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Film: Nights Of Cabiria
Release date: 2nd March 2009
Certificate: PG
Running time: 114 mins
Director: Federico Fellini
Starring: Giulietta Masina, Giovanni Baghino, Loretta Capitoli, Francois Perier, Franca Marzi
Genre: Drama/Romance
Studio: Optimum
Format: DVD
Country: Italy/France
Following on from The White Sheik and La Strada, Fellini teams up again with his wife and muse Giulietta Masina in this Oscar-winning film, which marks a pivotal point in the director’s career.
The film is structured around the sporadic accounts of naive prostitute Cabiria who lives on the outskirts of Rome. In the opening scene, Cabiria and her lover Giorgio are running hand in hand along a riverbank outside the city. As she pauses by the river to enjoy the moment, Giorgio grabs Cabiria’s handbag and pushes her into the river. Dragged to safety by some boys playing nearby, Cabiria is shaken and sodden, but furious with her rescuers and determined to make her own way home. As she burns her thieving boyfriend’s belongings outside her shabby house, Cabiria promises herself she will never be a fool for love again.
Later that night, film star Alberto Lazarri picks Cabiria up off the street after a quarrelling with his glamorous girlfriend. Back at Alberto’s luxurious house, Cabiria enjoys her lavish surroundings, but is forced to hide when his girlfriend returns unexpectedly. Concealed in the bathroom, she watches with all too familiar disappointment as Alberto reconciles his relationship, and falls asleep slumped on the floor.
Dejected and lonely, Cabiria joins her friends on an impulsive pilgrimage to pray for abolition of her sins. Afterwards, she is devastated to find herself and her friends unchanged by their religious expedition.
Cabiria gets drunk and stumbles into a music hall performance at a seedy theatre, where she is plucked from the audience almost immediately by a smirking hypnotist. Onstage, Cabiria is hypnotised and believes she is a young girl in love, much to the cruel delight of the audience. Furious and humiliated, Cabiria flees from the theatre and straight into the path of mild mannered Oscar, and a doomed whirlwind romance ensues…
Nights Of Cabiria’s sporadic structure is ideally suited to its heroine’s tumultuous life; random encounters are played out in strange, haunting sequences which are at once authentically real and tinged with surrealism. In a famous sequence, Cabiria, abandoned at night by one of her clients, wanders though the darkening countryside outside of Rome. Here she meets a mysterious man who works through the night bringing food and comfort to impoverished people living inside caves in the hillside. This bizarre, dream-like sequence was originally cut by censors apparently affronted by its portrayal of charity independent of the church. Restored to the DVD edition, this sequence is a touching glimpse of the fate of the poor and neglected in society, indeed, living among the misfortunate is a formerly wealthy prostitute whom Cabiria is shocked to see living in such squalor. The anonymous man’s quiet charity contrasts starkly with the hysteria of the pilgrimage scene which follows it, a subtle reminder of Fellini’s aversion for the authority of the Church in Italian society.
Fellini fills his film with larger than life characters from the seedy underbelly of society (he enlisted Pier Palo Pasolini to advise him on the sleazier side of Roman life). These poor and marginalised characters are treated with a compassion that characterises his work. Although concerned primarily with the poverty stricken, there are hints of Fellini’s fascination with decadence which defined his later films. The film star’s lavish apartment, complete with marble staircases and tropical birds is contrasted starkly with Cabiria’s own shack on the fringe of the city. When Cabiria moves on, she sells her home to a downcast, poor family, far too large for the cramped dwelling. Like the waifs and strays forced to shelter in the hillside, these people are marginalised by society, and alienated by the creeping excesses of life in Rome.
Giulietta Masina is extraordinary in the central role, perfectly embodying Cabiria’s unbreakable joy de vivre. Branded the female Chaplin, Masina has a hugely expressive face which flickers seamlessly between pathos and comedy, betraying moments of devastating vulnerability beneath her exuberant swagger. She is a strangely childlike character, who flits rapidly between joy and rage. Like a child she makes rash decisions, quarrels relentlessly with her friends, and is fatally trusting of those around her.
