as a pair of theatrical performances sitting on either side of a moral divide – one being a gaudy spectacle of feathers and sparkles that satiates the senses, and the other starring Juliet herself as a virgin martyr being executed for her faith.
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.
In the former, Fellini constructs a visual extravaganza that pays homage to Italy’s rich tradition of performing arts, and the seductiveness of this lifestyle that lured her grandfather into an affair with a beautiful dancer. The career he had built as a respected professor was thrown out with this decision, and by the decree of Juliet’s disapproving mother, so too was his relationship with his family. As he runs with his mistress towards a stunt plane, each of these figures chase him from behind, playfully staged in a long shot that evokes Ingmar Bergman’s ‘Dance of Death’ from The Seventh Seal. It is clear to see here how infidelity has impacted Juliet’s life once before, and yet quite curiously her feelings towards her philandering grandfather are far more positive than those towards her controlling mother, who in her mind represents an unattainable standard of self-righteous morality and untouchable beauty.
Fellini irreverently calls back to the Dance of the Death from The Seventh Seal in this fine composition, as Juliet’s grandfather elopes with his mistress.
In comparison, Juliet’s pageant play arrives as a far more modest affair, surrounding her with spectral nuns in purple hooded cloaks who planted the seed of Catholic guilt in her mind. As she watches her child self be sacrifice on a pyre of paper flames and lifted to the heavens, the adult Juliet similarly recites her lines, and perhaps even finds some inspiration in them – “I don’t care about the salvation you offer me, but about the salvation of my soul.” As it is though, both versions of Juliet have essentially been sacrificed to society’s gender expectations and forced to become a virginal Madonna, serving men as a sexless, maternal figure.
Hooded nuns designed like ethereal spectres, haunting Juliet into her adulthood.The adult Juliet takes her child self’s place on the burning grill, becoming a sacrificial martyr in both life and the play.
While Juliet’s hallucinatory flashbacks begin as self-contained vignettes, each one introduces spirits that linger through her waking life, tormenting her with obscure reminders of her psychological self-doubt. Just as she is about to give up her marital vows and have sex with a guest in Sylva’s manor, the camera swings down from the reflection of their romantic liaison on the ceiling mirror to reveal the horrifying image of a demonic girl in white robes, roasting above a fire. Whenever Juliet feels she is straying too far from her morals, that demonic vision of her younger self from the play arouses a disturbing guilt, while nude women hiding around her bedroom conversely laugh and sneer at her insecurity.
A truly shocking jump scare as the camera swings down from the ceiling mirror to a horrific rendering of her child self in the pageant play, burning on the grill like a virginal demon.Spirits follow Juliet everywhere she goes, as Fellini goes all in with his outrageous character designs.
To complicate the conflicting pressures further, Fellini challenges Juliet’s belief in Christian salvation with a mixture of pagan alternatives, including the aforementioned séance, an Egyptian rite of passage, and an oracle named Bishma who is said to enlighten those who are lost. Speaking in a raspy voice from behind transparent white drapes though, this raving clairvoyant offers nothing but shallow advice to submit to one’s husband, even at the expense of Juliet’s own welfare.
“Love is a religion, Juliet. Your husband is your god. You are the priestess of this cult. Your spirit must burn up like this incense, go up in smoke on the altar of your loving body.”
Fellini injects religion and new age spirituality with camp ornamentations, underscoring the emptiness in their claims to great wisdom.
As for the private detective who represents a more secular approach to seeking truth, there is no doubt that he offers far more practical answers, yet hard proof of Giorgio’s affair does not bring with it the spiritual guidance that Juliet craves. It seems as though every character she meets is following their own path to self-fulfilment, and while many are convinced of their own eminent wisdom, few are able to satisfy her longing to reconcile moral virtue, carnal desire, and holistic enlightenment. By giving tangible form to the intangible Christian God for instance, her sculptress friend Dolores seems close to comprehending the infinite bounds of His grace, and yet Juliet also realises that she has degraded a divine beauty into objects of lust.
“Let’s give back to God his physicality. I was afraid of God before. He crushed me, terrified me. And why? Because I imagined him theoretically, abstractly. But no. God has the most superb body ever. In my statues, that’s how I sculpt him. A physical, corporeal God, a perfectly shaped hero who I can desire and make my lover.”
Confirmation of her husband’s affairs does not bring Juliet emotional resolution, but only sinks her deeper into despair in this bleak, monochrome room.Juliet’s friend tries to grasp the divine concept of God by reducing him to physical form in her sculptures, yet there is still something intangible lost in the process.
Even easier still is ignoring the existence of God altogether as Sylva and her hedonistic guests seem to do, encouraging a similar attitude in Juliet. “I fulfil my desires in life. I don’t deny myself a thing,” this glamourous starlet proclaims, and though she is clearly out-of-touch with any spirituality, Fellini does not paint her as a wholly negative influence. The confidence she instils in Juliet is absolutely crucial to her journey, driving her to pursue an independent life that sources happiness from within, rather than from her husband or any religious authorities. It is not that she is afraid of being alone, one American therapist who regularly attends Giorgio’s parties explains, but her only true fear is rather of the happiness she might find in independence that allows her “to breathe, to live, to become yourself.”
Sylva is a compelling foil to Juliet – outwardly expressive and confident in her sexuality, sourcing happiness from within rather than from fulfilling the expectations of others.
That Giorgio is the one to eventually pack up and leave at least eases the burden on Juliet to instigate the separation, though there are no tears to be shed on her part anyway. Left alone, she must venture into her soul one last time, but this time not to confront any new memories or insecurities. A small, previously unseen door in her bedroom wall opens up, and against her mother’s demands, she enters to find a long, narrow corridor. There, her inner child is strapped to that flaming grill, alone and scared. Finally untying the ropes that have kept her bound to society’s scalding judgement all these years, she lets her run free, right into the arms of the man her mother had kept her from all these years. “Farewell, Juliet,” her grandfather warmly imparts. “Don’t hold me back. You don’t need me anymore. I’m just another one of your inventions. But you are life itself.”
A beautiful dream to formally resolve Juliet’s trauma, freeing her younger self from the fiery grill which society has tried to martyr her upon.
