At Cinecittà Studios where Federico Fellini shot his most famous films, the ageing Italian director is preparing for his next endeavour. This is to be his adaptation of Franz Kafka’s novel ‘Amerika’, though on the outer, self-aware layer of Intervista which recognises this whole enterprise as fiction, the substance of the source material barely matters. While buxom actresses desperately compete for the coveted role of Brunelda, Fellini entreats a Japanese television crew looking to report back home on his production, and old friends unexpectedly reunite to reminisce on their glory days. There is work to be done in this bustling film studio, but over the decades it has also become a second home for him to relax and play in, like “a fortress, or perhaps an alibi” he slyly remarks.
Just as Fellini inserts himself as the main character, so too are the soundstages and backlots of Cinecittà depicted authentically for perhaps the first time in its long history. Intervista careens almost directly into documentary territory here, pulling the curtain back even further than 8 ½ or Roma, only to intermittently expose the surrealism which has bled from his art into his life. These blurred lines are where he is most comfortable as a filmmaker, though as Fellini’s illustrious career begins to wind down into more modest projects, it is clear that his once-tight grasp on cinematic and narrative chaos has slackened.
There is not a whole let of sense to the structure of this piece, gliding aimlessly between scenes of movie productions and reconstructed memories without great formal purpose. Echoes of 8 ½ manifest in dreams of flying above the studio, but Intervista is far more compelling when it is paving new ground, casting actor Sergio Rubini as a vague blend of himself and a younger Fellini first coming to the studio in 1940. The pink dressing room where he interviews matinee idol Katya is a stunningly uniform set piece of roses, drapes, and chaise lounges, though he is far more entranced by the chaos of the studio itself, watching giant sets roll through showers of white petals and sparkling dancers take centre stage in a gaudy historical epic. Suddenly, a trunk falls off the head of a fake elephant, sending the director into a hysterical argument with his crew who begin toppling all the other cut-outs – until the older Fellini cuts them off. “You were supposed to knock over the first elephant, not the third,” he proclaims, revealing this entire sequence to be yet another layer of fiction within a film he is making about his first visit to Cinecittà.
It is a seamless transition he conducts here, not so much forcing us to question where the line is between Fellini’s life and stories than to accept them as one. Especially when Marcello Mastroianni drops in with a dramatic entrance as Mandrake the Magician, Fellini pays sentimental tribute to the cherished relationships he has built over the years through film, gathering up his old collaborator and Rubini into a car to visit Anita Ekberg at her mansion.
The Swedish actress only ever featured in one Fellini film, but as shown here, the impact that her famous Trevi Fountain scene with Mastroianni in La Dolce Vita has had on their lives may be equal to its high standing in Italian culture. When Mastroianni magically summons a white sheet at her house party, the two wistfully recreate their old dance as shadows against its surface, accompanied by Nino Rota’s instantly recognisable score. Afterwards, their eyes turn to a projection of the original Trevi Fountain scene itself, smiling and tearing up with unspoken nostalgia. All at once, we bear witness to the chemistry they shared as attractive young film stars, and how it has strengthened through years of mutual respect and adoration.
That this is the moment from Fellini’s career which he chooses to directly evoke in Intervista doesn’t just speak to his pride in its artistic brilliance. Above all else, the relationships that formed behind the scenes hold a timeless value to these artists, justifying all the pains and struggles that come with their profession. It is dismaying to see modern apartments buildings encroach on this studio lot that once hosted the grand sets of Ben-Hur and Cleopatra, yet the sad state of the industry does little to dampen the spirits of cast and crew who band together for the sake of entertainment.
This is the true joy of filmmaking, Fellini posits, and it is on full display in the absurd final scenes of Intervista when Amerika finally enters production. Out in a muddy backlot of scaffolding and cardboard cutouts, an actress complains about her cemetery scene being cut, while a crewmember sheepishly gathers up the lightweight gravestones. Suddenly, mounted stage lights begin to explode from the drizzling rain, which soon escalates into a storm and sends everyone running beneath a small tarp shelter. As a jazz band in the back of a truck plays cheery tunes into the night, cast and crew entertain themselves with games, songs, and conversation, before falling asleep in cramped, uncomfortable positions.
Unbeknownst to them, standing atop a nearby hill the next morning is a tribe of Native Americans on horseback, carrying television antennae as weapons. Their attack on the makeshift shelter suddenly transforms the scene into a Western, only to be halted by Fellini’s call to cut. “We’re wrapped it!” the crew yells. “The film’s over!”
Once again, Intervista completely blindsides us with its invisible layers of metafiction, dwelling so long in what we assume to be reality that we fail to spot the illusion. At this point at least, Fellini is done hiding his intentions from us. “The film should end here,” his voiceover considers. “In fact, it’s over.” But not before reflecting on a criticism that he has often heard levelled at his stories.
“I hear the words of an old producer of mine. ‘What? Without the faintest hope or ray of sunshine? Give me at least a day of sunshine,’ he would beg when viewing my films. A ray of sunshine? Well, I don’t know. Let’s try.”
Fellini’s films were far from the bleakest of his contemporaries, especially with Ingmar Bergman’s oeuvre in contention, though these ambiguous final words are justified to an extent. Just as he revelled in entertainment and spectacle, so too did their cynical hollowness often rise to the surface in his films. The ambiguity of this ending sees Intervista dissipate without much gravity, but within it there is at least a sense of hope. “Take one,” a clapper loader announces in the final shot, commencing a new project. Perhaps it is Fellini’s, finally delivering that ray of sunshine he never quite mustered, or perhaps it belongs to another director carrying on his legacy. Either way, the lively spirit of Cinecittà Studios and the Italian film industry it houses lives on, long past their historic, illustrious golden age.