It is not hard to see why the film attracted criticism on release for its odd, sometimes vaguely comical portrayal of prostitution. Indeed, Cabiria seems to spend more time arguing with her friends and going on dates than she does actually plying her trade. But Fellini was less concerned with exploring the grim realities of his subject matter than he was studying the strength of the human spirit. Perhaps the film is best viewed as fable; Cabiria is a symbol of hope, but she is also a very flawed, deeply human character, resilient, but completely unable to learn from her mistakes.
The final film from his Neo Realist period, Nights of Cabiria was Fellini’s last study of society’s outsiders before he turned his attention to decadence and glamour in sprawling art films like La Dolce Vita and 8½ .
Cabiria is perhaps the greatest outsider of Fellini’s work. Her misadventures provide both a subtle social commentary and a deeply affecting message about hope and emotional resilience. It is Giulietta Masina’s unforgettable performance; however, that really gives this film its tender heart. AM
Film: Spirits Of The Dead
Release date: 15th November 2010
Certificate: 18
Running time: 121 mins
Director: Federico Fellini, Louis Malle, Roger Vadim
Starring: Brigitte Bardot, Alain Delon, Jane Fonda, Terence Stamp, James Robertson Justice
Genre: Horror/Mystery
Studio: Arrow
Format: Blu-ray
Country: France/Italy
Inspired by three short stories by Edgar Allan Poe, Roger Vadim (Barbarella), Louis Malle (Murmur of the Heart) and Federico Fellini (La Dolce Vita) each contribute to this horror omnibus which is available for the first time on Blu-ray.
Roger Vadim follows Barbarella with the first segment in this anthology, with his adaptation of the first of Poe’s published works, Metzengerstein: A Tale In Imitation Of The German. Starring both Jane (then married to Vadim) and Peter Fonda as the evil countess Frederique de Metzengerstein and her rival Baron Wilhelm Berlifitzing respectively. In an act of rage after being spurned by the young Baron, spoiled Frederique burns down his stables, killing him and all but one of his horses. She forms a strange bond with the black stallion after witnessing the same figure being burned out of the large tapestry in her castle, indicating that there is more to the horse than she anticipated.
Louis Malle continues with William Wilson, adapted from the short story of the same name. An Austrian soldier desperately runs through the claustrophobic streets of a 19th century Italian town before seeking refuge in a church. He frantically demands to be seen for confession, and continues to recount all the evils in his life to the bewildered priest. It becomes clear that the soldier, William Wilson (Alain Delon), has been doggedly pursued throughout his life by his doppelganger (Delon again), who is determined to make him see the errors of his ways.
Fellini concludes the trio of stories with Toby Dammit, (very) loosely based on the short story Never Bet The Devil Your Head. Terence Stamp is Toby Dammit, a failing Shakespearean actor, driven to near-madness by alcohol and paranoia who travels to Rome to take part in a film where he will be paid with a new Ferrari. Drunk and delirious, Dammit stumbles around an awards ceremony where he is the guest of honour, before speeding off in his new car. Plagued by visions of a young girl playing with a ball, Dammit approaches a fallen bridge, determined to make the jump across…
The most striking element of this collection is the differing quality of the three films. Metzengerstein is by far the weakest of the three, despite the calibre of the cast. The production values are poor, with many of the costumes being recycled from Barbarella, resulting in medieval sets and a medieval-looking supporting cast working around a scantily clad 21st century astronaut riding around the countryside on her horse. Its Robin Hood meets Flash Gordon, but with an even more nonsensical plot than that allegory suggests. Jane Fonda snarls and pouts impressively enough as the spoiled and selfish countess, but Peter Fonda is criminally underused, with only a few fleeting minutes of screen time.
The rivalry between the two families is barely touched upon, with the baron’s rejection of the sexual advances of the countess providing the basis for her act of revenge (in the original story, both characters are male, and there is a long line of disputes and competition between the warring families which sets up the burning of the stables). This interpretation of the source material brings a strange, obsessive quality to the character of Metzengerstein, which is at odds with her actions. Initially she is headstrong and assertive, but soon becomes completely fixated by the horse who she believes to be the embodiment of the baron - despite their interaction being limited to her flirting with him, and his rejection of her.
