Fellini - City Of Women
Picture: C+
Sound: C Extras: C Film: B-
City Of Women (1980) launched the
fourth and last decade of the prolific career of Italian directing legend
Federico Fellini. The world-renowned
auteur was still offering fresh, consistent visions that were almost
surrealistic, yet here is a man who came out of the Italian Neo-Realist
movement. That informed his early work,
then he took off with his own unique style.
At this point, Fellini was on his last five
films. Elder directors tend to do a
film that focuses on women more than usual, and this was the one for
Fellini. Like Stanley Kubrick’s
underrated Eyes Wide Shut (1999) and Robert Altman’s Ready To Wear
(aka Prêt A Porter, 1994), Fellini had made a film explicit about the
physical woman, then was cheaply branded a “dirty old man.” This is the telltale sign of a critic,
particularly female critics, who has totally missed the point of a film trying
to deal with erotic themes in an adult manner.
Showing nude women is not the equivalent of perversity, with anyone
claiming otherwise having major issues of their own.
In Fellini’s case, his films always showed his
obsession with women, particularly ones with “above average chest sizes” as it
were. To then call him a dirty old man
all the sudden is especially idiotic!
Now the film is available in a special edition from
New Yorker Films, which is worthy of special editions Criterion has been
issuing of the legends work, like 81/2, or Nights Of Cabiria. It may not be his best work, but it is one
of his most personal. It may not be his
most well known or artistically successful, but it may be more sadly revealing
of his life than his earlier classics.
The extras here help enhance this interesting look at the director.
A 1.85 X 1 anamorphic transfer of the film is
offered, but it is not always as vivid as one would expect such a transfer to
be. Of course, Fellini has an amazing
cinematographer in Giuseppe Rotunno, who went on to shoot other Fellini films,
plus the likes of Cinema Paradiso and Malena for Giuseppe
Tornatore. That makes this film look
good, even when the transfer fails to be impressive. At its best, the transfer shows the heightened colors and
atmospheres typical of Fellini’s signature mise-en-scene.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 sound is monophonic, despite
the film being made several years into the Dolby Stereo surround era. Furthermore, there is a strange paradox
about the sound. It is clear, yet flat,
which comes out of the age-old practice in Italian cinema of doing most or all
of the dialogue in postproduction. The
sound feels like it wants to break through into stereo or even surround, but it
never breaks free of the mono it is stuck with. As a matter of fact, Fellini did not use Dolby until 1987's Intervista,
his next to last film!
With all that said, this is still an above average
presentation that Fellini fans will have no major issues with the DVD, but it
is a bit color poor overall. The
heightened reality sequences shine the best, with their wild production
designs. The dubbing heightens the
unreality, intentionally or not, since you can see when no ones mouth is
moving, yet still hear dialogue. In
these cases, it is hard to tell if Fellini intended this, or if this was just a
technical matter he did not concern himself with.
There is a photo gallery with only 6 stills, but
they have good color reproduction. The
short behind-the-scenes piece runs only 3:23, and contains no dialogue,
singing, or even words. The profiles of both Fellini & Mastroianni are
unusual in the way each one is split into three sections. The sections are
profiles, filmographies, and awards.
Respectively, Fellini’s segment runs 6, 4, and 6 frame pages, while
Mastroianni’s runs 4, 7, and 4 frames.
His filmography could have runs longer, since he was in about 150 films,
but that is abbreviated here. The best
surprise is a featurette called “Traveling With Fellini Through (pun intended?)
The City Of Women.” It runs 20:24, and
features interviews with Fellini experts, including the great American director
Paul Mazursky. The director’s early
films, like Alex In Wonderland, and Harry & Tonto, could be
seen to have at least a bit of Fellini’s outrageousness and absurdity in
them. In the section on New Yorker,
besides the usual seven page-frames describing the company and its history,
there are trailers for films other than this one, including Unmade Beds,
Lou Lou, Nelly, and the grossly underseen Bitter Sugar.
The film stars Marcello Mastroianni, Ettore Manni, Anna
Prucnal, Bernice Steigers, and Donatella Damiani. Cinematography by Giuseppe Rotunno, Edited by Ruggero
Mastroianni, Music by Luis Bacalov, Screenplay by Federico Fellini &
Bernardino Zapponi, and Directed by Federico Fellini.