Intervista is now streaming on The Criterion Channel.
The passengers that gather aboard cruise ship Gloria N. to scatter the ashes of world-renowned opera singer Edmea Tetua are an eclectic mix of European aristocrats. The obese Grand Duke of Harzock is present with his blind sister, a Princess who claims she can see the colour of sounds and voices – besides the General’s, which is drolly described as “a void.” The Count of Bassano is here as well, a reclusive, obsessive fan of Edmea’s who has transformed his chamber into a shrine, and dresses as her ghost to frighten those disrespectfully trying to summon her spirit in a séance. The most dominant demographic by far though are those industry professionals who have come to commemorate their colleague’s passing. Singers, conductors, musicians, and theatre managers have no inhibitions when it comes to showing off their talents on this journey, and consequently expose egos as large as the vessel they travel on.
As for our guide through the vast ensemble of And the Ship Sails On, Federico Fellini gives us Orlando, a jovial Italian journalist with a proud dedication to his role of narrator. In the ship’s dining hall of lavish golden décor and architecture, he addresses the camera as both an outside observer and a passenger, while being pushed to the edge of the room by wait staff demanding he stand out of their way. This is a historic moment, he is sure to inform us, though one that is steeped in the absurdity of a ruling class that is no longer answerable to the conventions of mainland society. Here, they amplify each other’s most obnoxious qualities, the singers jealously competing to win the admiration of the crew in the boiler room while nobles squabble over the trivial semantics of metaphors.
This is an environment of total indulgence and pretence, constructed within an artificial world that Fellini’s narrative bookends expose as his own arbitrary cinematic invention. The recreation of silent cinema which opens And the Ship Sails On mockingly evokes the 1914 setting, using expository intertitles at the docks where characters board the cruise liner, before sound and colour slowly fade in with the reverential boarding of Edmea’s ashes. An even more bombastic shattering of the fourth wall also occurs in the film’s final minutes, where Fellini’s camera tracks behind the scenes of his marvellous set to reveal the crew, technical equipment, and hydraulic jacks rocking the entire ship, stripping away all illusion.
These are Fellini’s attempts to undercut the pomp and circumstance of the voyage, and yet the latter especially comes off as erratic, eroding the formal cohesion of the piece. Where And the Ship Sails On more successfully peels back the layers of this world is in its rich theatrics, revealing the ocean in long shots to be little more than a glittery, blue tarp, and the ship itself to be a miniature model set against painted backdrops. The interiors are equally elaborate, particularly within the golden dining hall where towering candelabras obstruct shots around crowded tables, while even Fellini’s editing resigns his characters to their stations in life. The manic fast-motion of cooks rapidly preparing food decelerates into mechanical slow-motion when it is finally served upon the guests’ plates, whereupon they raise glasses and spoons to their mouths in mindless unison. Without a single line of dialogue, Fellini draws a firm divide between the classes of passengers upon the Gloria N., underscoring the ludicrously dissimilar paces of both lifestyles.
Only when Serbian refugees are rescued and taken aboard in the film’s final act does unity unexpectedly manifest upon this ship, and for some time it would even seem that the optimist in Fellini has won out over the cynic. The blocking here is handsomely staged upon the deck, particularly as celebrations erupt with food and dance shared between passengers from diverse backgrounds. For one blissful night, all pretensions of sophistication are thrown overboard, along with concerns of the very real danger which these shipwrecked outcasts are fleeing from – though the onset of World War I’s geopolitical tensions can only remain at bay for so long.
The arrival of an Austro-Hungarian ship demanding the return of these refugees snaps the passengers of Gloria N. back to reality with jarring whiplash, softened only by Orlando’s hopeful imagining of what might have unfolded had this newfound solidarity also inspired courage. “No, we won’t give them up!” the ship’s singers belt in anthemic unison, using their art to make a bold, powerful statement.
“Death to arrogance,
No monster shall overcome us,
Violence will not conquer us!”
Fellini’s rapid dissolution of this surreal daydream is bleak, and devastatingly inevitable. “The battleship was compelled to arrest the Serbs. It was an order from the Austrian-Hungarian police,” Orlando matter-of-factly informs us, though the conflict does not end here. The Gloria N. was not merely famous for its commemorative voyage, we learn, but for the many lives lost in its catastrophic sinking.
“It’s almost impossible to reconstruct the precise sequence of events,” Orlando continues to monologue as he prepares to evacuate the ship, yet Fellini is not so elusive when it comes to the turning point in this chain of events. In climactic slow-motion, a young Serb refugee lobs a handmade bomb through the porthole of the enemy ship, setting off a chain reaction of events that ends in historic catastrophe. Maybe it was carried in a moment of furious passion, or perhaps it was a premediated terrorist act, Orlando broodingly considers, before his arbitrary musings are swiftly cut off.
All of a sudden, the gentle rocking of the camera which has persisted through the entire film escalates into a formidable lurch, sending fine furniture sliding to the other end of the dining room and effectively destroying these fragile icons of high society. Maestro Albertini conducts the operatic underscore of his own demise upon the upper deck, while The Count of Bassano weeps in his flooded room down below, watching film reels of the deceased opera singer who he will soon join in death.
