Fellini's Juliet of the Spirits

Juliet of the Spirits - 1965

"For 8 1/2, I wanted to do a polydimensional portrait of a man. For Juliet of the Spirits, I am getting closer to what interests me. The cinema is the unique and perfect tool to explore with precision the inner landscapes of the human being. I've always wanted to do an extrasensorial tale, born entirely of the imagination. This should be it."

---Federico Fellini

Fellini's 1963 masterpiece, 8 1/2, was (arguably) an autobiographically inspired work. When Juliet of the Spirits arrived it aroused much of the same controversy. "Is this based on the Fellini marriage?" critics asked. In fact, the films star, Giuletta Masina, is Fellini's actual wife. Autobiographical or not, Juliet of the Spirits showcases many of Fellini's recurring cinematic themes; complex viewpoints, subjective shots turning into objective shots, dream sequences that reveal character and the fixation on long parades of characters. The dream sequences show a representation of what Juliet is thinking and feeling.

This is Fellini's first film in color, and he uses it to paint the film on the screen. Color is a character in this film. Consider how some characters are presented at various times with a completely unreal color to their face. This is intentional, taking the viewer in and out of reality and waking fantasy.

Juliet, the main character, is a shy, chain smoking, romantically naive housewife. The movie utilizes quick cutting scenes and a nervous tempo to show Juliet's disordered state of mind. Her neighbor is the flamboyant Suzy (Sandra Milo), who is Juliet's personality opposite. As Juliet is drawn to Suzy's company, she is tormented by it as well.

At one point, Fellini doesn't show us Juliet's face until her husband, Giorgio, steps into her presence. Symbolically, she doesn't exist outside of her husband. Juliet knows he is a philanderer but emotionally she cannot become Juliet.

Roger Ebert and others consider this movie to be the beginning of the decline of Fellini's mastery of filmmaking. I'm a big Ebert fan but I disagree. This is the first Fellini film I saw and remains my personal favorite.

It is hard to imagine anyone who has seen Juliet of the Spirits will ever forget the images and the sets, costumes and color. The sheer beauty of this movie is the movie.

 

Related posts:

Fellini's 8 1/2

 

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Fellini's 8 1/2

Fellini's 8 1/2 - 1963

"8 1/2 is meant to be an attempt to reach an agreement with life... an
attempt and not a completed result."

---Federico Fellini

Fellini's 1963 masterpiece, 8 1/2, is suggestive of an autobiographical work. Consider these:

1. Fellini made 8 films prior to this one and one half unit for Variety Lights.
2. The movie is about a film director.
3. The film director is creating a follow up to a successful film.

In 8 1/2, the focus is on Guido, a well known director, who is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He is attempting to complete the script for his picture about the escape to outer space for the survivors of WW III. Guido fears of making a meaningless picture and he cannot explain his thinking to an endless parade of producers, critics, actors, intellectuals and writers. He eventually realizes that it is impossible for him to turn out a simple picture with a message for mankind but must instead produce a complicated story about his own confusions, uncertainties, and compromises.

What we end up seeing - as the movie viewer - is the movie that Guido intends to make, or more precisely, did make.

In 8 1/2, Fellini brilliantly manages complex shifts in viewpoint. Sometimes we are seeing the world through Guido's eyes. At other times we are watching him. Alternating subjective and objective perspectives leaves us seeing a stream of Fellini memories and associations. He uses flashbacks, daydreams, nightmares and fantasy to project the world that Guido is traveling in. The ride is exhilarating!

Guido's dream ideal woman is played by the beautiful Claudia Cardinale. She appears in dream sequences as his muse, offering reassurance. But she is fleeting and elusive. He must come to terms with his intellectual wife Luisa (Anouk Aimee). Luisa is as mad at him at one point in the film - after an affair - as much as for who he chose as for the infidelity itself.

8 1/2 followed Fellini's successful La Dolce Vita. [see point 3 above] His next film was Juliet of the Spirits, his best film and included in my Top 100 Movie List. But 8 1/2 won over 60 international awards, including an Academy Award for best foreign film and seven Silver Ribbons (Italy's equivalent of the Oscar).

In the end of the film, Guido's rebirth as an artist is complete and he comes into terms with his emotional past. Guido has an artistic triumph with his film - as does Fellini with his.

 

Related Posts:

Juliet of the Spirits

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Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia - 1974

Sam Peckinpah is well known for big, blockbuster movies like Pat Garret & Billy the Kid, The Wild Bunch, and Straw Dogs. And he certainly didn't shy away from some bloodshed in his projects. As William Holden says at the beginning of The Wild Bunch, "If it moves, kill it". Peckinpah lived life to its fullest, abusing drink and drugs, and that plays out in his scripts.

