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Giulietta degli spiriti (1965)
Read this review after seeing the film
One of my friends saw this movie and derided it as just another quirky European message film. I offer the following interpretation to help people appreciate this wonderful story.
In 1965, Italian director Federico Fellini directed his wife, Giulietta Masina, in an expressionistic soap opera about neurosis and the journey to healing. With her waif-like look of undying innocence, Masina was the perfect choice to represent the child in us all.
In this film we see the world as Giulietta (Juliet) feels it: grotesquely distorted in lurid colors, peopled with posturing caricatures of human beings, and beset by hobgoblins from a past that refuses to die. Giulietta's friends are as neurotic as she is, only in different ways. Giulietta herself lives with a dull, constant, inner pain; yet her suffering can lead her out of psychic bondage should she ever summon the courage to face herself.
As the picture opens, we discover that Giulietta's husband is heartlessly cheating on her with a younger woman. To avoid noticing, Giulietta dabbles in spiritualism. During a séance, in a rare moment of truth, Guglietta admits – or the spirits tell her – that she is leading a sham life, that no one loves her, that she is surrounded by false friends. The séance abruptly ends.
Later, while sunning herself on a beach, she dozes off and dreams of a barge in the water just off shore. It is night, and people from Giulietta's decaying past crowd the barge, calling to her. Next we see her on the shoreline, trying to pull the barge after her by means of a long, thick rope. Then Giulietta wakes up. The film is full of these expressionistic touches.
In another key scene, Giulietta consults a psychic – an elderly hermaphrodite. The psychic tries unsuccessfully to get Giulietta to face her repressed sexuality. Similarly, during a visit to the home of one of her escapist, pleasure-loving friends, Giulietta is paired with a real stud; but she cannot bring herself to enjoy sexual relations with him.
Hobgoblin nuns in ominously hooded habits regularly haunt Giulietta's home – more ghosts from the past. They hearken back to a particularly painful episode in her childhood, when she appeared as a martyr in a religious pageant at a Catholic school. Only about seven years old, she was tied to a cross on the floor. Brightly colored crepe streamers simulating flames were taped to the cross, fluttering in the breeze from a nearby fan. Suddenly her grandfather bursts in upon the scene and angrily denounces the clergy for subjecting his grandchild to such cruelty. Untying her and taking her in his arms, he storms out of the room.
At least someone in Giulietta's past cared about her. Certainly her frigid ice-maiden of a mother never did. We see the mother on a sunny day, colorfully dressed and looking like a surrealistic sherbet dessert.
Finally her husband leaves her, depriving Giulietta of the last defense against her neurotic pain. Left alone in her large house, she is besieged by hooded demons everywhere she turns. Discovering a door without a handle, she tries in vain to pry it open. The voice of her mother booms, "Giulietta, do not touch that door!" With nothing more to lose, Giulietta suddenly stands tall and defiantly answers, "I no longer fear you!" The door opens by itself. Entering what looks like a ventilation duct, Giulietta discovers herself as a child, still tied to that awful flaming cross. In a deeply moving scene, she unties the child and hugs her, thereby effecting a true inner cure.
Emerging from this secret chamber, Giulietta observes the hooded hobgoblins fading away. Then she walks outside into a peaceful rural setting, where everything once again looks natural.
Anna Karenina (1935)
A shrewd adaptation of Tolstoy's great novel
Two things stand out for me in watching this fine film: Garbo's acting and the way in which the novel was transferred to the screen.
Many American viewers are impervious to Garbo's acting even as they acknowledge her beauty. To the end of her life, despite more than 50 years of residence in this country, Garbo never became Americanized. She remained an anti-social foreigner who appealed mainly to Europeans. Since this approach does not work in the American melting pot, she retired after World War II had deprived her of her European audience.
However, for many intellectuals and artists, whenever she appears on the screen it is as though an inner door has opened to all of European culture: its literature, painting and sculpture, drama, poetry, music, philosophy, architecture – everything. Though certainly no intellectual, Garbo had a profound instinct for the real thing that continues to inspire artists and creative thinkers in this global age of mass media.
The script for this movie is an admirable adaptation of Tolstoy's long, panoramic novel of life among the upper crust in 19th century Russia. There are well-mounted scenes from an officers' banquet, a full-dress ball, a croquet party, a horse race, an Orthodox wedding and a Russian opera. Together with a searching musical score by Herbert Stothart, this sumptuous filmfare communicates volumes in itself.
Foremost among the themes of the novel was the double standard, whereby married men can be openly promiscuous while married women must keep their hanky-panky a secret. Anna attempts to buck this trend through open adultery and loses everything. The inertial forces of society are symbolized in the novel and in the film by the train. The train scenes are very important to the unity of the story and are superbly photographed and abetted by sound effects and musical commentary.
I could go on and on, but for reasons of space limitations must end here by declaring this film to be the best adaptation yet of one of Europe's finest novels. See it!
The Towering Inferno (1974)
A searing critique of male-dominated society
While the symbolism of this movie is hardly subtle, I noticed no references to it in the 30 some-odd reviews I just scanned. The "Edifice complex" referred to by Paul Newman's Doug Roberts is parodied by the Glass Tower, a 137-story phallic erection in downtown San Francisco, berg par excellence of unbridled phallicism. The fire corresponds to male sexual desire, the central utility duct to the urethra, and the final explosions to male orgasm and ejaculation. What could be more obvious?
All the women in this film are secondary, and toward the end they disappear completely. The men treat them as well-behaved children. They share no confidences with them and, once the fire starts, advise them to stay put until they say otherwise. Doug Roberts even deputizes a 10-year-old boy to look after not only his younger sister but a 50-year old woman as well ("These ladies are your responsibility now.")!
Perhaps if we lived in a matriarchy, buildings would be wide rather than tall, with a central inner sanctum protected by outer rings of rooms separated by interior gardens and canals. Size would be less of an issue than the quality of the decor. Men would grow crops, take care of animals and, yes, learn how to bring women to a complete orgasm. Women would set policy in a less contentious way than we see in modern governments.
I have seen this film about 30 times, not only because it is exciting but because it shows up us he-men for the blind fools we so often are. Even the courageous firemen are, in the final analysis, correcting the idiotic mistakes of other men. The fact that women like Liselotte Mueller (played by Jennifer Jones) can love men at all (despite seeing clear through them) is testimony enough to their innate superiority. We men come from Eve's rib!