Still, And the Ship Sails On is far from the mournful tragedy of Titanic, instead drawing a closer comparison to Ruben Östlund’s more recent nautical class satire Triangle of Sadness. Much like his stubbornly upbeat ensemble, Fellini remains cheery right through to the end, his attitude even bordering on careless as he feebly wavers between a few different conclusions without totally committing to any single one. It is quite understandable that he has some fondness for these outrageous caricatures, given that he has essentially instilled them with pieces of his own vanity, though he is also not one to wistfully mourn their losses. After all, within this dreamy microcosm of self-obsessed aristocrats, it is far more enlightening, enjoyable, and enamouring to revel in the macabre absurdity of their splendid misfortune.
And the Ship Sails On is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.
Each time famed adventurer Giacomo Casanova tumbles into another sexual escapade during his worldly travels, his wind-up bird is right there by his side, bobbing and flapping its wings in suggestive, mechanical motions. As both a literal and figurative cock, its phallic shape is not easily missed, casting giant shadows on the wall much like its owner’s. In any other sex scene, in any other film, it would be jarringly out of place – this act is meant to be one loaded with spontaneous passion after all, vulnerably exposing humanity’s most primal instincts. Within the lecherous ventures of Fellini’s Casanova though, this bird is simply an extension of the Venetian playboy’s libido, consistently ticking along like a metronome to Nino Rota’s contrived score of rigid, unwavering synths.
Though based on the memoirs of the real Casanova and his expansive voyage through 18th century Europe, Federico Fellini’s reimagining of his life manifests with demented surrealism, twisting the historical figure into a man trapped in cycles of meaningless carnal exploits. Sex in this decrepit world is not an expression of deep yearning, but rather an imitation of pleasure performed out of obligation, as if trying to convince oneself of an authentic, sensual connection that simply isn’t there.
Within Casanova’s lecherous ventures, the mechanical bird is simply an extension of the Venetian playboy’s libido, consistently ticking along like a metronome to Nino Rota’s contrived score of rigid, unwavering synths.
The giant head of Venus which sinks to the bottom of Venice’s Grand Canal in the opening scene becomes a symbolic reminder of this too, returning in the film’s final scene beneath the frozen surface to illustrate the abiding death of everything the goddess of love represents. In her absence, lovemaking is dispassionately chaotic. Coital partners seesaw in the most untitillating manner possible, while Fellini’s camera rocks and zooms in jerky motions as if synchronised to the ensemble’s outrageous acting.
The sunken head of Venus bookends Fellini’s Casanova – a mythic symbol of love trapped in icy waters.
Even outside of these scenes Casanova does not mark a significant achievement for Donald Sutherland, and yet his effeminate, foppish spin on the great Venetian adventurer nevertheless fits perfectly within Fellini’s garish scenery, thinly concealing a deeply insecure ego. After all, it is not his sexual vitality, but his intellectual pursuits as “a poet, philosopher, mathematician” which he would rather be known for – but if his prodigious reputation for bedding women is to be his legacy, then who is he to deny this extraordinary talent?
By the time Fellini adapted Casanova’s autobiography in the mid-1970s, he was no stranger to reshaping classical texts and historical eras with lurid experimentation, frequently sacrificing narrative convention in favour of episodic vignettes. As such, Fellini’s Casanova bears especially close resemblance to his cinematic interpretation of the Ancient Roman text Satyricon, which similarly journeyed through warped, theatrical landscapes that never seemed to feel the touch of natural sunlight. Casanova’s excursion to a Venetian island where a wealthy voyeur pays to watch him sexually perform lays the brazen theatricality bare in the opening scenes, sailing his boat across a black sea of billowing tarp, while his convergence with civilisation brings astoundingly anachronistic renderings of 18th century high society. Fellini carries a Sternbergian sense of unruly excess here as he clutters his colourful mise-en-scène with candles, statues, and exorbitantly large plates of food, painting Baroque portraits of overindulgence fuelled by an insatiable emptiness, and curating cinematic galleries of incredible orgiastic anarchy.
Aggressively theatrical mise-en-scène, floating Casanova’s boat atop an ocean of black, billowing tarp.Fellini carries a Sternbergian sense of unruly excess here as he clutters his colourful mise-en-scène with candles, statues, and exorbitantly large plates of food, painting Baroque portraits of overindulgence fuelled by an insatiable emptiness.
In Rome, Casanova is invited to the patrician palace of the British ambassador, where a deranged party of obscene games demeans the surrounding historical art that once signified class and decorum. There, his pretentious attempts to wax lyrical philosophy are met with bewilderment, and to curry favour he instead participates in a contest with a peasant to determine who can sexually perform the most times in the space of an hour. In London, he attends a hypnotically gloomy Frost Fair on the River Thames, where he moves on from the suicidal grief of losing his girlfriend to another man and instead pins his new obsession on a royal giantess. Later in Württemberg he attends what is meant to be “the most beautiful court in Europe,” and yet which rather appears as a haywire nightmare of insane aristocrats wreaking havoc, while musicians fill the air with a dissonant cacophony emerging from the pianos and organs hanging off the walls.
Casanova moves from one party to the next, encountering bizarre characters and adventures, yet never quite finding the fulfilment he seeks.A haywire nightmare in Württemberg, where musicians fill the air with a dissonant cacophony emerging from the pianos and organs hanging off the walls.A dazzling composition of chandeliers hanging above Casanova at the opera – with his bigger budgets, Fellini does not half-commit to his production design.
The disconnection between these wandering vignettes somewhat hurts the overall form of Casanova, and yet this detachment also serves to underscore the wistful isolation at the core of Sutherland’s performance, elevating the moment where he discovers what he deems true love. It is during his adventures in Germany that he meets Rosalba, a life-sized mechanical doll who dances stiffly with the voyager like a ballerina in a music box, and whose only objection to his sexual advances is a silent, pained grimace. She is a bastion of unchanging purity in this world of absurdist mayhem – a clockwork contraption not unlike Casanova’s metal bird who reflects his desire for fastidious control over his emotions, relationships, and libido.