Louis Malle fairs slightly better with William Wilson. With a much more interesting plot and a truly unnerving premise, this story is a welcome change of pace after the drawn out trudge through Metzengerstein. Alain Delon is superb as the titular soldier, confessing his sins after being relentlessly pursued by his doppelganger. The game of cat and mouse between the two starts in their school days, with the evil Wilson’s bullying and torture of his classmates attracting the attention of his double, and continues through his time in medical school when he intends to perform a living autopsy on a tied and naked girl before being foiled again.
Poe’s notion of the doppelganger is based on the feeling of unease when one encounters someone with the same name, taking away an element of one’s identity as we lose part of our uniqueness. This sense of the uncanny permeates the film, as the macabre and evil acts of Wilson are infiltrated by his reflection. Whether or not the other William Wilson is merely a projection of his subconscious is open to speculation, as he shows little remorse for his actions.
This segment does suffer from some laughable production errors (breathing corpses and mannequin’s in lieu of stunt doubles being of particular note) which only seem to add to the sense of strangeness and disjointedness that is channelled through Delon’s tormented performance.
Finally, Federico Fellini’s Toby Dammit concludes the anthology. This unique and bizarre short is undoubtedly the highlight of Spirits Of The Dead, and is so superior to the other offerings that it is lauded as Fellini’s hidden masterpiece. Terence Stamp is Dammit, turning in a mesmerizing performance that perfectly mirrors the melancholic, surrealist backdrop of the augmented Rome of the piece. Looking every inch the washed up rock star, Dammit stumbles and staggers his way through the various production meetings and interviews that he is forced to endure, always keeping his eye on the prize of the brand new Ferrari he was promised. He is plagued by visions of a young girl (in the original story, the devil was an old man) who seems to be tempting him towards his downfall. He has literally sold his soul for the fame and fortune that is slowly killing him.
Awash in a sea of flashing paparazzi bulbs and masked, nightmarish passers-by, Toby’s arrival in Rome is particularly unsettling. It is an overwhelming sensory overload which acts as the perfect allegory for the broken, burnt out alcoholic he has become, and the price that he must pay for the notoriety he desired. The breakneck race around the empty city in his newly acquired Ferrari is also a highlight, as his madness and desperation is played out through a first person perspective.
Unfortunately, the weakness of the first entry of this omnibus leaves a sour taste that William Wilson works hard to placate. It is worth staying, however, for the phenomenal Toby Dammit, which is the least faithful to the source material of the three, but somehow remains the most truthful, playing with the themes of the original text while updating them to a more contemporary setting. RB
Trio of supernatural stories based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe and directed by Roger Vadim, Louis Malle and Federico Fellini.
In 'Metzengerstein', Vadim's then-wife Jane Fonda plays a jealous medieval Countess with incestuous feelings for her cousin, played by Peter Fonda. In 'William Wilson', directed by Louis Malle, Bridget Bardot finds herself on the end of a whipping when she loses at cards to a sadistic Austrian officer (Alain Delon). Finally, in Fellini's 'Toby Dammit', Terence Stamp plays a self-obsessed movie star who, while driving home drunk one evening, bets his head that he can survive a deadly accident.
This Blu-ray release features a brand new transfer from a new HD restoration of the original negative; alternative English audio for Metzengerstein and William Wilson, English and Italian audio for Toby Dammit, as well the French dubbed version - brand new English subtitle translation on all versions – and rare Vincent Price voiceover narration used for the US theatrical version.
Packaged with a sixty-page booklet featuring Edgar Allan Poe’s original short stories, ‘Metzengerstein’, ‘William Wilson’ and ‘Never Bet the Devil Your Head’ (Toby Dammit); 'Spirits Of The Dead Revisited' essay by critic and author Tim Lucas; and ‘Literature And Cinema' essay by scholar and author Peter Bondanella on Toby Dammit. There are also re-prints of original lobby cards and posters included.