During a period in the early to mid 1970's, Peckinpah went through a severe period of alcoholic fear and loathing. From this mindset we get this film. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia was immediately panned by many film critics. But understand the context in which this movie was born of, and you will feel Peckinpah's life coursing through this movie. The movie's hero, Bennie, has a haunting demon, an exhaustion, and a sense of utter desperation that is certainly a picture of where Peckinpah was at the time.

The film stars Warren Oates, a grizzled character actor of the 60s and 70s. I grew up on a staple of this era's TV shows and probably have seen him in the likes of Gunsmoke, Bat Masterson, The Rifleman and Rawhide. Here he plays Bennie, a seedy American expatriate, playing piano in cheap bars and Mexican brothels. When a rich and powerful industrialist offers a large reward for the head of Alfredo Garcia for impregnating his daughter, Bennie sees a way out of the bottom of life. He teams up with a prostitute (and former lover of Garcia) to find Garcia and collect the reward, along with other enterprising bounty hunters. The odyssey to get the body part, and get it back to collect the reward is riddled with violence and desperation.

For most of the film, Bennie carries around the burlap sack with the severed head of Garcia in it. Much like Bogart's Fred C. Dobbs in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, the personal mission provides the emotional unraveling of the character. There is no joy in this life and this quest is undoubtedly not the best path towards happiness.

Under a scorching Mexican sun, a bagged head doesn't preserve well. Bennie however protects it over all else that might be of value in his life. Oates masterfully shows the desperate emotion required of the part. After a period he calls the head Al and chats about the woman they both loved.

This movie is what it is because of Peckinpah's emotional state. It seeps into the film at its core and the actors are part and parcel of it.

There is a scene where Bennie and Elita stop on the road for a rest under a tree. Elita talks of marriage and commitment after all this is over. Bennie is initially taken aback with the thought. A happy marriage is as foreign to him as any life joy. But they both run with the thought and pay proper respect to it. Although they agree to the commitment, and tears are shed, we all know that it is not in the cards.

This has become a cult classic - but it represents so much more. It is a slice of wild life of one of America's best film directors.

Research the movie at Amazon here.

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Mystery Train

Mystery Train - 1989
 
Mystery Train opens with two young Japanese tourists pulling into Memphis on an Amtrak train. The girl adores Elvis and her boyfriend adores Carl Perkins. They are experiencing Memphis as a great American city - ignoring its obvious run down flaws that we viewers see - and as a shrine to the music they love. As Jun says during their night in Memphis, "Its cool to be here in America, right now, with you".

The movie plays the same evening time period over in 3 different vignettes. We see the same events happen from different perspectives. There is a gunshot in the distance and an all night blues station that link the three stories. All three find themselves staying at the same tacky Arcade hotel.

Jim Jarmush only puts out a movie every couple years but they are absolute gems. In Mystery Train, the New York filmmaker, a member of the late '70s/early '80s art-punk band Del-Byzanteens, knew his musical history. He chose Memphis, home of Sun Records, the storefront sound studio at which Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Roy Orbison rockabillied their way to stardom. Memphis, where bluesmen Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters played for change in the parks along Beale Street. Memphis, home of Elvis - and home of Elvis' home, Graceland.

In fact you'll find music personality presence throughout the film: John Lurie, Tom Waits, Joe Strummer, Rufus Thomas and Screamin' Jay Hawkins.

These themes - especially the ghost of Elvis permeate through the three stories. As Elvis's Blue Moon is played on that all night blues station, we feel as if we are experiencing a bit of after hours Memphis that is uniquely American.

Mystery Train is not a conventional story. It is not about how the story ends but how the lives go on. It is populated with dozens of small, meaningful moments - slices of life.

This exchange between the Japanese couple and Hawkins as the hotel night clerk gives us a glimpse into the lives of both...

Mitzuko: Hi! Good night!
Night Clerk: Good night. How may I help you?
Mitzuko: Umm... We would like most cheap room please do you have?
Night Clerk: All our rooms for two people are the same rate.
Mitzuko: Oh.
Jun: (speaking in Japanese) What'd he say?
Mitzuko: (speaking in Japanese) I'm not exactly sure. (In English) I'm sorry, that is too expensive.

This is a movie that is more enjoyable with each viewing. You will love it as much on viewing 50 as number 1.

Put this movie on your to do list. Again. And again. And again.

Research Mystery Train on Amazon here.

