Juliet of the Spirits (15.)
Directed by Federico Fellini. 1965
Starring Giulietta Masina, Sandra Milo, Mario Pisu,Valentina Cortese, Lou Gilbert, Sylva Koscina. 132 mins. Italian with subtitles. Released on dual format Blu-ray/ DVD by Cult Films.
I remember reading an article about Tony Hancock many decades ago where the writer said how strange it was that a comedian with such a remarkably expressive face, who could do so much without words, became a star on the radio. Watching Juliet of the Spirits, Fellini's first full-length colour film, it's hard to believe that this man could ever have made films in black and white. Indeed, made some pretty good films in black and white. He's like a boxer who became a champion fighting with one arm behind his back.
Fellini's follow up to 8½ is truly remarkable. It isn't, to be fair, truly remarkably good, but you'll probably be too dazzled, dazed and perplexed by it to care. Casting his wife in a film for the first time in seven years, he has her play a timid woman who dabbles in spiritualism and is married to a man who may be cheating on her. As her safe little existence begins to unwind, she is increasingly overwhelmed by visions and fantasies.
The film's problem is that it gets the basics wrong. Visual logic suggests that her on-screen real life should be more mundane than her dreams, fantasies and visions of the afterworld. But everything is so over the top and out of wack that there is no normality to contrast with. The pristine white palace in the countryside she calls home is too simplistic and bland a dream house. The only people that could believably exist there are children's TV presenters, waiting for their next opportunity to invite their young audience see what they can see through one of its large square windows. In the reality sequences the colours are prime and sometimes garish; in her fantasies, the tone is more muted.
The fantasy sequences though are quite extraordinary. Surreal fantasy dream sequences are hardly the sole preserve of Fellini, but his best ones have a pull on the subconscious that nobody else's have. Terry Gilliam has a glorious imagination but his wildest sequences don't grab you as fully as Fellini's. An early sequence at the beach with sickly horses on a raft is a direct precursor of his next film Satyricon. The most amazing one is Juliet as a young girl playing a Catholic martyr being burned alive in a school play. The little children dressed up as Roman soldiers, the muted white of the background, the flickering bright red of the paper flames, give it an extraordinary potency.
Then there are the sequences with her saucy neighbour (Milo), never knowingly more than half dressed and whose house is far wilder than anything in the fantasy sequences. Is she meant to be taken as real or a projection? Juliet comes from an era when the appeal of foreign films was the possibility of seeing something a bit more racy than you'd get from Hollywood. It's a fruity little number, but teasingly so. Flesh is flashed, but briefly. There's something very chaste about Fellini's sense of the erotic. Perverse possibilities are everywhere, but nothing is done about them. Any sex is just play-acting, a game of statues, like the burlesque shows of the time.
As somebody who would count themselves as an authority on inappropriate spousal giftage, I have to wonder how Mrs Fellini reacted when she was presented with the star vehicle her Oscar-winning hubby had come up with just for her: a film where she is the still, calm, ever smiling centre of a world where everybody else is sexy and uninhibited. The poor woman is like the Queen on a visit to an unusually light and airy S&M dungeon: smile and wave, gritted teeth, smile and wave, gritted teeth, don't make eye contact.
Juliet of the Spirits doesn't make a lick of sense (or at least not in two or three viewings) but it is quite wonderful. I saw this for the first time about four years ago and found it then to be one of Fellini's duller films, a bit of a chore. Maybe the true measure of an artist is not in their pinnacles but in their misfires. Ah Fellini, what a lad he was. Like Max Miller, there'll never be another.
Extras.
Audio commentary by Kat Ellinger.
Video essay by Oxford Professor Guido Bonsaver.
Other Fellini reviews:
Fellini Casanova
Fellini Roma
I Clowns
City of Women
Orchestra Rehearsal
Directed by Federico Fellini. 1965
Starring Giulietta Masina, Sandra Milo, Mario Pisu,Valentina Cortese, Lou Gilbert, Sylva Koscina. 132 mins. Italian with subtitles. Released on dual format Blu-ray/ DVD by Cult Films.
I remember reading an article about Tony Hancock many decades ago where the writer said how strange it was that a comedian with such a remarkably expressive face, who could do so much without words, became a star on the radio. Watching Juliet of the Spirits, Fellini's first full-length colour film, it's hard to believe that this man could ever have made films in black and white. Indeed, made some pretty good films in black and white. He's like a boxer who became a champion fighting with one arm behind his back.
Fellini's follow up to 8½ is truly remarkable. It isn't, to be fair, truly remarkably good, but you'll probably be too dazzled, dazed and perplexed by it to care. Casting his wife in a film for the first time in seven years, he has her play a timid woman who dabbles in spiritualism and is married to a man who may be cheating on her. As her safe little existence begins to unwind, she is increasingly overwhelmed by visions and fantasies.
The film's problem is that it gets the basics wrong. Visual logic suggests that her on-screen real life should be more mundane than her dreams, fantasies and visions of the afterworld. But everything is so over the top and out of wack that there is no normality to contrast with. The pristine white palace in the countryside she calls home is too simplistic and bland a dream house. The only people that could believably exist there are children's TV presenters, waiting for their next opportunity to invite their young audience see what they can see through one of its large square windows. In the reality sequences the colours are prime and sometimes garish; in her fantasies, the tone is more muted.
The fantasy sequences though are quite extraordinary. Surreal fantasy dream sequences are hardly the sole preserve of Fellini, but his best ones have a pull on the subconscious that nobody else's have. Terry Gilliam has a glorious imagination but his wildest sequences don't grab you as fully as Fellini's. An early sequence at the beach with sickly horses on a raft is a direct precursor of his next film Satyricon. The most amazing one is Juliet as a young girl playing a Catholic martyr being burned alive in a school play. The little children dressed up as Roman soldiers, the muted white of the background, the flickering bright red of the paper flames, give it an extraordinary potency.
Then there are the sequences with her saucy neighbour (Milo), never knowingly more than half dressed and whose house is far wilder than anything in the fantasy sequences. Is she meant to be taken as real or a projection? Juliet comes from an era when the appeal of foreign films was the possibility of seeing something a bit more racy than you'd get from Hollywood. It's a fruity little number, but teasingly so. Flesh is flashed, but briefly. There's something very chaste about Fellini's sense of the erotic. Perverse possibilities are everywhere, but nothing is done about them. Any sex is just play-acting, a game of statues, like the burlesque shows of the time.
As somebody who would count themselves as an authority on inappropriate spousal giftage, I have to wonder how Mrs Fellini reacted when she was presented with the star vehicle her Oscar-winning hubby had come up with just for her: a film where she is the still, calm, ever smiling centre of a world where everybody else is sexy and uninhibited. The poor woman is like the Queen on a visit to an unusually light and airy S&M dungeon: smile and wave, gritted teeth, smile and wave, gritted teeth, don't make eye contact.
Juliet of the Spirits doesn't make a lick of sense (or at least not in two or three viewings) but it is quite wonderful. I saw this for the first time about four years ago and found it then to be one of Fellini's duller films, a bit of a chore. Maybe the true measure of an artist is not in their pinnacles but in their misfires. Ah Fellini, what a lad he was. Like Max Miller, there'll never be another.
Extras.
Audio commentary by Kat Ellinger.
Video essay by Oxford Professor Guido Bonsaver.
Other Fellini reviews:
Fellini Casanova
Fellini Roma
I Clowns
City of Women
Orchestra Rehearsal
