Ginger e Fred (1986)

(On Cable TV, May 2022) Writer-director Federico Fellini was an old man (at 66) when Ginger e Fred was released, and it’s uncanny how much it feels like an old man’s movie. There’s the topic matter, obviously, as two aging performers accept to reprise their long-ago impersonations of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers for a vulgar TV show – This is, from the premise onward, a film about the past, whether to revive it or attempt to recapture it. This backwards-looking stance is reinforced by casting, with Fellini acolytes (Marcello Mastroianni and Giulietta Masina) echoing earlier, younger performances in his earlier films. Then there’s the film’s thematic wrapper, as it seems to grouch over the omnipresence of televisions and the vapidity of its shows. In form and function, Ginger e Fred stands between nostalgia, crankiness and wistfulness. While I won’t rank this among the best of Fellini’s work, it does have the director’s later-career blend of realism and impressionism, with some huge plot manipulations (such as a power blackout in a TV studio) as a way to heighten the drama of the piece. Both Mastroianni and Masina handle their characters well, and anchor a film that often seems to fly off in brief background tangents and small passing details. It takes a while to get going: the script’s structure is very conventional at first, only getting deeper and deeper in non-realism as it advances. But Ginger e Fred is interesting all right – both on its own, and as part of Fellini’s career.