As present-day Juliet walks outside the large white gates of her home, so too does she find liberation from its persistent spirits. Suddenly, new voices she had never heard before begin speaking to her, coming from a deep sense of self-acceptance rather than the nagging judgement of others. There is no aggressive expressionism or cluttered opulence to found in the green, natural expanse that she walks into, and much like the final seconds of Nights of Cabiria, Masina’s eyes once again drift towards the fourth wall in poignant recognition of our presence in her story. With a simple glance, Juliet takes control of her narrative, finally escaping into new beginnings away from the imposing gaze of society, religion, and Fellini’s own prying camera.
Much like the ending of Nights of Cabiria, Giulietta Masina looks right at the camera – freedom granted from the removal of the restrictive fourth wall, allowing her to become a full person outside cinematic and social convention.
Juliet of the Spirits is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to purchase on Amazon.
When dessert finally arrives at the wedding reception of Yoshiko and Koichi Nishi, it would surely seem as if someone is pulling a cruel prank on the father of the bride, Iwabuchi. The day has already been tainted by the arrest of the senior businessman’s assistant Wada in full view of the guests and reporters, and now as the cake is wheeled out to reveal an elaborate design modelled after the Public Development Corporation headquarters, a single rose sitting in a top-floor window draws hushed whispers. It is no secret that this is where Assistant Chief Furuya jumped from some years earlier, bringing a standstill to the investigation that implicated Iwabuchi and several other executives. Meanwhile, suspicions that his colleagues pressured him into taking his own life are only ever uttered behind closed doors, with absolute confidence that no one is eavesdropping.
Only by methodically peeling back the layers of conspiracies guarding the upper-class plutocrats can the truth be revealed, though this is not a job for the police, courts, or even the media. True to his fondness for Shakespeare, Akira Kurosawa places this colossal objective on the shoulders of a single man seeking retribution for his deceased father, and thus reveals The Bad Sleep Well to be a contemporary, noir-tinted adaptation of Hamlet starring Toshiro Mifune as the vengeful son. Posing as Iwabuchi’s secretary, Koichi Nishi stands alone against the corrupt corporate culture of mid-century Japan, working from the shadows as he blackmails, intimidates, and investigates his way to the top.
Astounding depth of field in Kurosawa’s compositions, stretching the entire span of the dining hall where Nishi is celebrating his wedding to Iwabucha’s daughter Yoshiko. Kurosawa knows how to build tension without even cutting.Roses and crosses in that top floor window become something of a visual motif in The Bad Sleep Well, calling up the past to propel Nishi forward in his vengeful mission.
Even by Kurosawa’s standards, The Bad Sleep Well’s plot is remarkably dense, sprawling across a vast ensemble of characters who bring personal stakes to each gear in the narrative vehicle. The wedding itself is a tremendous setup, introducing the relevant parties through a Greek chorus of journalists offering backstory and commentary, while remarkably steering clear of convoluted exposition. In his meticulous arrangement of these nameless reporters among the masses of wedding guests, Kurosawa’s extraordinary eye for blocking bodies across the full horizontal length of his widescreen canvas is immediately revealed, developing a sharp aesthetic that carries through virtually every frame of the film with astounding consistency.
A tremendous use of blocking to draw our eye to the small details of Kurosawa’s scenery, but he also isn’t afraid to reframe his camera without cutting.
The shapes and lines that form in Kurosawa’s crowded staging here effectively draw our eyes to the subjects of his focus, highlighting even the smallest details within his ensemble such as Nishi’s quiet surveillance of his guests, and the suspicious reactions of executives when the cake makes its damning appearance. “Best one act I’ve ever seen,” a reporter wryly acclaims at this grand twist, and if this were a short film he wouldn’t be wrong – yet the witty response from his colleague might as well be Kurosawa impishly promising to follow up with an even more magnificent pay-off.
“One act? This is just the prelude.”
A superb arrangement of facial profiles to cap off the first act, staggered at four different layers in the frame.
Indeed, The Bad Sleep Well is only just getting started, as from here Kurosawa effortlessly shifts between multiple narrative threads and carefully weaves them into Nishi ‘s single-minded endeavour to take down his father’s killers. After Wada is released from police custody and rescued from a suicide attempt atop a live volcano by Nishi, he quickly becomes one of our protagonist’s greatest resources, faking his own death and psychologically tormenting contract officer Shirai by appearing as a ghost. Unfortunately, Nishi is not so quick to save company accountant Miura from his superiors, who demonstrate their chilling efficiency through a single, written message – “I know you will see this through to the bitter end.” It might as well be a bullet from a sniper’s rifle, one reporter comments, as it isn’t long afterwards that Miura willingly runs in front of a truck.
The volcano is a tremendously bleak set piece, shrinking Wada against its rocky terrain and leading him right to the edge of the crater.You have to feel sorry for Shirai – the most paranoid and tormented of the lot, driven mad by the mind games being played on him by both sides. Kurosawa plays out the manifestation of Wada’s ‘ghost’ with ethereal horror, even though we know exactly what is going on.
With Venetian blinds imposing severe backdrops inside corporate offices and Masaru Sato’s band of brass and percussion rhythmically carrying through a dark, jazzy ambience, Kurosawa’s admiration of Hollywood film noirs bleeds through his nihilistic take on Hamlet, positioning Nishi himself as a morally questionable antihero. This is a man who didn’t even realise how much his father loved him until after receiving a huge inheritance in his will, and yet has nevertheless taken it on himself to sacrifice innocence bystanders, marry a woman he doesn’t truly love, and implement cruel methods of torture to avenge his murder. “It’s not easy hating evil. You have to stoke your own fury until you become evil yourself,” he ponders in a shot that sinks his profile in darkness, flanking him with Wada and his friend Itakura in the background like two conflicting sides of his conscience. Even when Itakura is furiously chastising Wada in another tightly framed composition, Mifune continues to dominate the shot from the foreground like a hardboiled Humphrey Bogart detective, coolly smoking a cigarette and radiating a bitter stoicism.
Nishi’s darkened, foregrounded profile flanked by Itakura and Wada behind him, like two conflicting sides of his conscience.Tightly framed compositions maintain a visual relationship between each character – the boss, the underling, the bully.
By this point, keen-eyed viewers will have picked up on a visual device that reliably teases out the complex character dynamics in Kurosawa’s blocking, and subtly underscores Nishi’s position as a covertly powerful player in this game. In many of The Bad Sleep Well’s most crucial scenes, Kurosawa prominently features three individuals in triangulated compositions, with each point being defined by its relative position and movement around the others. When Shirai becomes Nishi’s newest target in his scheme for instance, Kurosawa’s camera holds on a long take of his panicked discovery of stolen money planted in his briefcase, and follows him edgily through the office as his supervisor Muriyama grows more suspicious of his behaviour. Of course though, this scene would not be complete without Mifune’s confident, unobtrusive presence in the background, sitting lower in the shot as he quietly observes the disturbance. He does not say a single word, and yet this painstakingly geometric approach to composing the frame ensures that he is always at the front of our minds, crediting him as the man responsible for Shirai’s guilt-ridden, psychological breakdown.