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Station Agent

Station Agent - 2003

I'm a big fan of IFC - the Independent Film Channel. Sometimes you'll find a quiet little gem out there that got absolutely no commercial fanfare, yet just absolutely blew you away. An independent film can touch a smaller segment of the population - not needing to hit that mass appeal. When you are one of those touched people, you feel like the movie was made for you.

The Station Agent is about Finbar McBride, played by Peter Drinkledge. Finbar is a dwarf. He is really only interesting to other people as a curiosity. He has gone through life with an isolationist altitude. When his one friend, who shares his passion for trains dies and leaves him an abandoned train station, Finbar sees an opportunity for escape and moves in. The people he meets in the small town form the basis of the movie and change his life.

One of the people that come into his life is Joe (played by Bobby Cannavale). Joe is a relentless extrovert and so forces his way into Finbar's life. There is the lonely Olivia (Patricia Clarkson), who needs friendship yet turns from it. Together these three form an unlikely bond of friendship. As Finbar initially rejects Joe's overt attempts of friendship, we see his inner turmoil of wanting that friendship. Later when the friendships are broken, he can think of nothing else.

There is scene when the drunk Finbar, disgusted with the play of events, climbs up on the bar and shouts to the world, "Look at me. Look at the little man...". This is a brave bit of acting here. But the movie is alternately funny, sad, good-natured. It examines friendships among different people without being heavy handed.

Joe's likability and Olivia's neediness pull Finbar out of isolation and into the real world. Its a frequently funny movie and I'm trying to find a place for it in my 100 Greatest Movie List.

[update] Added to 100 greatest Movie List 11/21/2007. Removed Rainman.

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Downfall

Downfall - 2004

Downfall takes place almost entirely in Hitler's underground bunker, during the final days of World War II. Hitler is played brilliantly by Bruno Gantz. Hitler is ill, mad, compassionate, racist, paranoid.... human. The controversy that surrounded this film centered around this fact - Hitler did evil things, Hitler was directly responsible for millions of innocent deaths... and Hitler was human. Throughout American cinema we are used to seeing Hitler as monster, Hitler as Satan, Hitler as supernatural evil. Does this movie, in humanizing Hitler provoke sympathy? I'm thinking that by showing Hitler as a delusional paranoid, hanging on to what little he has left - the answer is no.

We see him ordering troops and units into position that do not exist, looking for deliverance from brigades that have long fallen away. As the Russian troops slowly move in on Berlin, Hitler alternately displays emotional outbursts of anger, tender compassion for his wife and for his secretary, Traudl Junge, and long moments of isolation and desertion. The movie is told largely through the eyes of Traudl. We hear comments from the real life Junge before and after the movie. Her book Until the Final Hour: Hitler's Last Secretaryis the basis for the movie's script.

As Hitler becomes more and more out of touch with reality, we see those loyal to him confronted with the ultimate decision - stay with Hitler, face certain death; but remain loyal to the vision of National Socialism - or face reality and get out now. Some are so loyal they do the unspeakable. In fact the most unsettling and shocking scene I can remember in any film [seriously!] involves Joseph and Magda Goebbels. Magda cannot envision a world without National Socialism. And she does not want her six children to live without it either. In the sad and shocking scene, she gives her children a sleeping potion, then proceeds to give them one by one a cyanide capsule. We hear the soft crunch of the capsule as she presses their jaws closed.

I had to turn away.

Rodger Ebert said that he felt sympathy for the Hitler character as he would feel sympathy for a rabid dog that had to be put down.

The director, Oliver Hirschbiegel, shows us the horror of the war outside the bunker, which keeps us rooted in the reality of the situation. As the Hitler loyalists, one by one, succumb to suicide or murder; by the end of the film we are relieved and thank God that we were born post 1945.

Research the film on Amazon here.

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Bandwagon

Bandwagon - 1996

We've seen and enjoyed Kevin Corrigan in a number of supporting roles (Buffalo 66, Slums of Beverly Hills, Trees Lounge) through the years. In Bandwagon he plays Wynn, a cynical hippie guitar player. This witty, rambunctious band road trip movie becomes my favorite Corrigan performance.

The four band members are embarking on the transition from garage band to big business band. This movie formula was done respectably by Tom Hanks in 1996's That Thing You Do. That movie had more recognizable actors in it - but don't let that stop you from enjoying this superior film. When these four completely different personalities get together it is simply for the love of music. They all come off as real and honest. The themes are loneliness, friendship, commercialism.