Film: Spirits Of The Dead
Release date: 15th November 2010
Certificate: 18
Running time: 121 mins
Director: Federico Fellini, Louis Malle, Roger Vadim
Starring: Brigitte Bardot, Alain Delon, Jane Fonda, Terence Stamp, James Robertson Justice
Genre: Horror/Mystery
Studio: Arrow
Format: Blu-ray
Country: France/Italy
Blu-ray Special Features:
•
Original trailer
Film: Fellini's Casanova
Release date: 1st May 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 148 mins
Director: Federico Fellini
Starring: Donald Sutherland, Tina Aumont, Cicely Browne
Genre: Drama/Fantasy/Biography
Studio: Mr Bongo
Format: DVD
Country: Italy
Frederico Fellini’s biopic of the infamous womanising Venetian author is a little unusual to say the least. In Fellini’s favourite of his own films, we follow Giacomo Casanova (Donald Sutherland) throughout his life, witnessing his various loveless sexual exploits as he travels across 18th century Europe. Boasting striking visuals and heavy symbolism, it won’t be to everyone’s taste.
The film opens in Venice, where the annual carnival is taking place. After witnessing the festivities, Giacomo Casanova begins his run of sexual adventures. First, in Venice, he puts on a sexual performance with an actress dressed as a nun for the voyeuristic pleasure of a rich noble. Then, after a brief imprisonment for supposedly practicing the dark arts, he escapes to Paris, where he conducts an insane ritual designed to transform an elderly aristocratic woman’s soul into that of a young man’s (predictably, using sex, with the addition of a candle headdress!). Later, after apparently losing his sexual potency (after inevitably catching a venereal disease), he travels to London, where he is fascinated by a giantess, and gets a kick out of watching her being bathed by two dwarves.
Over his life, his sexual encounters become less and less fulfilling, to the extent that in Dresden, a woman rejects his advances and he instead participates in a bizarre orgy with a hunchback and two heavyset women. He lives his final days sad, ridiculed and alone as a librarian at a count’s residence in Bohemia…
The visuals are striking, if a little unusual. Each city Casanova visits is represented in a very theatrical way, by a minimalist set (the ocean is represented by billowing bin liners in one scene, for instance, whilst London is shown as a single cobbled street shrouded in fog).
The costume design is also very impressive, deservedly winning an Academy Award. Each of Casanova’s outfits is extravagant to the extreme. They become less over-the-top throughout the course of the film (in early scenes and flashback sequences, he appears as a strutting and garish peacock, but he gradually becomes more subdued and dapper as he spirals into old age and depression).
Everything about the character of Casanova is designed to make him grotesque – from the horrific hair and makeup (including rolled and bunched hair, and a shaved crown to make the hairline more severe) to his sickening expressions during intercourse and, of course, the very fact that it’s Donald Sutherland playing him (not exactly the most conventionally attractive man). He’s portrayed as largely emotionless – an automaton seeking sexual gratification while avoiding attachment. At no time do we feel anything for his younger self; on the contrary, he is quite repulsive. Only in the final act to we feel any empathy (or is it pity?) for him, when he’s being mocked.
The whole film represents a man’s need to gratify his desires and his inability to connect on any emotional level. No matter where Casanova travels, no matter what he goes through, he will never find happiness, he will never find love. Easily the most poignant scene is a fantastical moment where Casanova falls for a doll-like woman, and, after seducing her, continues to dream of her for the rest of his life. She is, in reality, his ideal woman – she will never resist his advances, and never require him to engage with her on anything more than a physical level. In this moment, the true sadness of Casanova’s character is revealed: he is utterly unable to love a real woman, and has to make do with a mannequin.
Some scenes may appear a little laughable to some, as the acting and characterisation is, at times, very exaggerated. This is still in keeping with the dreamlike, theatrical feel of the film, but it may annoy some viewers.
It’s not the symbolism, exaggeration and flights of fantasy that irritate the most, however. What really grates is the clumsy Italian dubbing of Donald Sutherland on this particular DVD, which distracts to the point of having a detrimental effect on the story!
