(5/27/01)
Toby Dammit is a section of an omnibus film based on stories by Edgar Allan Poe. The story that Fellini's episode was based on was not identified, which was a disappointment because I would like to have read it.
The story is updated to then-contemporary Italy. An actor comes to Italy to appear in the first Catholic western. He is interviewed and then goes to an awards show at which he is expected to speak. He drinks, is dissipated and is obviously disgusted with the whole business. All he really cares about is a fancy car which he is to be given. When he gets it he drives off and seems to get lost in a kind of maze. He is haunted by the image of a young girl with a ball. At the end he finds her on the other side of a breach in the road. He attemps to cross the space in his car, but crashes.
This really impressed me for the sheer style, the sheer personality of Fellini. It is full of his baroque or bizarre imagery--this time in color. It is simply that the director's strong personality comes through so clearly that I found interesting. Other than that, there isn't that much that I have to say about this piece. Nino Rota's music, though the work of another man, is an important part of Fellini's style.
Terence Stamp does sort of resemble Edgar Allan Poe, although he is blonde and Poe was dark. He is further linked to Poe through his drinking and his moodiness. There is a sense here of show business as shabby and grotesque, which we had seen before in 8-1/2. It is sickening, disgusting and we can appreciate Toby's revulsion with the whole sordid business, the vulgarity.
Toby says that he doesn't believe in God but believes in the Devil. Somewhere (I think) the girl with the ball is identified with the Devil. What does it all mean? Is Fellini saying that without a belief in God all is hopeless? I don't know. I didn't understand this film.
Showing posts with label Federico Fellini. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Federico Fellini. Show all posts
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Saturday, February 27, 2010
The Whie Sheik (Lo sceicco bianco). 1952. Directed by Federico Fellini.
(7/22/00)
Fellini's first film as solo director is a delightful comedy which sustains its pace from start to finish. I found it more immediately enjoyable than 8-1/2. It's really a fun picture.
A young couple come to Rome for their honeymoon. The wife sneaks off for what she believes will be a very short meeting with her hero from the fumetti (photographed comic strips)--the Whit Sheik. However, circumstances dictate that her absence is not so brief and she is swept away by circumstances and finds herself going out on location. And no way to communicate with her husband who had scheduled a day with important relatives (his uncle works in the Vatican). During the day the White Sheik reveals himself to be a sham and the poor girl, disillusioned, realizes that her husband is really her White Sheik as they are finally reunited--just in time to head in for an audience with the pope.
They are like two babes in the woods. The film keeps switching from the wife's adventures to the husband's desperate attempts to keep the relatives from finding out what has happened.
One delightful moment is when the Sheik, who has managed to get the wife out in a boat with him, tries to seduce her. He tells her a ridiculous story about how he really loved another woman, but his wife put a spell on him. Subsequently confronted by the Sheik's irate wife, the young bride tells her off, repeating the story. She completely believes it.
The Sheik's wife is a wonderful portrait (or caricature) of a dominating Italian matriarch. Giulietta Masina is also wonderful in that brief scene where the husband meets the prostitute Cabiria. That's a bizarre scene in which Cabiria gets a man to sort of breathe fire.
A couple of moments which I remember fondly from seeing this film in the past didn't quite have the same impact: the Sheik's first appearance on a swing mounted high up between two trees and the scene where the bride attempts to drown herself in a canal or something. She does it with all the expected Italian melodrama and then the water only comes up around her ankles.
Fellini's first film as solo director is a delightful comedy which sustains its pace from start to finish. I found it more immediately enjoyable than 8-1/2. It's really a fun picture.
A young couple come to Rome for their honeymoon. The wife sneaks off for what she believes will be a very short meeting with her hero from the fumetti (photographed comic strips)--the Whit Sheik. However, circumstances dictate that her absence is not so brief and she is swept away by circumstances and finds herself going out on location. And no way to communicate with her husband who had scheduled a day with important relatives (his uncle works in the Vatican). During the day the White Sheik reveals himself to be a sham and the poor girl, disillusioned, realizes that her husband is really her White Sheik as they are finally reunited--just in time to head in for an audience with the pope.
They are like two babes in the woods. The film keeps switching from the wife's adventures to the husband's desperate attempts to keep the relatives from finding out what has happened.
One delightful moment is when the Sheik, who has managed to get the wife out in a boat with him, tries to seduce her. He tells her a ridiculous story about how he really loved another woman, but his wife put a spell on him. Subsequently confronted by the Sheik's irate wife, the young bride tells her off, repeating the story. She completely believes it.
The Sheik's wife is a wonderful portrait (or caricature) of a dominating Italian matriarch. Giulietta Masina is also wonderful in that brief scene where the husband meets the prostitute Cabiria. That's a bizarre scene in which Cabiria gets a man to sort of breathe fire.