Rosalba the mechanical may be Casanova’s one true love, becoming bastion of unchanging purity in this world of absurdist mayhem.
Clearly little has changed in the decades that pass between their awkwardly romantic tryst and Casanova’s retirement from travelling, choosing to take up the role of librarian in a cold, draughty Bohemian castle as he approaches the end of his life. Still he attempts to impress audiences with dull poetry recitations, and still he is ridiculed for his pomposity, leaving him to retreat in shame to his darkened chamber where dreams of waltzing with Rosalba upon an icy Venetian lagoon await. As Rota’s music box motif tinkles a soft, metallic melody for the last time, they rotate like tiny figurines, eternally frozen in plastic. There, at the end of this traveller’s long life, Fellini finally reveals the impossible fantasy which has eluded him through many cities, parties, and romances – the frigid, lifeless embrace of a woman as hopelessly inhuman as him.
Resigned to the end of an empty life, Casanova retreats into his imagination with Rosalba. As Nino Rota’s music box motif tinkles a soft, metallic melody for the last time, they rotate like tiny figurines, eternally frozen in plastic.
Fellini’s Casanova as currently available to purchase from Amazon.
Spring arrives in the Italian village of Borgo San Giuliano with white, fluffy poplar seeds floating on the breeze, bearing a striking resemblance to the snow that has just melted away. In summer, school student Titta relishes the warm weather on a family day trip to the countryside, with his Uncle Teo being granted short-term leave from the psychiatric hospital where he resides. Autumn later brings cooler temperatures, and sees the vast majority of the population sail out on boats to witness the passage of the ocean liner SS Rex, while winter’s frozen grip on the small town heralds sickness and tragedy in Titta’s family.
The year that passes over the course of Amarcord is not bound by plot convention, and yet each vignette has its formal place in the eccentric portrait of 1930s Italy that Federico Fellini sentimentally models after his own childhood. Unlike the wandering odyssey of Satyricon or the pseudo-documentary of Roma, Amarcord never falters in its lively, easy-going pacing, loosely building its episodic formal progression around the seasonal changes and communal traditions of these villagers’ mundane lives.
Spring arrives with white, fluffy poplar seeds on the breeze – an annual occurrence that each year enraptures the small town of Borgo San Giuliano.Summer brings warmer, brighter days, as Titta visits the countryside with his family and Uncle Teo for an amusing escapade.The SS Rex passes by the town in Autumn, met by locals eager to witness this feat of maritime engineering.Winter settles over the village, the snowflakes bearing notable resemblance to Spring’s white poplar seeds.
Perhaps then we must look even further back to I Vitelloni for the closest comparison in Fellini’s filmography, similarly trapping young men within cyclical routines that connect them to a larger community and hamper their dreams of escape. Like his 1953 hangout film, the camerawork here is dynamic, gliding and panning in breezy tracking shots that gently soak in the remarkable scenery. Even then though, the difference between Fellini’s early neorealist-adjacent style and the vibrant surrealism of Amarcord is gaping, as if his own nostalgic reflections have grown more playfully distorted with age. Characters here slip into dreams with careless abandon, dwelling on fables that infuse Borgo San Giuliano with its own spectacular mythology, and distant fantasies that may only ever live in their minds.
This town’s distinctive character comes together in scenes of communal celebration and tradition, the camera gliding breezily through the detailed mise-en-scène.The town of Titta’s adolescence also possesses its own unique mythology, manifesting with surreal wonder in the dreams and memories of its people.
Little do these people know, they themselves will one day become legends to be wistfully recalled by a grown Titta in years to come as well, colouring in the vibrant ensemble of his life with effervescent idiosyncrasies as they rotate in and out of Amarcord’s narrative. Much like Saraghina from 8 ½, the town’s beach-dwelling prostitute Volpina becomes a subject of fantasy for Titta during his adolescent sexual awakening. Local hairdresser Gradisca is conversely a far more untouchable beauty, frequently drawing stares in her shapely red dresses and hiding a loneliness that delicately parallels Titta’s own discontent. The Grand Hotel where she is rumoured to have slept with a prince also plays host to a tall tale propagated by food vendor Biscein that comically details his wild night with 28 foreign concubines, while the long-suffering town lawyer perseveres through the heckling of neighbours to relay this village’s culture and folklore directly to the audience.
Minor characters cycle in and out of Fellini’s vignettes, fulfilling familiar archetypes wherever they are needed – the town prostitute, the untouchable beauty, the friendly lawyer.
The absolute persistence of ‘Mr. Lawyer’ in offering a scholarly perspective on Borgo San Giuliano is amusingly at odds with its pragmatic, free-spirited people, and it is telling that he is the one of the few to regularly break the fourth wall. “Theirs is an exuberant, generous, loyal, and tenacious nature,” he kindly elucidates, describing their proud heritage that runs “Roman and Celtic blood in their veins.” His appearances are intermittent, yet his self-aware monologues work powerfully to divorce Amarcord from the naturalism it occasionally leans towards, sweeping us into the subjective realm of memory where Fellini is at his strongest as a filmmaker.
Nino Rota’s endless variations of the film’s main theme capture this whimsy with carnivalesque panache as well, and are absolutely crucial to the sensitive evolution of each scene. The motif swoons on strings as the camera romantically glides through a frozen tableau of soldiers, forms the jazzy underscore to Titta and his friends’ waltz with imaginary women in the foggy darkness, and even passes diegetically to a musician playing his flute in a barbershop. Its joviality is resilient, never quite losing its optimism even as it fades out with the village lights dimming at night, and ultimately becoming a pure expression of the town’s own flamboyant character.
