Review: 8 1/2 (1963)

* * * *
Director: Federico Fellini
Starring: Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimee, Sandra Milo, Claudia Cardinale

What's left to say about a film as beloved and influential as Federico Fellini's 8 1/2? Not much, I fear. I can merely affirm its dreamy, sublime greatness. It isn't my favourite Fellini film - that honor goes to La Dolce Vita which, in addition to being a great movie, was the first Fellini film I ever saw and so has a special place in my heart - but it is a great and very entertaining movie. It's easy to see why it influenced so many subsequent films, some of them great in their own right, some of them... not so much.

Friday's Top 5... Fellini Actresses

In honor of the forthcoming release of Nine:


#5: Sandra Milo
(8 1/2, Juliet of the Spirits)
She was Guido's mistress in 8 1/2 and reportedly Fellini's mistress in real life... which must have made filming of Juliet of the Spirits rather interesting. The fiery actress was popular with Italian and French filmmakers in the 50s and 60s before entering into semi-retirement in 1968.


#4: Anita Eckberg
(La Dolce Vita, Intervista)
When you think of Fellini, the image of the Trevi Fountain cannot be far behind. She charmed Marcello and audiences alike, helping to create one of the most magical moments in cinema.


#3: Claudia Cardinale
(8 1/2)
One of the most beautiful actresses ever to grace the screen. However, even though this is a list celebrating work in Fellini films, my favourite performance of hers is in a film from another Italian filmmaker: Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time In The West.


#2: Anouk Aimee
(La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2)
They don't make 'em like Anouk Aimee anymore. Hers is a wholly captivating screen presence - when she's there, you can't look anywhere else. She's one of only a handful of actors who have received Oscar nominations for performances in foreign language films (hers was for A Man and a Woman).


#1: Giulietta Masina
(Variety Lights, The White Shiek, La Strada, Il Bidone, The Nights of Cabiria, Juliet of the Spirits, Ginger & Fred)
The one and only. One of the most uniquely talented performers ever to grace the screen, she could do comedy, drama, and everything in between without ever missing a beat.

Countdown To Oscar: The Nights of Cabiria

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Best Foreign Language Film, 1957

Director: Federico Fellini
Starring: Guilietta Massina

If you watch The Nights of Cabiria and La Dolce Vita back to back, you may get a feeling of déjà vu. There are a number of similar “episodes” in both films, but what’s astonishing to me isn’t that Federico Fellini recycles the plot points in the first place, but that he was able to create two fresh and very distinct films regardless. With the plot resting firmly on the very able shoulders of Giullieta Massina, The Nights of Cabiria is a film which is alternately delightful and heartbreaking.

Massina stars as the eponymous Cabiria, a low rent prostitute who is robbed and almost drowned in the film’s opening minutes. After she’s rescued, she’s less angry at the fact of almost dying than she is that her boyfriend, Georgio, would try to kill her for so little money (40,000 lira – “They’d do it for 5,000,” a friend informs her). Cabiria’s relationship to money is an essential part of understanding her character. She accepts money as a necessity in life but doesn’t quite grasp the concept of greed, nor does she understand how money could be so important to someone that they’d kill for it. She also possesses what you could call a “pure” work ethic insofar as she refuses to accept money that she doesn’t feel she has earned. In one of the film’s episodes a movie star picks her up and takes her home, only to have his girlfriend show up. Cabiria spends the night hiding in a closet and afterwards refuses the money he attempts to give her. Money is more or less just paper to her; she doesn’t live her life in pursuit of it.

Cabiria has a keen understanding of the real value of things. In one episode she and her friends join in a pilgrimage and in the midst of the pomp and circumstance, she believes that she’s had a spiritual awakening. When it's all over, however, and the ceremonial aspects have faded away, she realizes that it was all false, that she had been caught up in the performance of religion and spirituality. “Nothing has changed,” she says recognizing that neither herself nor any of her friends has really been inspired to change their ways. No one is essentially better or worse for having attended; she and her friends are all exactly the same coming out of it as they were going in. The value of the experience, therefore, is no more or less than, say, the experience of running from the police. It’s just another thing that has occupied her time.

The loose structure of the story works particularly well with this film because it makes you focus less on the plot and more on the performance at its centre. Massina is simply terrific, the kind of actor who performs with her entire body, making the way that she moves as important as the words which she says. It’s a well-rounded performance which makes you really care about Cabiria, a character who, in other hands, you might write off as “stupid.” This is a woman who refuses to be hardened by the lessons life sees fit to teach her, who retains an unwavering optimism even in the shadow of heartbreak. There is a light that shines out of her and you want things to work out for her even as you fear that she’s setting herself up for yet another fall.

The protectiveness that the audience feels towards Cabiria is both a blessing and curse. On the one hand you’re invested in the film, but on the other hand you may find yourself too anxious about what’s going to happen to her to really enjoy the experience of watching it. This is the really big difference between Nights of Cabiria and La Dolce Vita - I enjoyed Marcello’s adventures, but I never worried about him. I worry about Cabiria - she's too good for her own good.

Review: La Strada (1954)

* * * *
Director: Federico Fellini
Starring: Giulietta Massina, Anthony Quinn

The first film to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, La Strada is a magical and tragic fable from Federico Fellini. Unfolding as a tale of love, devotion and, ultimately, heartbreak, the film is a thoughtful character study of two people who should probably never have been together in the first place, but come to find that they can’t go on without each other.