A couple of moments which I remember fondly from seeing this film in the past didn't quite have the same impact: the Sheik's first appearance on a swing mounted high up between two trees and the scene where the bride attempts to drown herself in a canal or something. She does it with all the expected Italian melodrama and then the water only comes up around her ankles.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
8-1/2. 1963. Directed by Federico Fellini.
(6/30/00)
Around 1963 8-1/2 was considered the epitome of the "art film." I wasn't in the mood for it--or perhaps I wasn't prepared--but it took me a very long time to get interested in it. And when I did get interested it only came alive for me in fits and starts.
It's about a movie director who seems to not be interested in the film he is to make. It is about his fantasies. It is very difficult to tell where real life leaves off and the fantasies commence. He is trapped with a lot of people he cannot relate to--or so it seems. People arte always mking demands on him. At the end he decides to give up and not make the film after all and the film ends with a fantasy of unity and acceptance in which he joins in a dance with the others.
I found the director's interaction with his wife interesting. She phones him and has him invite her to come to where he is working. This seems to be her wish, yet she accuses him of always being the one who pursues her. I couldn't figure out if he was actually unfaithful, but there is a strong sense of marital strife.
There is some wonderful stuff about the Catholic Church, especially a scene with a cardinal in a steam bath--a shrivelled-up little man who nonetheless wields power. Fellini really shows up the power and arrogance of the church.
There is a great memory or fantasy about the protagonist as a child, going with his friends to visit the prostitute Sagharina and paying her a few coins to dance the rhumba. The fat Sagharina is a wonderful figure, one who reappears elsewhere in the film.
There is a very memorable scene where the director has a fantasy about lording it over some women who constitute a kind of harem and cater to his every whim. But as they get old they are banished to the upstairs. This fantasy contrasts vividly with the reality of nagging, demanding women that he has to put up with.
Towards the end there is a scene where the director has to look at screen tests of people who want to play the parts of some of the figures from his life. That was an interesting scene and it pointed up thye fact that what he wanted to make was really about his own life.
Then there was an interesting unfinished set for a spaceship or something. Whatever it was, it didn't seem to fit in with the serious (or pretentious) nature of the film he aspired to make. It is at this set that the director appears, dogged by everyone, at a sort of press conference at which he announces that he is not going to make the picture. That is a very intense scene.
I didn't get very far with 8-1/2. I really didn't connect with it to any extent. And I didn't find Marcello Mastroianni so interesting, either. Perhaps another time.
Around 1963 8-1/2 was considered the epitome of the "art film." I wasn't in the mood for it--or perhaps I wasn't prepared--but it took me a very long time to get interested in it. And when I did get interested it only came alive for me in fits and starts.
It's about a movie director who seems to not be interested in the film he is to make. It is about his fantasies. It is very difficult to tell where real life leaves off and the fantasies commence. He is trapped with a lot of people he cannot relate to--or so it seems. People arte always mking demands on him. At the end he decides to give up and not make the film after all and the film ends with a fantasy of unity and acceptance in which he joins in a dance with the others.
I found the director's interaction with his wife interesting. She phones him and has him invite her to come to where he is working. This seems to be her wish, yet she accuses him of always being the one who pursues her. I couldn't figure out if he was actually unfaithful, but there is a strong sense of marital strife.
There is some wonderful stuff about the Catholic Church, especially a scene with a cardinal in a steam bath--a shrivelled-up little man who nonetheless wields power. Fellini really shows up the power and arrogance of the church.
There is a great memory or fantasy about the protagonist as a child, going with his friends to visit the prostitute Sagharina and paying her a few coins to dance the rhumba. The fat Sagharina is a wonderful figure, one who reappears elsewhere in the film.
There is a very memorable scene where the director has a fantasy about lording it over some women who constitute a kind of harem and cater to his every whim. But as they get old they are banished to the upstairs. This fantasy contrasts vividly with the reality of nagging, demanding women that he has to put up with.
Towards the end there is a scene where the director has to look at screen tests of people who want to play the parts of some of the figures from his life. That was an interesting scene and it pointed up thye fact that what he wanted to make was really about his own life.
Then there was an interesting unfinished set for a spaceship or something. Whatever it was, it didn't seem to fit in with the serious (or pretentious) nature of the film he aspired to make. It is at this set that the director appears, dogged by everyone, at a sort of press conference at which he announces that he is not going to make the picture. That is a very intense scene.
I didn't get very far with 8-1/2. I really didn't connect with it to any extent. And I didn't find Marcello Mastroianni so interesting, either. Perhaps another time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)