This could easily have turned out to be a Turkey Trot but Fellini manages to avoid producing a turkey largely via the two central performances. Mastroianni doesn't appear until fully thirty five minutes in, unlike Signora Fellini who is present from the start. She IS a fine actress, that is beyond dispute but in those first thirty five minutes Fellini indulges his penchant for the grotesquerie of life by introducing yet another gallery of freaks. About halfway in we get to the television studio which allows Fellini to start taking swipes at the medium but the problem is they're the same kind of swipes that even low-budget British films were taking in the early fifties - or thirty years earlier whichever is the greater. Of course what we've come to see is how well or badly the principals xerox the eponymous characters and it is a tribute to Astaire and Rogers that almost half a century after they were working together their names are so emotive that virtually everyone on the planet knows who is meant by Ginger and Fred. Neither of the principals has ever, to my knowledge, claimed to be a dancer and even in their prime they could never have trodden the same boards as the real thing but those of us who love Astaire will relish not the footwork of Mastroianni but the small, keenly observed Gestures of Astaire, the brushing of the hat, the discarding of a cigarette, the quizzical looks, etc all testimony of what must have been hours if not days of watching old Astaire movies. Rogers, of course, was never much of a dancer and without Astaire would have fallen by the wayside so her dancing is not so important. Over and above all this we have to factor in the sheer CHARM and professionalism of the principals which lend a sort of gravitas-lite to the bittersweet elements in the story. A minor delight.
Review of Ginger & Fred
