fellini s/d

Ginger and Fred: A nice little send-off for Giulietta. It’s good that she and Mastroianni got to do a movie together. Given the parties involved, it’s not as good as you want it to be, but it ain’t bad. SEARCH

Intervista: Easily the least of Fellini’s faux-documentaries. This is really a film that only converted will enjoy. The sequence w/ Mastroianni & Ekberg is kinda touching. MEH

Voice of The Moon: The final testament w/some nice sequences. The film feels like a clearinghouse of unused sketches and it doesn’t quite cohere like Fellini’s best frescoes. It’s funny though that w/ Benigni, Fellini finally found a guy to play a Giulietta-style character. Despite that, another MEH.

I’ll try to post some final thoughts on the canon tomorrow.

the only Fellini film i love w/t reservations is i vitelloni. the other ones i've seen ... the so-called cream of the crop like la strada, la dolce vita and 8 1/2 ... don't do much for me and are a bit of a slog to sit through. i mean, i think i GET what he was going for and all of the films i have seen have great SCENES. but that's really it ... kinda like what Fellini said himself in 8 1/2 about mastroianni the director/character -- a bunch of excellent scenes spliced together, but randomly and not much sense.

Fellini also suffers from too much adulation by the film critics/nerds, kinda like Bergman. as in, "if you don't like Fellini or Bergman, you're just a philistine idiot who's unworthy of even some unfunny Rob Schneider schlock." i will stand up for Bergman, Fellini not so much.

also, upthread someone praised Woody Allen's stardust memories ... which i also found to be the most unwatchable of his films from his "golden" era (as it were). perhaps the overt Fellini-isms of that film were what made it so.

oh, i forgot i've also seen nights of cabiria -- the (great) final half-hour notwithstanding, i simply couldn't stand Cabiria (or whatever her name was). not that she deserved what befell her (no spoilers for those who haven't seen it), but still i found it a bit hard to care much about what happened to a vulgar, loudmouthed tart.

Orchestral Rehearsal is my favorite Fellini film

I saw Dolce Vita an 8 1/2 on BBC2 in black and white in my early teens and fucking loved them. If film school ruined Fellini for you, or if the action sequences just don't come thick and fast enough, all I can say is I'm sorry for you. But at least try Amarcord.

did we never poll this fella?

La Strada is my favorite Fellini film, but La Dolce Vita is his most beautiful

Am I being 1) a coward or 2) a philistine if I nope out of seeing the following Fellini films this weekend:

1) 8 1/2
2) Roma (w/ Toby Dammit)?

(The antiabortion zealots have their annual march this weekend; and I don't want to go into downtown DC.)

FWIW, I have not yet seen a Fellini movie that impressed me, but I didn't want to miss the National Gallery of Art's ongoing retrospective.

8 1/2 is all about trying to impress you, so if it doesn't you might prefer his earlier movies. Roma just seemed like a bunch of uninvolving spectacle to me, but not as bad as Casanova.