A dream frozen in time – the camera gently drifts through the Grand Hotel with mystical intrigue.A dense fog settles over the town, while Titta and his friends waltz with imaginary women, deep in a trance.
It is quite remarkable as well that every street, building, and monument of Borgo San Giuliano is entirely constructed on studio sets, allowing Fellini a level of control over his handsomely offbeat mise-en-scène that captures a specific era in an isolated region of Italy. At the same time, the scale of Amarcord’s production is enormous, transforming this village into an entire world – which of course it is to an adolescent Titta. The cultural and historical detail woven into the architecture is particularly rich, though Fellini also chooses opportune moments to subtly let authenticity slide for a more wistful evocation of his hometown of Rimini instead, cutting out sharp shadows and silhouettes in his low-key lighting. Even the Victory Monument which stands in its square is recreated with impressionistic elegance, baring the backside of a woman that draws the lustful gaze of visitors, while the small addition of angel wings elevates this voluptuous figure to a level of divinity that exists only in Fellini’s memory.
One of Amarcord’s strongest compositions arrives at the Victory Monument, baring the backside of an angel who draws the lustful gaze of visitors venturing out into the rain.
In those moments of surrealism where this narrative departs from reality altogether, Amarcord moreover reveals a pointed, satirical edge aimed towards the nationalistic tyranny bearing down on Italy’s younger generations. When Mussolini comes to town, the red-and-white papier-mâché model of his face that is raised in a formal procession is laughably cartoonish, and even begins speaking when Titta’s lovestruck classmate Ciccio imagines it marrying him to his crush, Aldina. Suddenly, this military ceremony transforms into a wedding before our eyes, and the fascist pageantry is defanged as red, green, and white confetti is joyously tossed over the underage newlyweds.
Fellini delivers one excellent set piece after another, mocking the obsessive, fascist pageantry of the era with a giant papier-mâché face of Mussolini who springs to life and weds a pair of young school students.
Fellini continues to send up the stern teachers at Titta’s school and the church’s ineffective Catholic priests with mischievous glee as well, and yet he is also delicately aware of the malice which lurks within these institutions. There is no comedy to be found in the local authority’s torture of Titta’s father for making vaguely anti-fascist remarks, nor in their chilling speeches of “glowing ideals from ancient times.”
With baggage like this attached to otherwise cheerful memories, maybe it is best for them to remain in the past, Fellini contemplates, though not without sparing a sad thought for those like Gradisca who were carried away by the cultural norms of the era. She may have been the subject of many fantasies in her eye-catching red, black, and white outfits, but she is still a woman with her own hopes and insecurities, revealed in fleeting glimpses behind her veil of cool, feminine confidence. Perhaps then the loneliness which brings her to tears one night in front of a crowd is also what spurs her to marry a fascist officer in the final scene of Amarcord, even as her own fate beyond the inevitable fall of Italy’s totalitarian regime is left sorrowfully ambiguous.
The camera pans across this low-lying landscape just outside town, where Gradisca marries a fascist officer and resigns herself to an uncertain future. Titta’s absence is only barely noted – this too is a turning point for him to carve out a new future away from the only home he has ever known.
She is evidently not the only one leaving Borgo San Giuliano with dreams of brighter futures either. As the camera slowly pans with the remaining wedding guests across the countryside, their distant shouts offhandedly mention Titta’s departure with little elaboration. Given the recent passing of his mother from an infectious illness though, it isn’t hard for us to surmise the reason. The winter months have wreaked devastation on his family, and their funereal grief has been absorbed into yet another communal ritual carried out with depressingly rote perseverance.
Still, time continues to traipse forward, seeing spring’s puffballs replace the glacial winter snow and old memories give birth to new beginnings. Escaping the routines that govern this community need not arrive as a grand epiphany, but may even be as subtle as a silent, unremarkable departure, leaving one’s name to be fondly recalled by those who have stayed behind.
The loss of Titta’s mother also marks his loss of innocence – a rite of passage which, unlike all those other small ventures throughout the year, is carried out with depressing perseverance.
After all, within Fellini’s portrait of evaporated childhood, memory moves in both directions. Distance across time and space may erode our physical connection with old friends, yet those relationships are revived in the mercurial oceans of nostalgia. Just as the past wistfully lingers in the present, the present sways the past, constantly remoulding it into new forms that reveal previously hidden truths. Only through Amarcord’s reality-warping hindsight can Fellini recognise the absurd norms of his youth with the nuance they deserve, from the oppressive evils and mournful insecurities of his neighbours, to the sweet, boundless joys that have faded with the encroachment of adulthood.
Amarcord is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, is available to rent or buy on Apple TV, and Amazon Video, and can be purchased on Amazon.
The two eras of Rome that Federico Fellini displays in his offbeat homage to the Italian city are set apart by three decades, though the boundaries separating one from the other aren’t always so clearly outlined. Hippies lounge around ancient monuments in the 1970s, air raids send civilians running for cover in the 1940s, and yet still life goes on for those who seek the simple pleasures of sex, entertainment, and good food. After all, what else is there to cling to in a world eternally bound within a state of perpetual chaos?