The scene of Shirai discovering the stolen money in his briefcase is a masterclass in blocking, particularly showcasing Kurosawa’s use of triangulated arrangements.
Still, the cunning manipulations and exorbitant privilege of Japan’s wealthy elite are not to be underestimated either. As Nishi hides out with his small crew in the dark, dank ruins of a bombed out factory, Iwabuchi operates from a well-resourced office with countless disposable minions working beneath him, ready to get their hands dirty. Like Nishi, he too proves that he is willing to manipulate and even drug his daughter Yoshiko to save himself, drawing a dead heat between them in terms of sheer determination.
More triangulated structures from here down, in this case using the formation of the reporters’ heads to centre the entire scene around Iwabuchi who has unlimited resources at his disposal.Kurosawa locates Nishi’s base of operations in this bombed out factory, far beneath the corrupt corporation they are fighting from the shadows.Kurosawa using the full horizontal length and depth of the frame here to create an astounding composition, using the scarred scenery to reveal the lingering impact of World War II.
Even once all parties have finally caught up to each other and the finish line has come into view in the final act of The Bad Sleep Well, the competition between Nishi and Iwabuchi remains neck-and-neck. Within the Public Development Corporations’ bank books is the undeniable proof of Furuya’s assassination – all it comes down to is whether Nishi or Iwabuchi will win the race to their respective targets, infusing the climax with an uneasy suspense that Kurosawa finally resolves with a brutal, cynical gut punch. We are not even given the closure of witnessing the train collision which flattens Nishi’s car, set up by Iwabucha’s lackeys as a drink driving accident. Instead, Kurosawa simply leaves us to observe the lifeless wreckage of its aftermath, with the only survivors who know the truth being those too powerless to do anything about it.
Like his father, Nishi’s murder chillingly takes place offscreen, with his smashed up car being the only remnant of his death.
That Nishi should suffer the same fate as his father at the hands of the same men makes for a poetically devastating end to this saga, though within Kurosawa’s cutthroat world of corporate collusion, the ruling class’s total subjugation of the underdog is merely the way society works. At Iwabuchi’s press conference, the reporters who opened the film return to bookend it as well, reflecting upon Nishi’s life with a wary acceptance of the Vice President’s cover story in much the same way they once spoke of Furuya’s tragic suicide. Perhaps they are conscious of the corruption that runs deep in Japan’s bureaucracy to some extent, and yet its bloodied foundations remain shrouded in myth right to the end, resting upon the obedience, sacrifices, and bloodshed of disposable civilians.
One of Kurosawa’s most cynical, devastating endings, bringing back the reporters into the final scene as Nishi joins his father on Public Development Corporation’s list of casualties.
The Bad Sleep Well is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and the DVD and Blu-ray are available to purchase on Amazon.
Common wisdom says that 8 ½ is titled after the number of films Federico Fellini had directed at this point in his career, the total consisting of six previous features, two shorts, one co-directing effort, and this, his most autobiographical, self-reflexive piece of cinema yet. It would have been represented as an entirely different numeral had none of those fallen into place, but instead we get this incomplete fraction, stuck between integers as if waiting to be filled in.
The same could be said of the two Italian directors connected to this film, with both the fictional Guido and real-life Fellini reflecting on the pressures of fame, religion, art, and relationships tugging them in multiple directions without any unifying principle. Thanks to their professional careers, they are familiar with the unique suffering that comes with overactive imaginations trying to sort through fragmented lives of excess, but ironically this vocation is one of the few that seeks to deliver a catharsis for the issues it has created. Finding relief is not so simple as projecting one’s crippling insecurities up on large, flickering canvases, but rather arrives through humbling self-examination, opening one’s mind up to a world that may either praise the genius it sees or eviscerate it for a lack of inspiration.
One of the greatest opening scenes of cinema history, with Fellini dipping us right into the film’s remarkable surrealism. A suffocating traffic jam, a liberating flight, and a rope pulling us back to the ground, all without revealing Guido’s face.
For Guido, there are few nightmares worse than this claustrophobic social anxiety. Caught in the middle of a traffic jam, he bangs on the windows of his car as if suffocating from the stagnation, while the silent witnesses of neighbouring vehicles passively watch his struggle with cold, bored expressions. Among them, bus passengers hang their arms outside windows, while an older man in a car seems more preoccupied with his glamorous female companion. Quite eerily, there are no engines to be heard on this busy stretch of road, and neither do we see any close-ups of Guido’s panicked face which might have otherwise oriented us in the scene. Even his escape and liberating ascent into the sky are eventually spoiled by a man looping a rope around his ankle, tethering him to the earth like a kite that can only soar so far before crashing back down. When he awakes, the surrealism dissipates, and yet Fellini still holds back from revealing the face of his surrogate as doctors and colleagues bring their consultations to his hotel room. It is not until he is able to get some time to himself in a bathroom that he is revealed in full, and that Marcello Mastroianni’s perturbed, restless performance finally starts to lift off.
Guido is revealed in full when he finds a moment of peace alone, momentarily freed from the pressures and pigeonholes of the outside world.
Even at the spa retreat where Guido hopes to compose himself before embarking on the production of his next film, there is little hope that he will find the peace that he desires. How ironic that even within this sanctuary of rejuvenation, he still finds no escape from journalists, casting directors, crew members, sycophants, agents, and fans turning up with questions ranging from the trivial to the overly invasive, none of which are particularly helpful in curing his director’s block. It is not an issue of funding or resourcing, but he is simply not mentally prepared to offer up anything of value to his audiences.
In Fellini’s own career, La Dolce Vita and 8 ½ mark the point where he begins to veer further away from his roots in neorealism, and so it is not difficult to imagine himself in Guido’s position facing a culture of excessive fame and materialism, trying to create something grounded in real world issues. 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.
Far from his neorealist roots, Fellini indulges in his ravishing Italian architecture and decor, building Guido up as a man of great wealth and privilege.
