Giulietta Masina

  • Giulietta degli spiriti [Juliet of the Spirits] (1965)

    Giulietta degli spiriti [Juliet of the Spirits] (1965)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) One of the hidden superpowers of being a movie reviewer is the ability to switch gears in appreciating a film when chunks of it don’t work. Writer-director Frederico Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits is a typical Fellini: stylish and oneiric but not concerned about narrative values. It’s about a homely middle-aged housewife (Giulietta Masina, she of previous Fellini films such as La Strada and Nights of Cabiria) who discovers her husband’s infidelity and, though vivid reveries, musters up the courage to do something about it. Notable for being Fellini’s first colour film, Juliet of the Spirits shows the filmmaker fully indulging in the rich possibilities of colour for visual impact; paradoxically, it’s also a film deeply influenced by black-and-white cinematography, as many scenes—including the opening—are set in deep shadows. (This doesn’t always work to the film’s advantage, as the nighttime shots are grainy even as the daytime sequences are far more detailed.)  Considering the film’s frequent recourse to daydreams, it’s not a surprise if the narrative fabric of the film is thin and almost inconsequent: both the lead character and the film become alive when steeped into fantasy. At some point, I frankly stopped caring about the characters or the story and started focusing on the filmmaking technique used in the film. Fortunately, this is Fellini we’re talking about: there’s always something to see — including an amazing shot in which the camera looks at a mirror, sees the main character, pans to the character, then pans back to the mirror showing something else in a visually seamless but technically complex ballet. I didn’t feel much connection to the characters or the actors: while there’s some narratively effective material in the film’s last quarter, much of the film is primarily designed for visual impact. The female characters are, with the exception of the lead character, dressed and made-up in gaudy unattractive caricatures, heightening the lack of reality of the proceedings. But to be fair, I prefer seeing a meaningless visual fest over gritty cinema-verité, so I still got something out of Juliet of the Spirits despite not liking it a lot. Of course, I know what to expect with Fellini — I’m not sure I would have been so lenient had this been my first film of his, nor if it had been executed as neorealism.

  • La Strada [The Road] (1954)

    La Strada [The Road] (1954)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2019) Given that I don’t particularly like Italian neorealism and that Federico Fellini hadn’t yet fully evolved into his more personal expressionist style by the time he completed La Strada, you can probably guess how I feel about the movie. An episodic drama focused on two desperately poor entertainers eking a life of misery on the road with a circus, La Strada is not a film for the impatient. While there is a plot of sorts that eventually distinguishes itself from the individual scenes, it takes a long time between the scenes to get the narrative ball rolling … and you may not like where it’s heading. Anthony Quinn, unusually enough, stars as the strongman Zampanò. Alongside him, Giulietta Masina (familiar from her later role in The Nights of Cabiria) plays the dim-witted long-suffering young girl basically bought by the strongman. I tolerated much of La Strada, but the parts I liked more were those that strayed away from the neo-realist style (into expressionism, into genre suspense). Otherwise, it’s enough to be able to scratch off this film from the umpteenth lists of essential movies on which it figures. One annoyance (or cool find): The five notes of the film’s insistent leitmotif are near identical to the opening of the theme to the James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun.

  • Le notti di Cabiria [The Nights of Cabiria] (1957)

    Le notti di Cabiria [The Nights of Cabiria] (1957)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2019) Getting through writer-director Federico Fellini’s filmography is a bit like balancing the meat-and-potatoes (with early neorealist films) with the far more exciting desserts (his later, more expressionist material). The Nights of Cabiria is one of the duller meat-and-potatoes courses. It’s neorealism à la Fellini, following the adventures of a prostitute throughout heartbreak, murder attempts and complete destitution. While the tone can approach comedy at times, the unbelievably cruel ending is tough to watch despite last-ditch attempts to show joy. It’s clearly not as oneiric as later Fellini; in fact, it feels closer to other early neorealists like De Sica and that’s not necessarily a good thing when it comes to liking the result. I can’t say whether I liked the great performance by Giulietta Masina’s performance and the somewhat dispiriting depiction of mid-50s Roman slums—both are top-notch, but both made the depressing film even worse. That lack of enthusiasm also explains why the film feels overlong, with multiple episodes that keep on going long after any patience has worn thin. Still, the ending won me over, perhaps more out of beaten-dog sympathy than anything else. If you like Italian neorealism, you know it and you know if you’re going to like The Nights of Cabiria.