This is not quite the Rome chronicled in history books, nor the Rome captured with authenticity in the films of the Italian neorealists. This is Fellini’s Roma – an absurd, urban landscape defined more by its culture, politics, and traditions than any individual icon. Not to say that Fellini’s film lacks idiosyncratic characters – in fact virtually everyone here sets themselves apart from the colourful crowd – but they are simply threads woven into a larger, vibrant tapestry. Despite its familiar interrogations of modern Rome’s debauchery, Roma bears far greater resemblance to the surreal, episodic madness of Fellini Satyricon than the focused character study of La Dolce Vita. Such a grandiose defiance of narrative convention comes with some structural unevenness, though Fellini’s recreation of the city he both loathes and adores is nonetheless rich with impressionistic detail, filtering moments in time through the wily incongruity of satire and memory.
A city littered with millennia of history – fading, crumbling, yet always to be replaced with new artefacts and stories.Hippies lounge around ancient monuments in the 1970s while bombs drop on Rome in the 1940s – parallel timelines marked by war and celebration.
If there is a consistent character in Roma whom we are to follow beyond Rome itself, then it is the strange presence of Fellini himself in two forms. The first is a semi-autobiographical representation of the director watching silent films about Ancient Rome as a child, and later moving to the Nazi-occupied city as a young man. The camera moves with him past magnificent fountains and cathedrals in travelogue-style tracking shots, before he finally finds lodging at a shabby guesthouse bustling with vain actors, rowdy children, and religious zealots. The insanity seemingly has no boundaries, populating the streets at night with noisy al fresco restaurant patrons, and still we continue weaving through the crowd as our attention jumps from a waiter carrying a plate of pasta to the young Fellini being invited to eat with friendly strangers.
Fellini self-autobiographically enters the film as his younger self moving to Rome, embracing all that the city has to offer.
This version of Fellini is often little more than a passive observer accompanying our journey, while the second cinematic representation of the filmmaker manifests as an older, wiser extension of the same man – an unseen tour guide of sorts, offering amusing descriptions and opinions on Rome’s eclectic culture through omniscient voiceover. He is our constant companion through this adventure, possessing a whimsical self-awareness as he introduces a “portrait of Rome” exactly as a young, naïve Fellini once perceived it – “a mixture of strange, contradictory images.” Later as we stumble across Italian actress Anna Magnani walking home to her palazzo, this voiceover even holds a conversation with her, distilling all the facets of Rome down to this living symbol who has lived out its many lives on film.
“Rome seen as vestal virgin, and she-wolf. An aristocrat, and a tramp. A sombre buffoon.”
Rome’s proclivity towards fascism echoes through time, dominating the culture with fervent nationalism and authoritarianism.
On occasion, Roma does not always handle these fourth wall breaks so well, leading to some patchiness in one highway scene that turns the camera back on Fellini’s own crew capturing the traffic jam. Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend is the obvious influence here, as we observe anarchy unfold on the roads one stormy night. Dead animals, burning trucks, hippie protestors, and police barricades are illuminated under harsh spotlights to paint an image of societal breakdown, but for once the chaos seems to escape Fellini’s control.
Some vignettes in Roma are more effective than others, and the highway set piece is one that suffers in comparison.
It is evident that Fellini handles the mayhem with greater poise when he is aligning these disordered elements under unified set pieces, digging into the bedrock of culture and history the city quite literally rests upon. The wondrous regard these people hold for their heritage is not to be outdone by their relentless pursuit of progress, as industrials drills paving the way for a new transit system smash the walls of an ancient Roman house to pieces, revealing alabaster sculptures, mosaics, and frescoes that have miraculously survived for two thousand years. “Look how they seem to be staring at us,” one woman remarks as these artworks cast a stern eye upon their new visitors. Suddenly, the paint’s exposure to the outside air triggers a rapid deterioration, and thus these representatives of the ancient world cast their final judgement on modern civilisation for its graceless, irresponsible ineptitude.
The tension between past and present comes through bleakly in the industrial dig site. Attempts at establishing a new underground transit system are frequently halted by historical discoveries, and inadvertently ruin them in the process.
Still, little can erase the immense pride of a culture that annually celebrates the Festa de’ Noantri – literally translating to ‘Festival of Ourselves.’ Fellini stations his handheld camera in a car as it passes by colourful lights, bustling crowds, and folk musicians filling the air with joy, capturing a slice of the real celebration in an almost documentary-like manner, and even bringing in American writer Gore Vidal to reflect on his life in Rome. “This is the city of illusions,” he ponders to an audience of rapt listeners. “It’s a city, after all, of the church, of government, of movies. They’re all makers of illusions.”
Fellini’s location shooting soaks in the sights of the Festa de Noantri – the lights, the food, the community, everything comes together to form a lively picture of Roman celebration and joy.
Fellini does not attempt to escape from beneath the shadow of this reputation either, but rather devotes his vision of Rome to its extraordinary artifice, understanding that the truth never lies far from its projected façade. With Roma’s production taking place a few years after Vatican II, this is especially relevant to the church’s struggle of identity in a modern world, and thus he launches a scathing attack upon its attempted reinvention through a hilariously gaudy fashion show.
“Model number one: Patience in a classical line of black satin for novices,” the emcee announces to the crowd of cardinals, bishops, and nobles, as a pair of nuns walk down the catwalks in glossy habits and leather boots “suitable for Arctic wear.” Next, two more nuns with headdresses that flap like turtledove wings, priests on roller skates clad in “robes for sport,” and then men in frilly doilies swinging thuribles with choreographed panache – “Elegance and high fashion for the sacristan in first-class ceremonies.” The ecclesiastical accoutrements only grow more ridiculous, eventually culminating in the arrival of the Pope himself on a blinding white set, radiating sunbeams as the audience collapses to their knees in awe.
The true highlight of Roma comes in the form of an ecclesiastical fashion show, sending up the material obsession of the Catholic Church is it seeks a connection to modern culture. Particularly magnificent costume work from Danilo Donati.