Out on the resort’s blanched white terrace, patrons gather beneath umbrellas and in lines for mineral water, though Fellini rarely hangs on wide shots long enough for us to adjust to the blinding environment. Apparently, reality is just as disorientating as Guido’s dreams. While strangers and associates gaze right down the lens in point-of-view shots, Fellini’s constantly panning camera couldn’t get away from them sooner, disengaging and drifting through the surroundings so that their lines of dialogue essentially become voiceovers. Every so often though, a new character’s face unexpectedly moves into the frame, manifesting like a phantom and suddenly readjusting long shots into close-ups. To throw us off even further, Fellini often has his actors direct their eyeline behind the camera as they speak to Guido, only to pull back and reveal him standing elsewhere in the scene.
Fellini’s highly-exposed photography in the spa terrace set is almost blinding, pulling us abruptly into this daunting social setting.Fellini’s camera pans across scenes without gaining a firm sense of geography, instead crowding his foreground with extras looking right down the lens. Sharp distinctions between foreground and background, as faces suddenly move into the frame.
It certainly doesn’t help either that among his closest associates are embodiments of his deepest self-doubts, such as industry veteran Conocchia whose ideas are a little too stale for Guido’s taste, reminding him of his own encroaching irrelevance. Old friend Mario is also present at this retreat with his young fiancée Gloria, and their effortlessly cool dance scene here is one for the ages as they joyfully twist to the sound of modern jazz, unknowingly inspiring Pulp Fiction’s equally iconic dance some thirty years later. From the sidelines though, Guido can’t help but cast judgement upon what he perceives as a middle-aged man’s embarrassing grasp at youth – a fate which he realises similarly awaits him.
One of 8 1/2’s most iconic scenes, seeping into pop culture influencing everyone from Godard to Tarantino.
With pressure mounting on Guido from every side at this spa resort, Fellini keeps up a persistent anxiety in his jarring visual whiplash and frenetic classical musical cues drawn directly from the works of Wagner and other classical composers. As he snaps us between characters, priorities, and dreams that can’t quite congeal into anything productive, ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ imposes an overwhelming intensity upon Guido’s social obligations, while his subsequent humming of this tune suggests that this grandeur exists solely in his own head. Later when he is confronted by the reprovals of a film critic, it is Rossini’s ‘Overture’ from The Barber of Seville that heightens his anxiety, underscoring his greatest creative insecurities as they are brought to light.
“On first reading, it’s evident that the film lacks a central conflict, a philosophical premise if you will… making the film a series of gratuitous episodes, perhaps even amusing due to their ambiguous realism. One wonders what the author’s point is. To make us think? To scare us? From the start, the action reveals an impoverished poetic inspiration. Forgive me, but this might be the most pathetic demonstration ever that cinema is irremediably behind all other arts by fifty years. The subject matter doesn’t even have the merits of an avant-garde film, while possessed of all its shortcomings.”
The critic’s rebuke of Guido’s film might as well be a negative review of 8 1/2 itself, putting all Fellini’s artistic insecurities on display.
The hints of this criticism being directed towards 8 ½ itself isn’t easily missed. If art reflects one’s mind, then this director’s block necessarily calls Guido’s value as a filmmaker into question. Disappearing into his own fantasies might at times feel like the single most effective way he can run from these feelings, as demonstrated in one dream where a harem of women falls at his feet and offer him a power over those in his life he feels threatened by. Still, an unfiltered, self-critical imagination can be an unwieldy thing. Just as it is an endless source of creativity, so too can it spiral off in egotistic directions or turn against the dreamer themselves, as these women do when they catch onto Guido’s misogynistic hypocrisy.
Another layer of Guido’s psyche offers portals into his past, though rarely are they so straightforward as to be direct representations, clouded by discontinuity in Fellini’s editing and constantly shifting camera perspectives. When a magician reads his mind at the resort, the apparently meaningless words “Asa nisi masa” seemingly come from nowhere, yet are shortly revealed through flashback to be a mystical phrase taught to him by his peers at a Catholic boarding school. These formative years are at the core of his being today in many ways, especially seeing how his pampering by school staff is mirrored in his present-day harem fantasy, fetishising a worshipful, almost maternal treatment from female lovers.
“Asa nisi masa” are the magic words linking Guido’s past to his present, deftly leading into a flashback at his Catholic boarding school.Freudian sexuality connects Guido’s childhood memories to his modern-day harem fantasy, fetishising a worshipful, almost maternal treatment from female lovers.
This Freudian angst is complicated even further in 8 ½ with Guido’s frequent hallucinations of his deceased parents. In his mind they are slippery, malleable figures, with dreams of his mother transforming into his wife Luisa with a sly cut, and weeping over his sexual vices after he makes love to his paramour. His shame seems to be tied to his sexual development as an adolescent too, when he and his schoolmates paid La Saraghina, a prostitute who lived in a shack down at the local beach, to dance for them. The Catholic guilt beaten into him by the school priests after being caught out for this is instrumental in shaping his constant search for religious approval, as in the modern day he is still trying to appease a Monsignor imposing a strict Christian morality upon his film. Despite his aspirations to prove his spiritual wholeness though, visions of La Saraghina frequently intrude at the most unexpected times, denying him any escape from his mortifying past.
La Saraghina represents Guido’s shameful sexual desires rearing their head at the most inconvenient moments, continuing to appear unexpectedly in the present day.A severely blocked composition as Guido faces up to his crying mother, punished for his indecent cavorting with La Saraghina.Daunting religious imagery as we slip back into Guido’s childhood, with these Catholic priests asserting their dominance and setting him on a path of guilt.The spa sauna becomes a confessional for Guido, with this white sheet hung up like the divider between the priest and penitent. Fellini’s creativity with his symbolism is endlessly impressive.
Even above Guido’s desire to create art is his need to be loved and affirmed, not just by a select few, but by everyone – the religious, the secular, the fans looking for entertainment, the critics looking for intellectualism, his many love interests, and even his deceased parents, who continue withholding their affection in death. Hope seems lost after Luisa witnesses his bitter, cinematic representation of their marriage and leaves him, and the arrival of a beautiful actress who he believes is perfect for a role impossibly described as “young and ancient, a child yet already a woman” does little to assuage his insecurities. Even while he venerates her as an idealised, abstract concept, she cuts him down, recognising the character he has based on himself as being incapable of love.
Guido’s luck finding his ‘ideal woman’ for the impossible role he has created is remarkable, yet even she calls him out as a phoney incapable of love.
