Criterion Sunday 219: La strada (1954)

Nights of Cabiria remains my favourite Fellini film, but of course Giulietta Masina was pretty great in everything she did with Fellini. Here she plays a wide-eyed naïf, but almost a caricature of that, so very ingenuous does she appear, so simple in manner and trusting in affect. Of course, the story takes her down some bleak narrative turns, as she becomes hitched to a travelling sideshow performer (Anthony Quinn, looking unwashed), and the film follows in the footsteps of that profession by itself becoming something of a picaresque journey narrative. It’s a little bit winding and sometimes goes down dead ends, but for the most part it is carried by its performances, as well as the simple generosity of the writers towards their characters.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Federico Fellini; Writers Fellini, Tullio Pinelli and Ennio Flaiano; Cinematographer Otello Martelli and Carlo Carlini; Starring Giulietta Masina, Anthony Quinn; Length 104 minutes.

Seen at a friend’s home (DVD), London, Sunday 24 June 2018.

Criterion Sunday 189: Lo sceicco bianco (The White Sheik, 1952)

Early Fellini is probably the best Fellini, in my opinion, free of the baroque stylisation he would later fall victim to. That said, I find it difficult to imagine this as an Antonioni film (he was one of the writers of the original story, if not the screenplay), because it’s so filled with the extra touches Fellini would throw in, all light and music and movement and mugging for the camera. The lead actor is particularly good (Leopoldo Trieste), the one who plays the hapless husband making excuses for his star-struck wife, and it wasn’t until watching a making-of featurette that I realised this wasn’t a satire on film, but rather a satire on a very specific type of literature in which narratives were photographed for magazines, hence why I was confused about the nature of the shoot. Anyway, it’s all very pleasing and silly really.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Federico Fellini; Writers Fellini, Tullio Pinelli and Ennio Flaiano; Cinematographer Arturo Gallea; Starring Alberto Sordi, Leopoldo Trieste, Brunella Bovo, Giulietta Masina; Length 83 minutes.

Seen at a friend’s home (DVD), London, Sunday 3 December 2017.

Criterion Sunday 149: Giulietta degli spiriti (Juliet of the Spirits, 1965)

An attractive film to look at admittedly, made with an all-too-self-consciously flamboyant camera in some sequences, this still manages to leave me cold. It may be Fellini’s masterpiece, though, if we consider him a stylist of characters in hectic motion, a carnival of oddity, feeling, spirits, nostalgia and feminine charms. The plot can’t really be summed up easily — it’s about Giulietta Masina’s eponymous title character and her feelings, to a certain extent about her husband’s fidelity, though even that seems slightly beside the point — and instead we get 135 or so minutes of great sets, costumes, hair, camerawork, and an almost babble of manic expressionist madness.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Federico Fellini; Writers Fellini, Tullio Pinelli, Ennio Flaiano and Brunello Rondi; Cinematographer Gianni Di Venanzo; Starring Giulietta Masina; Length 137 minutes.

Seen at home (DVD), London, Wednesday 12 April 2017.

Criterion Sunday 81: Luci del varietà (Variety Lights, 1950)

Federico Fellini’s first film was this ensemble piece set amongst a travelling troupe of performers putting on a variety show, of fairly mediocre quality one assumes from what we see of it. It’s led by Checcho (Peppino De Filippo) who is seen at the start being hounded by acting hopeful Liliana (Carla Del Poggio), much to the annoyance of his sweetheart Melina Amour (Giuletta Masina). Her arrival ruffles a few feathers as her ambition leads her to try and use the break to further a career for herself, and the film proceeds in a sort of bumbling, peripatetic way, introducing a number of side characters and tracing the fortunes of these various performers, most of whom never really get out of the rut they’re in. It makes the film rather a bittersweet look at the acting profession, but no less generous and enjoyable for that.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Directors Federico Fellini and Alberto Lattuada; Writers Fellini, Lattuada, Tullio Pinelli and Ennio Flaiano; Cinematographer Otello Martelli; Starring Carla Del Poggio, Peppino De Filippo, Giulietta Masina; Length 97 minutes.

Seen at a friend’s home (DVD), London, Sunday 21 February 2016.

Criterion Sunday 49: Le notti di Cabiria (Nights of Cabiria, 1957)

Looking over a plot summary for Nights of Cabiria, I admit I found myself somewhat exasperated to see yet another Fellini film based around a happy-go-lucky prostitute. Surely a male-authored fiction by one such as Fellini (whose co-writers all look the model of patriarchal entitlement) could be counted on to treat sex workers as little more than adolescent male fantasies of sexual availability. After all, I found some of the treatment of the prostitute character in 1973’s Amarcord to be rather puerile and breast-fixated — hardly uncommon in 1970s cinema in particular, and that particular film was clearly made from the point of view of teenage boys. In any case (to return to the film under discussion), here, earlier in Fellini’s career, the spirit of his filmmaking seems different, closer perhaps to the neo-realism of his roots. There’s a real generosity towards the title character (played by Giulietta Masina), introduced being pushed into a river by a boyfriend who makes off with her purse, and who goes on to be screwed over by a succession of further weak men. She’s had a difficult life, but she has a strong friendship with a neighbour (and fellow prostitute), Wanda, with whom she has plans to get out of the game once they’ve paid off their mortgages. It’s once again a film with an episodic, wandering narrative, but at the core of everything is Cabiria, who despite her many setbacks manages to retain a cheerful if at times sarcastic demeanor. This is hardly to say it’s a feminist masterpiece, but it’s certainly got a lot more depth than I’d initially given it credit for.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Federico Fellini; Writers Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli and Pier Paolo Pasolini; Cinematographers Aldo Tonti and Otello Martelli; Starring Giulietta Masina; Length 118 minutes.

Seen at a friend’s home (DVD), London, Sunday 16 August 2015.