City of Women (1980)

My adoration for this seemingly out-of-control fantasia of male fears of woman as individual or Love Goddess is somewhat unreasonable; I do not tire of watching City of Women and have subjected others to Fellini's episodic wandering, loaded as it is with spectacular imagery; remarkably, some of them remain my friends.

Early Fellini films such as La Strada and Nights of Cabiria are really fairly conventional films with unconventional characters, easy to follow and memorable for leading characters such as Gelsomina or Cabiria. In the early 1960's, Fellini experimented with drugs and underwent extensive psychoanalysis and the results of experimentation were reflected in his films, which became more personal visions and while delighting some viewers, frustrated others for their lack of linear narrative.

City of Women is one of those, jammed with bizarre imagery, full of often peculiar fantasies, as it follows the Fellini stand-in, Snaporaz, as he cuts a train journey short to follow a female conquest into a world that he has never considered, a world where women dominate, a world that addresses many male anxieties and fears, a dream world full of nightmares. I first saw this film in 1980, and thought it only fair; with the passage of time I think it has only become more relevant to male-female relationships, and the imagery, in contrast with most pallid films made today, visually electrifying. While realizing that others may react in critical horror, my vote for this Fellini is "Nine"!

Fmovies: La Città Delle Donne is not a grotesque film even though it is rightly considered by many as a crazy little tale of a hapless philanderer.In this film,Italian superstar Marcello Mastroianni appears as if he is more of a morbid widower than one of the resourceful male chauvinists who would do everything in order to prevent weak women from usurping power.Feelini freely talks about the never ending confusion of male female relationships especially in the context of transfer of power.He has made a film which will surely have problems in getting understood by all.It can be surmised that even regular,loyal Fellini fans will have problems trying to figure out the hidden message of this film. This is the sole reason why this film necessitates multiple viewing session in order to understand why so much noise was being made about it.The focus in this film is on what all women of the world can achieve if they have solidarity.This has been shown by showing strange ways of women.Men have been reduced to ignominy as there are few taker for them.A major portion of the film is devoted to feminists who have not achieved much over the years.Fellini has shown them as they are and have always been:making fools of themselves.This film is neither pro women nor anti men.It is quite simply a beautiful film for the people who cherish the art of cinema.

Although I was born in Italy, I never had the chance to see a movie by Fellini.

Yesterday I decided to fill this gap, watching "La citta' delle donne".

I was very disappointed, not only by the movie, but also by the commentaries included in the DVD (American edition).

*** Some spoilers from now on *** The movie is a total mess. Everything is loud and exaggerated. There are no hints or subtleties. The message the movie aims at conveying, the difficulty of men to deal with women in the modern era with the men losing their predominant position, is screamed. For 20 minutes you can cope with such a visual and acoustic disorder, but I found 140 minutes definitely too much to bear.

I did not find the movie funny either. For example, one of the character's name is Katzone (an Italian vulgar expression for big penis) and guess what? He is a womanizer, he lives in a house full of phallic shaped objects, he has taped the moaning of all women he has slept with, and so on and so forth. Maybe, you can laugh for one second about it, but everything is so obvious, trivial and vulgar that I found it very hard to appreciate.

Mastroianni delivers a great performance, as usual. The problem does not lie in the actors, (actually most of them deliver great interpretations) but in the director's vision of the movie.

The film does not flow. The sequences are not linked appropriately and sometimes are way too long: he could have obtained the very same result (shocking/amusing the audience) in half the time.

Being the movie a dream by a man in his 50's, it is reasonable to express it in such a disorganized and convulsive way. However, I do not need to see a movie to get that feeling, my own dreams are enough.

Fellini was very brave to propose such a theme, especially in a very rigid society as the Italian one. He wanted to be provocative and he succeeded in that dimension. However, he failed at making the audience think about those issues, being only worried at representing his own insecurities and fears.

I also found the movie very arrogant, in the sense that it made me think that Fellini wanted the audience to believe that they were watching not only a movie but "art".

Frankly speaking, this film is so bad that it makes any Tinto Brass production look like a masterpiece.

In the DVD's commentary the people asked to comment on Fellini's work basically said that he was a genius. I think they do not understand what a genius is. Moreover, all the people interviewed do not explain or motivate why they think he was such a great artist.

He might have had a different approach to things, he might have had a personal interpretation of facts, he might have broken the clichés of his time, but defining him a genius is way too much, at least for what he has done with this movie.

I think that labeling him as a genius does not allow him to be pretentious and his movie to be pointless.

I still hope that "8 1/2" is going to change my mind about Fellini's work.

City of Women fmovies. A number of fascinating sequences and a few interesting ideas keep this film afloat when the other element do not work out. The film makes it quite clear within the first hour that what we are witnessing is a dream, and the sets, costumes and hues all reflect a dreamlike state very well. But, we know little of our protagonist before he falls asleep, nor do we see much that he has done, and therefore it becomes all rather meaningless - just a collection of thoughts, rather than anything relating to the "real world". Still, it is certainly quite interesting to watch, as one never knows just what will happen next. The film has a very intriguing screenplay, if not much else, and Marcello Mastroianni is rather good, if not great, in the lead. It is not a brilliant piece of work, especially coming from such a highly praised director, but it is an interesting film, with a gripping dreamlike quality.

I am a great fan of early Fellini, and as late as Amarcord I still find much to admire. After that, though, there seems to me to be an inexorable decline in originality. By the time we get to this film the decline is definitely in evidence throughout. Freshness has given way to trademark, vitality to predictability. Mastroianni is still there, as cool and enigmatic as ever, and some of the cinematography remains dazzling. But an air of staleness hangs over the whole film, which apart from its other defects is far too long. Fellini fanatics admire it, that much is obvious, and good luck to them. But most simple admirers will pass it by. It is worth adding that in the troubled and deeply unequal world we live in, Fellini's later obsession with the idle rich is looking increasingly frivolous. But maybe that's just me.

I'm not going to pretend that this is classic Fellini, or a masterpiece of Italian/European art-house cinema, but.....there's a lot going on in this movie that rewards a lengthy attention span. Mastroiani plays the archetypal middle-aged menopausal misogynist, the oldest swinger in town, calling women everything but women. Sows, mares, bitches, etc.

Fellini effortlessly sets him up for a long slow surreal fall from grace, deconstructing his fear of women in the process. It's a temporal culture clash, as stiff monochrome macho sexism meets technicolour badass feminism head on.

There's a few of Fellini's sublime production games going on in the background, most notably the orgasm orchestra that builds from the sono-portraits of Marcello's past lovers. The symbolism on display throughout is typically oblique, but it's effortlessly played for laughs in a way that few of his earlier films managed.

I've seen most of Fellini's output, from La Strada to Ginger and Fred, and for me this movie stands out along with those two as an accessible entry point into the satirical world view of one of Italy's most interesting directors.

It's certainly not a masterpiece, but it's definitely a wry look at the sexual mores of the day. And the cinematography ain't bad either.