Despite the heavy-handed dubbing of Sutherland, and the love-it-or-hate-it theatrical visuals and acting, Fellini’s Casanova effectively tells the story (impressive considering the lack of real plot points) of Italy’s most famous libertine. The film’s unusual visuals are effectively simple, and though the film begins emotionally shallow, it becomes quite poignant by the conclusion. SSP
Film: Fellini's Casanova
Release date: 1st May 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 148 mins
Director: Federico Fellini
Starring: Donald Sutherland, Tina Aumont, Cicely Browne
Genre: Drama/Biography
Studio: Mr Bongo
Format: DVD
Country: Italy
Giacomo Casanova is a writer, a wit and an aesthete. Venturing out from his native Venice and passing through the hedonistic capitals of Europe, he seeks to be recognised for his manifold and self proclaimed talents in the higher arts. But in his reckless wanderings, Casanova comes to realise that all anyone is interested in are his sexual escapades. Fellini called this film his masterpiece.
The film opens during one of Venice's famous carnivals. A statue of Venus is to be raised from the Grand Canal, but the supports break and she is one again engulfed by the water. Subsequently, Casanova, who has witnessed this while masked, is brought a note, asking him to attend an island where a nun excitedly awaits his ravishment.
On arrival, he learns they are to be watched by the French Ambassador who proclaims Casanova's sexual genius, only to disappear when Giacomo asks for a reference to the King.
On the return from the island, Casanova is accosted by the inquisition, who imprison him in a cell he can barely stand up in. However, he shortly escapes and embarks on a travel across Europe; Italy, Germany, Britain and France, hoping to make his mark as a man of letters, but everywhere he finds debauchery and disappointment - his string of sexual conquests hollow as he chases nonexistent dreams.
In Dresden, Casanova chances upon his mother in an empty Opera House. She can no longer walk and he carries her to her carriage, but after she drives away, he realises he has forgotten to ask her address to write to her. Finally, at the end of his travels, Casanova finds a position as Librarian at Waldstein. But he has become an object of ridicule, forced to eat with the servants. He is left to dream about the one woman he found in his travels whom he considered perfect. An automated doll…
Fellini's Casanova is a haunted dream journey through spectacular sets, populated by a bemused Giacomo and a surreal circus of grotesques. Deliberately as un-erotic as possible, Fellini meditates on the emptiness within Casanova, and the artifice that surrounds him in the debauched European nations - artifice that Casanova cannot help but beg for recognition from. The film is an incredible vision that does not readily open itself to explanation, but rather needs to be felt emotionally through the absurd chaotic journey on which Casanova is our steadfast guide.
The occasional narration by Giacomo provides the reinforcement that the madness we are witnessing is in fact Casanova's madness, even while Donald Sutherland provides an imperious and unrelenting presence as the stillness at the centre of each scene. Sutherland, despite being possibly the least likely actor ever to portray Casanova, radiates a softness and unnatural beauty that is quite unexpected. It is a triumph, therefore, that he never allows Casanova to become an object of sympathy or to allow his naiveté to overcome his dialogue with the audience. Fellini despised Casanova. Sutherland allows him to become an object of ridicule without compromising the character's integrity. The audience are left unmoved by Casanova's journey, upon which he learns nothing, tells the audience nothing, creates nothing, leaves nothing, and ends up with nothing except a dream about a hollow woman. When other stories about Casanova focus on tremendous amounts of sex and ribaldry, this is a film that dares to show the dark side of the very first ‘playboy’.
However, this does not make for easy viewing. The plot is nonexistent, the Brechtian theatrical techniques are many, constantly reminding the audience that they are viewing a facade of a facade, and the main character is a perpetually deluded freak for whom sex becomes such a routine, that it has all the eroticism of training for and participating in an Olympic sport, and for whom women drift into nonexistence.
For all that, Fellini keeps his audience through incredible scenes. London is a perpetual road in a pea soup fog, inhabited by a 7ft woman fighter who is attended on by two dwarfs. Casanova blunders through, lost and alone. In Germany, he finds a hall filled with pipe organs, played discordantly, and then concordantly, presided over by a comatose Dudley Sutton. As pure cinema, this is as good as it gets. Scenes that will etch themselves into the brain and never leave.
Fellini called Casanova his masterpiece. It is. However, that does not make it easy viewing, nor does it make a whole lot of narrative sense. Casanova is very much a film that requires its audience to feel rather than to think, and what is more, promises to leave them unmoved. It is a brave filmmaker who desires to pull off such a feat and a rare filmmaker that succeeds. A compelling film. PE
