- Messages
- 18
- Reaction score
- 39
- Trophy Points
- 23
After the late-career success of Amarcord, Fellini seemed to lose his way in the 70s. In 1980 he came up with an idea that seemed to be safe ground, a sexual adventure starring his muse and cinematic alter ego Marcello Mastroianni for City of Women (1980). Marcello follows or is lead by a series of mysterious women and finds himself in a labyrinthine hotel during a feminist convention then stranded on the road surrounded and hounded by various beautiful, militant, singing and/or nagging women (and also meets an extraordinary cocksman). This dreamlike fantasia ultimately forces him to confront his ideas about femininity and his masculine attitudes.
Sort of.
The film feels more like Fellini-lite than actual Fellini. It’s less surreal (although indulgently visual) but its editorial strategy is based more in conventional shot/reverse shot construction and adherence to geographical blocking than his ‘60s classics. Where did the Fellini of old go? It also treats the topic of feminism harshly and reduces Marcello/ Snaporaz to an adolescent observer, a victim of his own obsessions. There’s not a lot of poetry. The film feels over-stuffed and yet half-baked, never transcending its original concept as merely a chapter in an anthology film that never materialized. I wanted to take out the anger, the redundant shots, the "explanations" and make it feel more like a late-60s Fellini film, not a reactionary 80s treatise.
I also intend to insert or replace some of the music with Nino Rota tracks (Luis Bakalov does the score, no slouch, but not the same). I think 20 - 30 minutes less of Fellini here will make this feel more like Fellini. A younger more hungry horny Fellini. Has anyone wanted a more pleasant, less harsh version of Fellini's City of Women?
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