Costume designer Danilo Donati must be commended for the visual extravagance of this vignette, though it is Fellini’s genius which unites each garment under a single, scathing criticism of religious hypocrisy, and its attempts to win modern audiences through material spectacle. Then again, how can we blame the church for appealing to the masses in such an excessive manner when the people themselves are so blinded by escapist self-indulgence? Men from across the lower and upper ends of this society are far more likely to frequent local bordellos for a taste of intimacy, as Fellini only separates their endeavours by the sophistication of the facilities themselves. In the shabbier brothel, a long corridor fills with working class men hoping to pair off with a woman, before it is eventually shut down by police. In the more luxurious one, older men take their pick of the escorts before taking an elevator up into grand bedrooms decorated with red wallpaper and classical paintings.
An up-class and rundown brothel continue to draw parallels between different segments of Rome, uniting its men as seekers of physical pleasure.
Art and entertainment similarly prove to be effective distractions from the ills of the modern world, manifesting in the 1970s as a film director neglecting to depict the negative aspects of Rome, and in the 1940s as a vaudeville show that unites audience members in laughter, bawdiness, and nationalistic sentiment. The musical and comedy acts run for a little too long here, but the announcement of Germany and Italy’s successful defence of Sicily that interrupts the performances is worth it, erupting in disconcerting cries of support from the crowd.
The irony that this jubilant resolve dissipates into pandemonium the moment sirens start blaring a few short moments later is not to be missed. “Whose baby is this?” one patron shouts upon discovering a baby left alone in the evacuated theatre, while outside Fellini shoots the emptying streets in a chilly blue wash. Though present-day Rome has long moved past the terror and instability of World War II, the insecurity that comes to light here is a ghost that continues to haunt this city – a city which, as Vidal elucidates, “has died so many times and was resurrected so many times.”
A haunting juxtaposition between Rome’s nationalistic celebration and the violent bombing a few short minutes later – this is a snapshot of a city in turmoil, at odds with its own contradictions.
More specifically, it is Rome’s historical inclination towards fascism which can’t quite be expelled from its culture, and which becomes the subject of the town fool’s rhyming couplets comparing Italian dictators across time. “This fascist shit, his head is split,” he cackles at a damaged statue of Julius Caesar, before turning his insubordinate poem to the 1940s.
“Now we’ve got another meanie,
By the name of Mussolini.”
Fellini’s obvious disdain towards the police in the 1970s timeline formally brings this partisan statement full circle, noting that despite the political lull, there remains an oppressive, authoritarian influence quashing freedoms in contemporary Rome. These people may find any excuse for a communal celebration of family, art, food, or religion, and yet such lively passions can sway dangerously towards prejudice with the right provocation. “It seems to me the perfect place to watch if we end or not,” Vidal predicts, and by the end of Roma, Fellini has thoroughly substantiated his claim. Within this vividly surreal portrait, its culture is a vibrant epicentre of history and modernity, community and intolerance, highbrow art and lowbrow entertainment – and worth cherishing in all its wonders, contradictions, and flaws.
Fellini’s Roma is currently available to buy from Amazon.
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.
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.
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.
Every evening on the same Roman street, Giuletta Masina’s lonely prostitute passes time with her fellow ladies of the night, and waits to be picked up by men. Her birth name is Maria, but at some point between being orphaned as a young girl and taking on her current profession, Cabiria became the moniker which her friends and clients came to know her by. Elsewhere in the same city, a shrine to the Madonna draws believers from far and wide who desperately throw themselves on the ground and beg for their prayers to be heard. “Viva Maria!” they zealously cry out, and as Cabiria awkwardly joins the multitude to plead for a better life, Federico Fellini draws a striking parallel between the two women.
Here he presents a virgin and a prostitute – both named Maria, both drawn to God, and both embodying intrinsic goodness. In a symbolic rendering of the Madonna-whore complex though, the name that is shouted in passionate ardour through the churches of Rome refers only to one of them. Men have their fun with Cabiria for a time, but too often they discard her just as easily as they pick her up, cruelly twisting the knife on their way out. She is treated with all the dignity of a used rag, while the Virgin Mary continues garnering respect thousands of years after her death.
The Madonna and the whore have more in common than the people of Rome believe, both being paragons of goodness and innocence – a striking formal comparison.
Of course, the modern-day Rome of Nights of Cabiria would never accept this irony. Fellini’s love of the city’s history and culture is only outdone by his disgust at its hypocrisy, and six films deep into his directorial career, that cynicism is only increasing as he watches it destroy icons of innocence. Though the narrative is far more straightforward than his later films, it is still very much a character piece, relying heavily on Masina’s extraordinary ability to command our awe and empathy as the tragically forsaken Cabiria.
As always, Masina’s large, expressive eyes and dark eyebrows constantly project longing, joy, and anguish, though Cabiria is also far more world-weary than many of her previous characters. Where Gelsomina’s shattered innocence in La Strada leads to a tragic downfall, Cabiria wears her pessimism like a protective shell, even as she quietly searches for reasons to let some shred of hope through. Her high heels do little to lift her tiny stature as she shrinks beneath both men and women, but thanks to her feisty spirit that isn’t afraid to back down from petty fights, she rarely fades into any crowd.
Masina’s dark eyes express profound joy and sorrow, revealing the layers of emotion at war within Cabiria.Through Fellini’s blocking and Masina’s naturally slight stature, Cabiria often shrinks beneath other characters, yet compensates with a feisty spirit.
