Wednesday, June 7, 2017
158 - Juliet of the Spirits, 1965, Italy. Dir. Federico Fellini.
This film is dazzling.
Three things: Production design. Production design. Production design.
Fellini makes a feature film in color. Brilliant, beautiful color.
And he is still firing on all cylinders.
When we watched Contempt (1963) a few weeks ago, we saw the French director Jean-Luc Godard place his story in Italy, at the great Cinecitta Studios. He showed Cinecitta closed. Broken down. In decay.
Godard believed that cinema was dead and he wanted to prove it.
Yet here we have a two-and-a-half hour epic fantasy filmed two years later not on location but almost entirely on sound stages. At the great Cinecitta Studios. Cinecitta was alive and well. And still is today. And pumping out films.
Godard lied.
In Juliet of the Spirits, Fellini's wife Giuletta Masina is back. She plays the wife of an unfaithful husband, who wants to leave him but cannot.
Much of the film takes place in her dream world or in the fantasy world of the spirits that she consults for assistance.
Fellini reminds us that cinema is about images. That the word movies is short for moving pictures. And he gives us picture after picture after picture. Once again--
Every frame a Fellini.
No comments:
Post a Comment