The music in the movie is simply brilliant. If you listen to XM Cafe or XMU on your satellite radio you'll feel at home. The lead singer, Tony (played by Lee Holmes) is so shy and self conscious he can't face the audience when he sings. But what he writes is from the heart and very catchy. You just know that the girl he's writing about just can't share the same infatuation that he does.

Writer and director John Schultz has given us a fascinating look into the challenges of keeping a band together when so many different personalities are trying to rip it apart. The movie is funny, smart, bright and damn enjoyable to watch.

When you're watching this movie, imagine that most of the big name artists you like today started out very much like this band. The Circus Monkeys are a band that I would listen to - were they real.

This movie made my Top 100 Movie List.

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Children of Men

Children of Men - 2006

I'm a Clive Owen fan and a Sci Fi fan so this film was right up my alley. It portrays a nightmarish future where the youngest person on the planet has just died. Since his birth, no woman has been able to conceive. Facing extinction, mankind begins to close in on itself and chaos ensues. Britain alone stands as a last bastion of civilization.

Things are looking pretty grim when we find that one woman who is pregnant. Her protector is Theodore Faron (Owen), an unlikely hero, being an ex-revolutionary turned bureaucrat. He reluctantly teams up with some old terrorist buddies and so we have our adventure. Faron must deliver her to a sanctuary ship for her protection and run a gauntlet of terrorists, thugs, government toadies and miscellaneous malcontents.

The picture that this movie paints of the future is shocking. Britain is ruled by a fascist government that rounds up illegal immigrants and puts them in concentration camps. Stormtroopers beat suspects up indiscriminately. The rebels that are fighting back aren't much better.

One particularly frightening scene puts us in a van running through a rebel dominated territory. The ensuing confrontation is realized by the viewer in the first person and the shocking scene is shot without cut-aways. This filming technique is used again later when we witness a battle scene in a concentration camp. It is very riveting and the style is very effective.

This movie made my Top 100 Movie List.

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Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

Three Burials of Melquides Estrada - 2005

This is a movie about loyalty and honor. About honoring a single life and avenging a single death.

It stars Tommy Lee Jones as the grizzled owner of a small time cattle operation, Pete Perkins. He hires an illegal Mexican immigrant as a hand and a deeper friendship develops. Barry Pepper is the hot head border patrol agent that has no problem with socking a Mexican woman in the face if she crosses him (and the border).

Stir this mix up and you have an emotional western (?) in the mold of a John Huston. Melquides Estrada is the Mexican cattle hand and we get to know him primarily through flashback and story telling. We do get to know him well though, which is skillful on the director's part, primarily because he is, well... dead for most of the movie. [I don't think I'm giving away any plot spoilers here. Look at the title of the movie]. Perkins realizes the ineffective sheriff [played by Diwight Yokum] isn't going to get to the bottom of the murder and decides to take matters into his own hands.

What we get is a journey of redemption bought with gruesome physical labor. Both men learn respect that they didn't have at the beginning of the story. Pepper masterfully portrays the contrition that the part demands and is worth the price of admission right there.

The film is the directorial debut for Jones as well. I'm hungry for more.

This movie made my Top 100 Movie List. You can research the movie at Amazon here.

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Tsotsi

Tsotsi - 2005

* Spoilers included *

Tsotsi won an Oscar in 2006 under the category "Best Foreign Language Film". Its rare to see a film where the bad guy gravitates toward good instead of the other way around. This is a powerful film that shows a killer who learns humanity from a baby.

The film is shot in Soweto, a township near Johannesburg, South Africa. I travelled through Johannesburg last year on a trip to Mozambique. I saw the squalor of the ghetto from the safety of my bus - but I get it. The movie portrays the ghetto as a place where life is cheap... there is a scene where we witness orphans living in huge concrete pipes as if they are condos.

Tsotsi is presented with the challenge of caring for a baby - the by-product of a car jacking. The child evokes in him a reflection of his own brutal childhood. The flashbacks build for us a picture of growing up in this part of the world at this cultural level. As we watch Tsotsi develop his humanity around the baby - we see him essentially fight back against what he has himself become.

Ultimately, there is no good deal waiting for Tsotsi. The ending is a bit subdued, but appropriate. He is left to deal with the next section of his life at this point. We envision him thinking of how the next chapter of his life will be as the camera pulls away.

Ultimately Tsotsi doesn't simply become a good man - he just looses some of his evilness. This can be contrasted with City of God, [a film in my Top 100 Greatest Movies of all time list]. Tsotsi is more personal and close.

If you liked City of God, give Tsotsi a try. Similar story, different viewpoint.

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