Pleasing just a single person seems to be an impossible task, let alone the hundreds of people begging for answers, and therein lies the source of Guido’s creative block. “Everything happens in my film. I’m going to put everything in,” he proclaims, but in catering to the desires of so many others, there is nothing truly authentic or honest about his artistic expression. In his impossible endeavour, he has become a walking paradox: a director with no direction, the observer becoming the observed.
“I wanted to make an honest film. No lies whatsoever. I thought I had something so simple to say. Something useful to everybody. A film to help bury forever all the dead things we carry around inside. Instead, it’s me who lacks the courage to bury anything at all. Now I’m utterly confused, with this tower on my hands. I wonder how things turned out this way. Where did I lose my way? I really have nothing to say… but I want to say it anyway.”
Finally, the day of shooting arrives for Guido, and he has to practically be dragged on set against his will. Once again, the crowds of journalists, critics, and crew are present, blasting him with questions of political, tabloid, and spiritual natures. “Can you admit you have nothing to say?” one man cruelly jabs, as Fellini’s frenetic editing and score keeps trying to build to a climax. “Just say anything,” he is advised, but still, there is nothing that comes from his mouth. Within the crowd, Luisa is present in her wedding dress, taunting him with memories of happier days as he too wonders where they went. And of course, casting a shadow over the chaotic press conference is his giant launchpad set – a hulking steel monument to his own meaningless ambition and grounded imagination, offering empty promises of space-bound adventures with the clear absence of a rocket
A giant set piece promising great narrative catharsis for both 8 1/2 and Guido’s own film.Fellini deliberately dismantles the continuity in his editing, breaking eye lines and the 180-degree camera rule to completely disorientate us.
Beneath its menacing shadow, the only feasible solution to all Guido’s troubles seems to be a clean, sharp gunshot to the head, though not before a guilt-inducing vision of his mother asks where he is running to. At first this suicide seems to be nothing but another dramatic diversion from reality, adding one more drop to the sea of memory and dreams that Fellini traverses with such elusive grace, and which keeps obscuring the boundaries between Guido’s inner and outer lives. Symbolically though, it is a perfect merging of the two. What Fellini purposefully avoids depicting here is the explicit reveal that he has aborted production on the film, and only showing the aftermath of this decision when we return to reality. In killing his failed project, he has successfully killed the part of himself that simultaneously strives to live to impossible expectations and scorns the people setting those standards.
It is perfectly fitting to 8 ½’s cinematic form that Guido’s monologue announcing his fresh perspective is not the focus of these final minutes, but instead simply underscores a grand, visual sequence that could only ever be rendered through this artistic medium. Not even the critic’s disparaging words can kill the rising joy he feels in this moment, as Fellini cuts through a montage of all those people who make up Guido’s identity smiling right at the camera, and congregating for the first time in a single location. “How right it is to accept you, to love you. And how simple,” he ponders, as men in tuxedos shout to crew members standing up on lighting rigs, who aim their beams towards the rocket launchpad.
“Life is a party, let’s live it together. I can’t say anything else, to you or others. Take me as I am, if you can. It’s the only way we can try to find each other.”
Dreams and reality blend in conversations like these, with Guido’s dialogue playing out in voiceover to what may be an imaginary Luisa.
Though Guido’s lips are not moving with his voiceover here, Luisa can hear him perfectly. Between the two estranged spouses, finally there seems to be some sincere attempt at understanding. Only in shaking off his constant need for approval is he able to connect with others in any meaningful way, receiving them as they are, and in turn presenting his most honest self to the world without shame.
Not far away from the site of this epiphany, a small, ragtag marching band of carnival performers parade towards the set’s scaffolding, and a set of makeshift white curtains are suddenly pulled back. Behind them, every single character we have met throughout 8 ½ comes pouring down the steps of this magnificent launch pad as if attending some grand parade conducted by Guido, who directs them into a single, unifying fantasy. Far removed from the frivolous, empty spectacles of La Dolce Vita, the circus of 8 ½ becomes a celebration of communal delight, piecing together the fragments of the director’s life in a giant circle and spinning them hand-in-hand around the set. For any artist seeking a practical execution of their avant-garde ambitions, creativity and creation are not always perfectly synchronised. In painstakingly lining these up through Fellini’s wildly surreal stylings though, 8 ½ stands as history’s most brilliantly compelling piece of self-reflexive cinema, seeking to examine the arduous processes of its own construction.
Fragments of Guido’s life finally piecing together in this magnificent crescendo of carnival music, with him finally taking the role of director.Guido’s past, present, faith, secularity, artistry, ambition, insecurities, and relationships finally reconciled in a single joyful display of unity.
8 1/2 is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to rent or buy on iTunes and YouTube.
Beneath the open, outstretched arms of the giant Christ statue that flies over Rome in the opening minutes of La Dolce Vita, every sin he preached against two thousand years ago is being committed by its self-indulgent citizens. Aristocrats shamelessly fornicate in drunken orgies, greedy journalists overstep boundaries to fill their own pockets, and children’s lives are chillingly taken by those most trusted to protect them. Still, at least these people are willing to pause for a moment to wave at the sacred spectacle blessing the crowds with his abundant grace – or is it judgement he is casting down, condemning them to the miserable hellscape that they have built at the global capital of Catholicism?
Just because gossip reporter Marcello Rubini laments this underworld of fetishised religion and vacuous principles doesn’t mean he is absolved from indulging in the hedonistic lifestyle that feeds it. Though he follows the movements of the flying statue in his news helicopter, apparently not even that is impressive enough to keep his eyes from drifting to the rooftop of sunbathing woman calling out to him. “What’s going on with that statue? Where are you taking it?” they yell, only to be drowned out by the whirring blades. With Marcello quickly abandoning any hope of chatting them up beneath the noise, it would seem the disconnection is mutual, as he flies away to his destination and on with his life.
A bastardised icon of Christ flies over modern-day Rome, blessing its citizens – or is he casting judgement down on the sinners below?
This is the plague of loneliness which has infected Federico Fellini’s depiction of Rome in La Dolce Vita, distilled into pure allegory. The most basic communication between lovers, friends, and strangers is hopelessly lost in the noise of superficial distractions, stifling the few genuine attempts to find some deeper sense of purpose within an empty life. Like parasites sapping the lifeblood of humans, Rome’s media and celebrity culture are partially responsible for this spiritual epidemic, with Marcello’s photographer friend Paparazzo even being named after the Italian slang for mosquito, and in turn giving birth to the term ‘paparazzi.’