As Cabiria is so often written off as simple-minded and cheap by those looking for an easy laugh, any instance where she is lifted off her street corner by a man and placed on a pedestal becomes a moment of ecstasy, and each time she fully believes that she has found acceptance within the society she both loathes and adores. So often does this happen in Nights of Cabiria that it virtually becomes part of its narrative structure, convincing her each time that this relationship will be the one to lift her out of poverty, only to deflate the fantasy the moment something more enticing catches their eye.
Three relationships and three cruel rejections, beating Cabiria down over and over again as she is pushed into rivers and trapped in bathrooms.
In the film’s very first scene, it is Cabiria’s boyfriend Giorgio who steals her purse and pushes her into a river, while later movie star Alberto Lazzari takes her home on a whim simply because she is the first woman he sees after breaking up with his girlfriend. His vast, lavish villa makes for a jarring visual contrast against the seedy neon signs and worn architecture of downtown Rome, and especially the city’s barren outskirts where she resides in a small hovel. Fellini indulges in the symmetry of its grand stairway, opulent mirrors, and exotic artwork, giving her a glimpse of luxury before Alberto’s woman comes home begging for forgiveness and she is forced to hide in the bathroom for the night. The scene would almost belong in a screwball comedy if it wasn’t so demeaning, revealing just how expendable Cabiria is compared to wealthier, more ‘respectable’ women.
Fellini shoots on the barren outskirts of Rome, relegating Cabiria to a small hovel at the bottom of society.The lavish mise-en-scène inside this extraordinary Italian villa is a welcome break from the rugged streets of Rome – and it is only fitting that it should be snatched away from Cabiria in such a cruel manner.
Besides this brief but extravagant detour, Fellini’s location shooting out on the streets of Rome firmly entrench Nights of Cabiria in the harsh realities of the working class and their tedious routines. His deep focus lenses allow for some magnificently staged compositions of prostitutes loitering around cars and curbs, while the occasional addition of black umbrellas to these shots underscores the cold, wet discomfort of their lifestyles.
Living in environments as inhospitable as these, it is no wonder Cabiria is so awed by acts of altruism, even being stirred to seek mercy at the aforementioned shrine of the Madonna after observing one mysterious stranger feeding the homeless just outside the city. Much like the men in her life though, religion simply turns out to be another disappointment, leaving her and all the other hapless worshippers she prays with in the same destitute position as before. Maybe she just didn’t ask properly, one priest unhelpfully suggests, but she believes the problem goes deeper than that – she is simply too small and insignificant to live in God’s grace.
Rome becomes its own coarse character in Fellini’s location shooting, towering in dilapidated buildings and sinking its citizens into shadows.Waiting for customers out on the cold streets, Cabiria and her fellow prostitutes stand beneath umbrellas, shielding themselves from the rain.
On the other hand, there is not exactly any sanctuary to be found in Satan’s seductive allure either, taking the symbolic form of a magic show run by a devil-horned hypnotist. As she stands onstage under his spell, Fellini fades the background into darkness, leaving only her face illuminated by a single spotlight beckoning from the void. For the first time, her peaceful, dreamy expression is wiped completely of any doubt, being entirely absorbed in the perfect world the magician has built for her. To the amusement of the audience, she dances a waltz through a garden with an imaginary man called Oscar, and inadvertently reveals her most personal fantasies for the world to laugh at.
Satanic and divine imagery captured in a single scene, lulling Cabiria into a vulnerable state through devious illusions, and composing this image of eerie peace.
Cabiria’s humiliation at being turned into cheap entertainment might almost be the end of her were it not for the near-mystical manifestation of the man from her dream, astoundingly also called Oscar. Fellini has firmly established his narrative’s pattern of broken and mended hearts by this point, so we are aligned in Cabiria’s initial suspicion around this seemingly perfect man, but she can only keep her naïve idealism at bay for so long before falling in deep love all over again. It isn’t long before she is accepting a marriage proposal and selling her small house to move far away, partly realising how naïve she is being, and yet nevertheless committing enthusiastically to her dream of new beginnings.
Upon a clifftop, Cabiria and Oscar’s silhouetted figures look out at the sun setting over a peaceful lake, and a happy ending finally seems within reach – but Fellini is no writer of fairy tales. This magical backdrop is undeserving of the brutal narrative pay-off that taints its scenery, formally mirroring the film’s first scene as Cabiria once again faces the threat of being robbed and thrown into the water. The mercy that Oscar takes on her is not out of love, but rather sheer pity as she willingly hands over her purse and begs to be killed, her heart unable to sustain any more pain.
This gorgeous backdrop of the sun setting over a lake is undeserving of the brutal narrative pay-off that taints its scenery.
Still, even at Cabiria’s lowest and Fellini’s most cynical, the rekindling of hope need not be some naïve submission to the same cycle of suffering that has perpetuated throughout Nights of Cabiria. After several hours laying and sobbing on the cliff edge, the pieces of a broken woman pick themselves up again, and she dejectedly continues down a nearby road. Very gradually, the sound of Italian folk music fills the air, and she is surrounded by musicians rapturously playing and dancing alongside her. For once she is part of a crowd that is not only acknowledging her, but delighted to have her present. A single tear forms in the corner of her left eye, black with mascara, and as she looks directly at the camera in the final seconds, we find an unfamiliar self-acceptance in her tender smile. This is not the end of Cabiria’s tragedies, though for as long as she holds onto the hope that keeps her alive, neither will it be the end of her profound joy.
Fellini of course chooses to end his film with Masina’s eyes, breaking the fourth wall with a tender smile of self-acceptance and assurance.
Nights of Cabiria is currently streaming on Kanopy, and the Blu-ray is available to purchase on Amazon.
