City of Women (1980)
(La città delle donne)
Country: IT/FR
Technical: col 140m
Director: Federico Fellini
Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Anna Prucnal, Bernice Stegers
Synopsis:
Snàporaz dozes off on a train and what begins as a fantasy about his fellow passenger turns into a nightmare as he finds himself the butt of a feminists' conference and unable to make his way back to the station.
Review:
The film that inaugurated Fellini's last great period of activity is not without repetitions and recyclings of earlier material: the desert wind signalling memory or the world of dreams (Otto e mezzo, and many others), the joyless seduction by huge-breasted Amazon (Amarcord), the gallery of grotesques at a convention of some kind (ad loc). What is significant is the explicit addressing of his muse in all her guises, from seductress to conjugal harpy, from earth mother to sapphic intellectual. With Snàporaz, the director puts himself with disarming candour on the psychiatrist's couch, and Mastroianni is again the perfect proxy for this wanton seducer with the heart of a guileless little boy. (Interestingly, the Casanova role is again played by another actor, Ettore Manni, star of Italian peplums and real-life lothario and collector of firearms, who combined both passions in death by inadvertently decapitating his penis with a revolver.) The film is a riot of sound and does rather outstay its welcome by the end, but as usual Fellini's production designers ensure there is much to entertain the eye along the way.
(La città delle donne)
Country: IT/FR
Technical: col 140m
Director: Federico Fellini
Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Anna Prucnal, Bernice Stegers
Synopsis:
Snàporaz dozes off on a train and what begins as a fantasy about his fellow passenger turns into a nightmare as he finds himself the butt of a feminists' conference and unable to make his way back to the station.
Review:
The film that inaugurated Fellini's last great period of activity is not without repetitions and recyclings of earlier material: the desert wind signalling memory or the world of dreams (Otto e mezzo, and many others), the joyless seduction by huge-breasted Amazon (Amarcord), the gallery of grotesques at a convention of some kind (ad loc). What is significant is the explicit addressing of his muse in all her guises, from seductress to conjugal harpy, from earth mother to sapphic intellectual. With Snàporaz, the director puts himself with disarming candour on the psychiatrist's couch, and Mastroianni is again the perfect proxy for this wanton seducer with the heart of a guileless little boy. (Interestingly, the Casanova role is again played by another actor, Ettore Manni, star of Italian peplums and real-life lothario and collector of firearms, who combined both passions in death by inadvertently decapitating his penis with a revolver.) The film is a riot of sound and does rather outstay its welcome by the end, but as usual Fellini's production designers ensure there is much to entertain the eye along the way.
(La città delle donne)
Country: IT/FR
Technical: col 140m
Director: Federico Fellini
Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Anna Prucnal, Bernice Stegers
Synopsis:
Snàporaz dozes off on a train and what begins as a fantasy about his fellow passenger turns into a nightmare as he finds himself the butt of a feminists' conference and unable to make his way back to the station.
Review:
The film that inaugurated Fellini's last great period of activity is not without repetitions and recyclings of earlier material: the desert wind signalling memory or the world of dreams (Otto e mezzo, and many others), the joyless seduction by huge-breasted Amazon (Amarcord), the gallery of grotesques at a convention of some kind (ad loc). What is significant is the explicit addressing of his muse in all her guises, from seductress to conjugal harpy, from earth mother to sapphic intellectual. With Snàporaz, the director puts himself with disarming candour on the psychiatrist's couch, and Mastroianni is again the perfect proxy for this wanton seducer with the heart of a guileless little boy. (Interestingly, the Casanova role is again played by another actor, Ettore Manni, star of Italian peplums and real-life lothario and collector of firearms, who combined both passions in death by inadvertently decapitating his penis with a revolver.) The film is a riot of sound and does rather outstay its welcome by the end, but as usual Fellini's production designers ensure there is much to entertain the eye along the way.