Up to now, Fellini had explored similar moral tragedies within the fables of La Strada and Nights of Cabiria, though for the first time the poverty-stricken woes of the working class are not where his focus lies. Instead, he aims both disdain and conditional sympathy towards the upper end of society where there is a complete vacuum of personal responsibility, while only occasionally noting their impact on the suffering of those below. In true Christian style as well, seven is the all-important number which guides Fellini’s episodic structure, breaking this landscape of false idols into a series of parables that take Marcello ever deeper into Rome’s moral corruption – not unlike Dante’s physical descent into the circles of Hell.
The other key characteristic carried over from Fellini’s previous films as well is his location shooting within Rome itself, building on neorealist tradition while departing wildly from his mentors’ sensitive examinations of post-war poverty. For the first time he is shooting in widescreen CinemaScope, which itself is a fitting choice for this film of eclectic environments and bustling crowds, though his lush depth of field and meticulous blocking across the full horizontal length of the frame lifts La Dolce Vita to even greater stylistic heights that not even Fellini had touched before. At the many decadent parties Marcello attends, the camera frequently sits close to the ground as it observes inebriated guests mill around the bright, modern interiors, while one such gathering inside a Baroque castle treats its imposing history as little more than a consumable luxury. At the same time though, La Dolce Vita isn’t some conservative, high-minded condemnation of modern festivities. Like Fellini, Marcello is both lured in and repelled by its seductive glamour, the paradox of which incites a Catholic guilt that lingers from his childhood.
Fellini effortlessly transitions to a widescreen format, using its full horizontal scope to block his actors in luxurious arrangements, and a rich depth of field to layer his opulent compositions.
Beyond the ornate walls of Marcello’s parties, Fellini guides us through busy streets and neighbourhoods crowded with glossy black convertibles, reflecting the lights of Rome’s raucous nightlife. Only the wealthy can afford to live here, right by the majestic historical monuments that become little more than status signifiers, while the poor are kept out of sight on the city’s rundown outskirts. Though not all settings here were filmed in the real locations, such as the studio sets recreating the interior of St Peter’s Basilica and the Via Veneto, the artifice isn’t readily available from the sheer detail of the mise-en-scène.
Glossy black cars drive through busy streets, reflecting the lights of Rome’s raucous nightlife.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.
When it comes to La Dolce Vita’s most memorable and iconic scene though, Fellini wisely chooses to use the real Trevi Fountain as the basis of Marcello’s fleeting romance with lively Swedish movie star, Sylvia Rank. Played by up-and-coming actress Anita Ekberg, Sylvia makes a sizeable impact in her relatively short time onscreen, becoming celebrity incarnate with her ditzy public persona, buxom beauty, and moody sensitivity. She may not live outside the superficial glamour of the entertainment industry, but her radiant passion is unlike anything Marcello has encountered before, and so over the course of one night the subject of his gossip column evolves into an icon of angelic veneration.
Anita Ekberg’s appearance is brief but impactful – a woman to be revered, but never touched by a man as tainted with sin as Marcello.
After wandering away from the party, he and Sylvia approach the Trevi Fountain. She is the first to dance in its waters before inviting him in, where he reaches his hands out to touch her face. Once there though, he simply can’t bring himself to cross that threshold of intimacy. Like the Roman gods carved from stone that stand above them, Sylvia has frozen, as if taking her place among their divine company. She may be revered and even desired, but never must something so sacred be grasped by mortals as spiritually corrupt as Marcello.
The Trevi fountain scene is recognised even by those who have not watched La Dolce Vita, as Marcello and Sylvia cross the barrier into a realm where cleansing water flows from divine gods.
Perhaps then wealthy socialite Maddalena might be a more attainable prospect for the cynical journalist, seeing as how her discontent with modern-day Rome mirrors his own. For a time, he tries to cover that up with shallow praises of it as “a jungle where one can hide well,” though her desire to set up a simpler life elsewhere slowly wears away at his false positivity. When they run into each other again at a party hosted in an aristocrat’s castle, he once again wanders off with a woman who has drawn his eye, yet one who this time curiously leaves him in an empty room.
From a nearby chamber, Maddalena speaks into a well, revealing a trick of acoustics that hauntingly carries her voice to where he is seated. It is through this ghostly separation that Fellini plays out what seems to be the most sincerely romantic dialogue of La Dolce Vita, as she confesses her love and proposes marriage. Marcello tentatively dances around his answer for a time before finally returning the sentiment with a heartfelt monologue, and yet it isn’t until he is met with total silence that he realises Maddalena has been quietly seduced away by a fellow partygoer. The tangible vision of potential romance that faded into a disembodied echo has now disappeared entirely, and thus Fellini breaks Marcello’s heart again with another reason to despair.
The most intimate conversation in La Dolce Vita unfolds in separate rooms, connecting Marcello and Maddalena through distant echoes before she is swept away into another affair.
How can Marcello blame Maddalena though when he too has fallen so many times to the same temptations, even as he has complained of wanting to excise them from his life? His moral offences are not victimless, as throughout the course of La Dolce Vita he continues to cheat on, neglect, and physically abuse his mentally troubled fiancée, Emma. He has a “hard, empty heart,” she claims, while he accuses her of smothering him with a sickening, maternal love. Even at their lowest though, just as it seems they have cut ties for good, there he is picking her back up from where he dumped her on the road. In a more conventional Hollywood film this act might be framed as persevering love, and yet Fellini pierces the glib idealism to expose their reunion as little more than a desperation for companionship, and a passive willingness to let its toxicity eat away at their self-respect.
Trapped in a cycle of fights and silent make-ups with no real resolution, Marcello and Emma’s relationship slowly suffocates. Fellini takes up many issues with the state of modern relationships, and key among them is a lack of self-respect perpetuating a passive toxicity.
Delving deeper into Marcello’s inability to maintain healthy relationships, Fellini introduces his womanising father. It is through his sins after all that we gain some insight into the self-destructive hedonism that he passed onto his child, and on an even larger scale, from older generations down to all of Rome. The discomfort that crosses actor Marcello Mastroianni’s face here exposes a new kind of insecurity we haven’t seen before, reluctant to expose a formative piece of his childhood which lacked a stable, loving paternal figure.