The story begins with Gelsomina (Giulietta Masina) being sold to Zampano (Anthony Quinn), a travelling performer. Gelsomina is a simple soul, open and kind hearted and curious about the world around her, which she is exploring for the first time. By contrast, Zampano is short tempered and controlling and treats his protégée badly, abandoning her to go off with other women, beating her, berating her, and denying her the pleasure of playing the trumpet. Eventually the two join a circus where they come into contact with Il Matto (Richard Basehart), who charms Gelsomina and gets under Zampano’s skin, resulting eventually in a tragedy. What happens with Il Matto breaks Gelsomina’s gentle spirit, which would be heartbreaking enough in and of itself, but the real tragedy is what happens to Zampano, who doesn’t realize until it’s too late that Gelsomina isn’t just anyone, but someone that he truly needs.

Like many Fellini films this one unfolds in a picaresque style. La Strada, which translates literally as “The Road,” follows Zampano and Gelsomina as they travel from stop to stop with their act, having a series of mini adventures rather than one adventure which encompasses the entire narrative. The result of this is that rather than focusing the audience’s attention on the characters as they relate to the story, the audience is focused on the characters themselves and how they relate to each other, which makes the ending all the more compelling.

As Gelsomina, Giulietta Masina delivers a really open and sincere performance. This is a deceptively simple looking role in that the character is something of a blank slate, a sponge who soaks up the ways and mannerisms of the people she sees around her, yet maintains her innocent, child-like spirit. This is a character who is vulnerable precisely because she doesn’t realize how vulnerable she is, how likely she is to fall victim to the cruelty of the world. When she finally is broken, it’s enough to move even the hard hearted Zampano. As Zampano, Anthony Quinn has a similarly tricky role – both characters seem one-note on the page: the simple girl and the brutish man; however, through the course of the film they’re fleshed out, given depth and humanity through their interactions with each other.

The direction by Fellini is somewhat restrained in comparison to some of his later works – this film isn’t as heavy in symbolism as later works, nor does it mix the realistic and the fantastic in quite the same way – but is solid nonetheless, and the film features a wonderful score by the great Nino Rota, who collaborated with Fellini on a number of films but is perhaps best known for scoring The Godfather. Both the direction and the score go a long way towards supporting the very human drama at the film’s center which makes the story so compelling.

100 Days, 100 Movies: La Dolce Vita (1960)

Director: Federico Fellini
Starring: Marcello Mastioianni, Anouk Aimée, Anita Eckberg

La Dolce Vita is a story of contrast and symmetry – day and night, real and fake, lust and impotence – in the life of a tabloid journalist in Rome. Nearly fifty years after its release, it remains one of the most vibrant and lively of films, and also one of the most philosophically pensive. To spend time with Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) is to ask whether the sweet life is ever really attainable or only just another corrupted illusion.

The film follows Marcello, who is at a crossroads in his life. What he has no longer satisfies him, what he wants he finds doesn’t really exist… or at least not in the idealized way he had conceptualized it. He’s a journalist by trade and wants to become a serious writer but most of his time in the film is spent on one amorous adventure or another. There are three women in his life: Emma (Yvonne Furneaux), his girlfriend who bears the brunt of his anger and frustration as she attempts to domesticate and tie him down; Sylvia (Anita Ekberg), a movie star who drifts briefly into his life and then out again but captures his imagination; and Maddelena (the fabulous Anouk Aimée), a friend with whom he has perhaps the best chance of a successful relationship if only they weren’t both so passive and indifferent.

The genius of La Dolce Vita isn’t in its plot per say (it’s the kind of film where you could make the argument that “nothing” happens because even though things do happen, what’s important is what doesn’t happen), but in its structure. It’s a picaresque tale which follows Marcello from one adventure to another, his presence seemingly the only thing which connects them, but it’s so finitely structured that more connections become apparent when you actually look at the way the narrative is sewn together. The “episodes” usually begin at night and end at dawn and begin with the promise of something only to end with the disappointment of failure. Throughout the film Marcello is seeking something and finding that the source he’s seeking it from is somehow corrupted. For example, in Steiner (Alain Cuny) he sees someone to emulate. He’s a writer who seems to have the perfect life, a fine balance of work and family, of philosophy and love. Later when he learns that Steiner has killed himself and his children, he discovers that what he projected onto him is false. Marcello’s problem is twofold. First, he tries to make things that are “perfect” also be real. The opening and closing of the film foreground this through two religious symbols, the first being the statue of Jesus which flies through Rome via helicopter, the second being a fish that is dragged from the sea. One is beautiful but fake, the other is ugly but real, and both scenes feature a miscommunication between Marcello and a woman wherein she tries to tell him something but he doesn’t understand. As long as he continues to seek flawless perfection and dismiss the things which are ugly/real, he never will understand and the disconnect will forever remain.

Secondly, Marcello thinks that “perfection” can come without effort. He thinks that Steiner’s life just is “good,” not that he’s had to make it so. As protagonists go, Marcello is an incredibly passive one. He seeks things out, yes, but he’s never active enough to hold on to anything or move the plot to the next logical step. He has many romantic entanglements, for example, but at no point in the film can you ever really be sure that he’s had sex with any of these women. Even when he spends the night with Maddelena you can’t really be certain that they didn’t sleep together in only the most literal sense because it makes more sense that they wouldn’t have had sex given the way the film is structured around the promise which comes with nightfall, and the disappointment which greets the morning.

For all its symbolism and philosophy, La Dolce Vita is also a film that can be enjoyed simply for its entertainment value. There are many sequences that will stay with you long after you’ve see it: the famous scene between Marcello and Sylvia at the Trevi Fountain, the crowd that follows the children who claim to be able to see the Virgin Mary, the final party scene which devolves into an orgy of surrealism (if not actually sex). The scene that has stayed most vividly with me, however, is a scene at another party, when Marcello sits alone in a room and Maddelena speaks to him through a fountain. Marcello responds but Maddelena doesn’t hear him; she’s already engaged in an embrace with another man. It’s another miscommunication, another failure to launch for Marcello. It’s the story of his sweet life.