The later, nostalgic Fellini is always worth another look. How I want to like this more, a touching last adventure, albeit too late, that revives the old glories, ties up old emotions - a last irresistible chance to live. There's genius in the choice of subject: a couple of old dancing stars (Fellini favourites Mastroianni and Masina) have been invited to recreate their old act on a manic TV show. They prepare themselves physically and emotionally for this reunion, the last chance to tread the boards and feel the glory. This is Fellini - and his stars - well into old age, poised on the edge of oblivion, having got used, presumably, to irrelevancy, and now able to reflect wistfully on it all - even able to say a kind of goodbye. The homage to Astaire and Rogers is also a homage to cinema, and the idea of showing those old values displaced in the new tacky world of television is a fine ruse.
Ginger (Masina) is immediately lost in this mad new world exactly as if she has stepped out of an old film. Outrageous advertising, rubbish piled in the streets, gangs of youths on motorbikes, the uncertainty of where they are being taken and what will happen to them - all nicely encapsulate the disorientation. The unstoppable madness of real life, it seems, is more Felliniesque than Fellini. When Mastroianni finally appears - after some anticipation - he is a sorry wreck of his former self. This is quite touching. They go over their old routine, feel the nerves once again, meet some old friends, get that sense of achievement for the last time.
But what a hash Fellini makes of it, what a laborious rendering. It's a raucous gabble - treacle-think with yattering people who are really more irritating than cute. Yes, that's the theme: gentle nostalgia swamped by the manic, garish, loud, unstoppable modern world. But still, there had to be a subtler way of presenting an irritating world than irritating the audience. And let's be honest, this is his usual style. As usual, there are too many words in the script; there is barely a moment's rest from the breathless dialogue - most of it not as funny or quaint as it tries to be. It's never the words that raise a smile, but the silent moments that bring most out of the characters. If only Fellini had realised that.
The inventiveness is desperate, and is only sporadically funny, nostalgic, or touching. Largely it seems like an excuse to parade a variety of freakish or eccentric characters, cramming in far too many of them. Group scenes are invariably chaotic and lack the precision and clarity of the old days, when black and white forced a more precise delineation of scene and character. What it lacks in crispness it tries to makes up for in sheer sensory experience, but it feels slapdash, and that feel is compounded, as always, by that terrible Cinecitta dubbing. This is not nearly the worst example, but it does appear slapped on at times like a veneer. Quite clearly the words they are mouthing are not the ones you hear; it is maddening and sometimes difficult to see who is talking from a distance, and, more importantly, it robs the serious characters of sincerity, and makes the flippant characters into cartoons. Some might take it as an element of style, a deliberately imposed artificiality implying that the characters are always bigger than their words - that's being overly indulgent.
But it's hard to be too harsh. On the plus side, there is a fine arc to this film; it grows in meaning, matures, and finally blossoms into a delicate flower of nostalgia. There's great music, and the two stars, who are, you can tell, by nature wistful and gentle - that's enough. And I'm a big fan of railway station endings, having spent so long - whole nights often enough - enduring the loneliness of the long-distance traveller, even in Roma Termini the year this film was made. Everyone is benign - even the murderous mafia boss in handcuffs. Everyone has a beneficial role to play in society, a performance to make, no matter how freakish they are, how out of touch or out of date. Sure, the present makes a mockery of the past, but no more than the past, with more justification, makes a mockery of the present.
I'm surprised I like Fellini. He's never critical of anything, no matter how stupid or weird, whereas I'm critical of everything, especially things human. He has no interest in the natural world, only in people, whereas I see everything, especially the human world, in the context of a bigger picture- nature - in which humans are just a few billion scurrying ants. So Fellini represents all the stuff that I have lost, or never gained - the side of me that got concreted over somewhere along the way; he is the antidote to misanthropy and ill-feeling of any sort, to all the misery that society, as a necessary by-product, tips upon itself; he is the little man getting his own back without bitterness. In short, he's good for the soul. Just a pity the producer or other person of influence didn't rein in much of the extraneous garishness (including the smutty jokes) here.
People love the humanity in this film and will be prepared to overlook the directorial misjudgements. Fine. It must be nice to be so generous, but, in all honesty, from a filmcraft point of view, this could have been much better.
Ginger (Masina) is immediately lost in this mad new world exactly as if she has stepped out of an old film. Outrageous advertising, rubbish piled in the streets, gangs of youths on motorbikes, the uncertainty of where they are being taken and what will happen to them - all nicely encapsulate the disorientation. The unstoppable madness of real life, it seems, is more Felliniesque than Fellini. When Mastroianni finally appears - after some anticipation - he is a sorry wreck of his former self. This is quite touching. They go over their old routine, feel the nerves once again, meet some old friends, get that sense of achievement for the last time.
But what a hash Fellini makes of it, what a laborious rendering. It's a raucous gabble - treacle-think with yattering people who are really more irritating than cute. Yes, that's the theme: gentle nostalgia swamped by the manic, garish, loud, unstoppable modern world. But still, there had to be a subtler way of presenting an irritating world than irritating the audience. And let's be honest, this is his usual style. As usual, there are too many words in the script; there is barely a moment's rest from the breathless dialogue - most of it not as funny or quaint as it tries to be. It's never the words that raise a smile, but the silent moments that bring most out of the characters. If only Fellini had realised that.
The inventiveness is desperate, and is only sporadically funny, nostalgic, or touching. Largely it seems like an excuse to parade a variety of freakish or eccentric characters, cramming in far too many of them. Group scenes are invariably chaotic and lack the precision and clarity of the old days, when black and white forced a more precise delineation of scene and character. What it lacks in crispness it tries to makes up for in sheer sensory experience, but it feels slapdash, and that feel is compounded, as always, by that terrible Cinecitta dubbing. This is not nearly the worst example, but it does appear slapped on at times like a veneer. Quite clearly the words they are mouthing are not the ones you hear; it is maddening and sometimes difficult to see who is talking from a distance, and, more importantly, it robs the serious characters of sincerity, and makes the flippant characters into cartoons. Some might take it as an element of style, a deliberately imposed artificiality implying that the characters are always bigger than their words - that's being overly indulgent.
But it's hard to be too harsh. On the plus side, there is a fine arc to this film; it grows in meaning, matures, and finally blossoms into a delicate flower of nostalgia. There's great music, and the two stars, who are, you can tell, by nature wistful and gentle - that's enough. And I'm a big fan of railway station endings, having spent so long - whole nights often enough - enduring the loneliness of the long-distance traveller, even in Roma Termini the year this film was made. Everyone is benign - even the murderous mafia boss in handcuffs. Everyone has a beneficial role to play in society, a performance to make, no matter how freakish they are, how out of touch or out of date. Sure, the present makes a mockery of the past, but no more than the past, with more justification, makes a mockery of the present.
I'm surprised I like Fellini. He's never critical of anything, no matter how stupid or weird, whereas I'm critical of everything, especially things human. He has no interest in the natural world, only in people, whereas I see everything, especially the human world, in the context of a bigger picture- nature - in which humans are just a few billion scurrying ants. So Fellini represents all the stuff that I have lost, or never gained - the side of me that got concreted over somewhere along the way; he is the antidote to misanthropy and ill-feeling of any sort, to all the misery that society, as a necessary by-product, tips upon itself; he is the little man getting his own back without bitterness. In short, he's good for the soul. Just a pity the producer or other person of influence didn't rein in much of the extraneous garishness (including the smutty jokes) here.
People love the humanity in this film and will be prepared to overlook the directorial misjudgements. Fine. It must be nice to be so generous, but, in all honesty, from a filmcraft point of view, this could have been much better.