At the nightclub where Marcello meets his father, Fellini chaotically fills the frame with the glitzy spectacle of giant balloons tumbling from the ceiling, and draws their lustful eye towards burlesque dancers. It is during one clown’s sad trumpet solo though, incidentally reminiscent of Gelsomina’s from La Strada, that Marcello’s father grows disinterested and strikes up a chat with the woman next to him – his son’s ex-girlfriend, Fanny. His eagerness to cross that line and pursue his own impulsive desire not only speaks to his selfish, weak-willed character, but also offers some explanation for the vices ingrained in Marcello, who at the very least recognises them as such.
Fellini drops balloons from the ceiling in the nightclub where Marcello goes with his womanising father, finding entertainment in the form of burlesque dancers and one sad, lonely trumpeter.
Between the seven parables of La Dolce Vita, Fellini continues to trace the path that leads from small transgressions to a larger culture of cruel exploitation, most acutely capturing that evolution in the media frenzy that congregates around a fake sighting of the Madonna. Just outside the city, two children from a poor family lay claim to witnessing this miracle, while their parents spur them on. Marcello is among the more sceptical visitors – “Miracles are born out of silence, not in this confusion” – and yet he follows through on his report anyway, feeding the blind faith of believers to keep the news cycle moving along.
A small lie blows out into a media frenzy, and Fellini relishes his opportunity to crowd each frame with people, lights, scaffolding, vehicles – absolute excess in the name of finding spiritual enlightenment.
At the tree where the Madonna was sighted, sick people and their families pray for healing into the night, as if desperately trying to reclaim the Christian spirituality that Rome has lost. Fellini positions his camera at high angles above the crowd as rain begins to fall, short circuiting the flood lights and saturating spectators, yet still they all remain. Their devotion might almost be considered inspiring were it not for the mindless fanaticism that escalates when the children claim to witness the Madonna’s return. As they run from one spot to another, Fellini fills his frame with the crowd’s confused, disorderly movements, growing more frenzied until they begin violently tearing branches off the tree that she apparently touched.
Any objective observer can see the blatant irony of their desecration, breaking an apparently holy icon into lifeless parts so they might selfishly take a little bit of it home for themselves, though the scene’s final stinger doesn’t arrive until the following morning when the dust has settled. In the heat of the moment, a small, sick boy has been trampled to death, literally killed by Rome’s religious herd mentality and its corresponding media circus.
Religion mixes with mass media, and the consequences are devastating, stripping faith of its dignity and twisting it into a violent, grotesque competition.When the dust settles, the casualties are revealed – innocence literally killed by Rome’s religious herd mentality.
After such a reprehensible display of abhorrent human behaviour, there is only one person who Marcello can turn to for some restoration of hope, and whose own storyline is split up into three smaller parts across La Dolce Vita. Affluent intellectual Steiner is the man that Marcello wishes he could be with his balanced lifestyle, loving family, and sophisticated hobbies, and Fellini even sets him up as a spiritual guide of sorts who plays jazz and Bach on a church organ. His party of artists and philosophers is relatively subdued to the others featured in La Dolce Vita, inviting Marcello to thoughtfully ponder his two great passions of journalism and literature, and how he might follow in his host’s footsteps to find peace within himself. In rebuttal though, Steiner is quick to divulge his own discontent.
“A more miserable life is better, believe me, than an existence protected by a perfectly organised society.”
Steiner has achieved the dream of wealth, love, and success that Marcello deeply envies, with his splendid house party framed to pristine perfection.
Only when Steiner’s story is wrapped up in its third act do the terrible depths of his anguish come to light with a gut-wrenching twist. Outside his house, journalists gather to get the scoop on the man who allegedly killed his children before committing suicide, and swarm his unaware wife whose confusion turns to horrified realisation of what has happened. “Maybe he was afraid of himself, of us all,” Marcello tries to reason, grasping for answers that don’t entirely make sense in the wake of such immense tragedy. If a smart, self-assured man like Steiner couldn’t hold onto some thin thread of moral order in this universe though, then what hope is there for Marcello?
Fellini’s cinematography constantly highlights the astounding geometry of Roman architecture, here gazing up at a stairway to the heavens.News spreads out on the street of Steiner’s murder-suicide, delivering the final blow to Marcello’s hope in some cosmic moral order.
It isn’t quite clear how much time has passed between this scene and Fellini’s final episode, but the shift in Marcello’s disposition is notable, having abandoned both his passions of journalism and literature to sink deeper into the entertainment industry as a publicist. After he and some new friends break into one of their ex-husband’s beach house, the night quickly devolves into a bacchanalian orgy which sees Marcello cover a female companion in cushion feathers and ride her around the room, degrading her to the level of a beast. No longer do we see any inhibition or hesitation in his debauchery, but rather a listless resignation to his moral depravity that thoroughly blends in with the licentious crowd.
Marcello’s life devolves into a dehumanising orgy, void of dignity or belief in some greater purpose. These are the deepest pits of hell where humans become little more than animals.
In these closing moments, Fellini formally unites the end of Marcello’s spiritual journey in La Dolce Vita with its start and midpoint, and draws on two crucial symbols from both. As the sun rises the next morning after the party, Marcello and company loiter down to the beach where fishermen have hauled a bloated Leviathan from the water. “It insists on looking,” Marcello reflects as he stares into its dead, godless eyes, feeling them pierce his conscience. Where La Dolce Vita began with Christ flying over Rome, it now ends with Satan being dredged up from its depths, as Marcello finally reaches the innermost circle of Hell and faces the hideous disfiguration of his soul.
A bloated Leviathan dredged up from the ocean, piercing Marcello’s soul with the cold, dead eyes of Satan.
And yet even here at Marcello’s lowest point, still there is a divine presence by his side – a young girl he had previously encountered at a seaside restaurant, whose soft features he noted resemble those of an angel from an Umbrian church. In a key piece of foreshadowing, the cha-cha song ‘Patricia’ she innocently hummed along to while waitressing is perversely revisited in the closing moments as the soundtrack to Marcello’s orgy, hinting at her return and final attempt to reach him. From across a channel on the beach where he now stands with his friends and the dead sea monster, she waves and shouts at him, eventually getting his attention.
Ultimately though, Fellini chooses to end La Dolce Vita the same way he started it – with Marcello’s complete failure to connect with others, even as his Umbrian Angel tries to reach him over the noise of the waves. With a defeatist shrug, he returns to his decadent life, and consequently leaves behind the purest icon of divine grace that he has encountered yet. Through Fellini’s cynical subversion of theological iconography, the greatest religious epic put to film does not trace the paths of great men like Judah Ben-Hur or Moses, but a tortured soul’s weary descent to the depths of an amoral, existentialist hell.
