Fellini…now there is a an enigma...
Until this year’s screening of Satyricon the New York film Festival never screened one of his films.
What’s up with that? I mean he was considered, along with Bergman the greatest European filmmakers all through the 1960’s and 70’s.
Actually it’s completely understandable since Fellini has always been acquired taste. Back in my pretentious film days I remember seeing a couple of near fist fights when two equally pretentious people decided to let their passions run over as to who was better Fellini or Bergman. I tended to side with Fellini since there is an openness a sense of life and hope that Fellini had that Bergman didn’t. To me Bergman was sturm and drang and death where Fellini was absurd life even in the face of death.
Sadly Fellini seems not to have aged well. I’ve been re-viewing several of his films over the last year and a year and a half and I’m finding that times and tastes have changed and moved away from Fellini. He has largely fallen out of favor. The change started in the late 70’s when his films began to fail to get US release. Even though we’d occasionally get a film like Ginger and Fred, there were two or three other films that we never saw. ( I still don’t think you can see everything he directed in the US, and even if you can it won’t be easy since his films released all over the place)
For me Fellini is a mixed bag. I still think things like 8 1/2 and Amacord play well, but many of his other films just don’t work as they should. I was always a huge fan of Juliet of the Spirits, Fellini’s love letter role for his wife Giulietta Masina, but watching it recently I found it painful and obvious. Masina is quite good but the film seems pretentious. I think on some level he let he let his perceived style color what he was doing and it over whelmed his ability to make timeless films
A Digression- I think part of the problem with Fellini- stylistic oddness aside, is that he’s too tough a director for today’s audiences. I think while Fellini rose to heights of world cinema when people were hungering and willing to work with a director and his visions of the world. I think that willingness fell away, starting in the early 1970’s as filmmakers like Bergman and Bertolucci started to make films in English. I think many audiences, even today, want to see foreign films, in part because they want to seem cultured, but they don’t want to have to really work to be cultured. Films can’t be too complex, nor can they be films that require any amount of work. Most of Fellini’s films require work, so people don’t want to be bothered.
All of this brings me to Fellini Satyricon.
Based upon the fragmentary work Petronius, the film was described by Fellini as science fiction in the past. It’s the story of two friends who split up after arguing over the ownership of a slave. The film then follows both of them and various characters through some adventures.
I’m not going to lie I haven’t seen the film in years. I do have it on DVD , and the plan was to pull it out and watch it for a review, but I am so buried with other New York Film Festival films I haven’t gotten around to it (mostly because I have no idea where I buried the disc). My impressions based on my memories of the film are ones of visually overpowering wonders mixed with a story that rambles all over the place. The film is one that blows your mind moment to moment but in the end never really hung together. If I close my eyes and think of the film I see various images from the movies, the vast majority of which seem to generate a kind of tactile response. I can feel the and smell the locations. I don’t think I have ever had such a strong sensory response to any film.
Do I like the film. I don’t know. I can’t really remember the film , beyond the visuals and the sense that the film is perhaps the most Fellini like of any Fellini film.
Should you see it? If you haven’t seen it, yes you should. This is a film that looks and feels like no other. It’s a film that is for many people the high point of a great filmmaker (though for others it’s the start of his decline- which simply means he’s as high as he’s ever been). Seriously if you have never seen a Fellini film, or if you have only seen say Amacord, or 8 ½ or one of the Criterion released films, you need to see this because this film is the very definition of what a Fellini film is.
I’m not going to promise you that you will like the film rather I’m going to promise that if you go see the film, which is being shown in a super duper restored version, you will have a cinematic experience unlike any other.
The film plays the NYFF on October 13
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