The return of Marcello’s Umbrian Angel is a last grasp at salvation, but the distance is too great. Lips move, but the sound doesn’t quite reach across the channel, leaving this tortured soul to fade back into his existential hell.
La Dolce Vita is currently available to buy from Amazon.
The moment that the mysterious, unnamed hitchhiker of Knife in the Water boards the yacht of upper-class couple Andrzej and Krystyna, Roman Polanski’s camera attaches to the switchblade he carries in his pocket. It proves its utility as a practical tool, cutting ropes when the boat ends up marooned in shallow water, and slicing up food during meals. The dangerous game the hitchhiker plays of Five Finger Fillet is surely an impressive feat of dexterity too, and although Andrzej puts an end to it with apparent concerns of ruining the deck, his competitive side soon emerges when they take turns throwing it at the wall. Going by the lingering close-ups that Polanski uses to suspensefully track the knife’s movement, it would be safe to assume that this is his Chekhov’s gun, and it indeed serves an integral role at the climax. Ultimately though, the symbolic weight that is placed in this phallic icon of masculinity far outweighs its physical danger, chillingly sinking a rocky marriage before it gets the chance to take a life.
Polanski’s phallic symbol of masculinity is wielded as a toy, a tool, and a subject of competition between the two men.
Although the hitchhiker is spontaneously invited along as a plaything for the wealthy couple, the insecurity he sparks in Andrzej transcends class boundaries, both being men vying for the attention of Krystyna. Adding to the tension as well is the suggestion that Krystyna herself may not necessarily belong in this upper stratosphere of society, having married into money rather than being born into it. The egotism of her rich husband is as plainly evident to her as the hitchhiker’s jealous desire to become him, constantly drawing them into contest over that all-important knife.
The only evidence that might hint at Knife in the Water being Polanski’s directorial debut is the clearly limited budget that confines much of his narrative to the yacht, though there are few single-location films as visually inventive and resourceful as this. No doubt this is in part due to his keen study of cinema’s greats, with his manipulation of suspense through tracking shots and editing bearing the mark of Alfred Hitchcock, and the incredible depth of field across extreme camera angles pointing to Orson Welles. Even the shrewd framing of multiple faces in close-ups delivers a hypothetical answer to the question of what a psychological thriller might look like if it were directed by Ingmar Bergman, and was grounded in social critique rather than existential horror. Quite remarkably though, Polanski’s visuals do not merely dwell in the shadow of his influences, but are given a new, distinctive shape that sits alongside some of their finest works.
Few directors have recognised the true potential of framing the human face in endless arrangements – Ingmar Bergman is among them and is clearly an influence on Polanski, though he is clearly carving out his own path too.
The yacht itself is a fascinatingly geometric set piece bound by ropes, poles, and sails, and yet Polanski prefers using his actors’ bodies as obstructions and frames in the mise-en-scène. Legs, heads, and arms are often isolated in the foreground, reflecting their fluctuating power dynamics as they take turns dominating the scenery, and disconnecting the characters from each other. Polanski intimately presses us against their bare skin from low camera positions, while high angles alternately lay their vulnerable, half-dressed bodies out on the deck, like sacrifices prepared on an altar. Being surrounded by open water, they are obviously not trapped in any physical confines, and yet within Polanski’s claustrophobic blocking they are all victims of a parasitic social environment that they have created for themselves.
In the absence of varied set pieces, Polanski’s mise-en-scène relies primarily on the bodies of his actors, segmenting them into limbs that frequently obstruct the frame.Bodies laid out on the yacht like a sacrifice, bare and vulnerable.
After all, each passenger has something to selfishly gain from the others in this allegory of class and gender, letting us carefully scrutinise the complex web of desire and contempt that lies between them. When Andrzej first notices the hitchhiker on the road, he decides to teach him a lesson by swerving dangerously close to where he is standing, and when he invites the young man onboard, he wields his position of boat captain with smarmy authority. It is all a game to him, until he notices his dominance being undermined by the hitchhiker’s mocking jabs, minor rebellions, and flirty pursuit of Krystyna, who alternates in the middle between amusement and apprehension.
A composition loaded with tension, blocking the hitchhiker in the background between Andrzej and Krystyna as the division in their relationship.Extreme high and low angles are woven into the power play, as both men vie for the position of captain.Every so often, Polanski drops in these ethereal, greyscale wide shots that astound with their beauty.
Along with his nerve-wracking knife motif, Polanski skilfully uses these interactions to formally lay the groundwork of their eventual reckoning. The hitchhiker’s inability to swim is ominously underscored as a key plot point, while the fact that Andrzej has named his boat after his wife subtly marks them equally as his property, turning any competition for one into a contest for both. Andrzej fully realises the masculine power that resides in the hitchhiker’s switchblade when he steals it for himself, making a potentially deadly struggle all but inevitable when tensions eventually boil over and send his guest overboard. With no sign of him resurfacing, Andrzej immediately assumes the worst, briefly considering covering the tracks of his apparent murder before resolving to swim to shore and fetch police. As a result, a window of opportunity finally opens to the surviving hitchhiker who has secretly clung to a nearby buoy. With Andrzej out of the picture, he reboards the yacht, sleeps with Krystyna, and thus takes the rich man’s wife and boat as his own.
The hitchhiker’s revenge, subverting the artificial hierarchy through wits and sex.
Even after the boat is returned to shore and Krystyna is reunited with her husband, Polanski’s social critique doesn’t lose its savage edge. With Andrzej’s image of masculine and financial power complete damaged in his wife’s eyes, his insecurity as a weak, jealous man has also been exposed, desperately reducing women and lower-class citizens to toys so that he may wield a flimsy control over them. There is nothing left for him to say as they drive back home, nor any way he can mend the brittle foundations of this relationship. At a road intersection, he brings the car to a complete standstill, as reluctant to continue forward as he is scared to move back. Murder would be far too clean a resolution to Knife in the Water’s thrilling acute interrogation of class and marital breakdown. By the time Polanski has stripped away all pretensions of dignity in his ensemble, so too have they lost their ability to confront complex situations with decisive action, and revealed the critical emptiness of their moral character.
A bleak final frame, lingering on the car as it sits at a total standstill – there is no way forwards or backwards for this couple.
Knife in the Water is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and the Blu-ray is available to purchase on Amazon.
Scene by Green 