The libertines… City of Women (1981), BFI Fellini Centenary

"We do not go to Fellini to immerse ourselves in story and character or to encounter ideas. What we want from the maestro and what he gives us are fabulous adventures in feeling - a decidedly original mixture of nostalgia, poignancy, and joy that is unmistakably Fellini's own." John Gould Boyum, Wall Street Journal, 1981

"At the Cannes Festival the papers said that Fellini's last film was a total disaster, and that he himself had ceased to exist. It's terrible, but it's true, his film is worthless." Andrei Tarkovsky, 1981

I’m around the same age as Marcello Mastroianni when he made this film and just a few years younger than Federico Fellini who produced, directed and wrote this fantasy in which men of our age come face to face with feminism. I’m a generation or two below them and from a different cultural environment but I can’t say that I don’t know men like Snàporaz, Marcello’s character and therefore a cypher for Fellini. So, other than a snapshot of middle-aged male reactions to feminism, what can we make today of a film that so divided opinion at the time. We should also bear in mind what the director wrote about generational difference in the late sixties: “…faced with one of today’s youngsters, the young man of 1938 is like an accountant faced with a butterfly.”

I’m no butterfly counter but it’s safe to say that City is a startlingly inventive visual experience full of magically real episodes that are beautifully shot by Giuseppe Rotunno – Fellini in colour is always sweet-shop overload but capturing his mind’s eye took some doing and Rotunno worked with him on eight films. Mastroianni is also at his finest as the confounded Snàporaz who’s good nature allows him little awareness that he is part of a system of patriarchal oppression; it’s all a complete surprise to him, even when the points against become ever more personal.

Bernice Stegers gives Snàporaz the right impression, or so he thinks.

The film begins with Snàporaz waking up on a long train journey only to catch the eye of an attractive and enigmatic woman (Bernice Stegers) who excites his sexual interest so much he tries to make love to her in the toilets before mindlessly following her off the train at her station, which turns out to be a field in the middle of nowhere. Still following his base instinct, Snàporaz is left stranded as his train pulls away as does the woman after she calls out his crude advances.

Snàporaz begins a search for civilization only to find a hotel in the middle of a wood hosting a feminist convention with a particular focus on him; the woman from the train even pops up to target him personally. Snàporaz is initially fascinated and amused but this soon turns to concern. He is helped away from the febrile debating hall by a young woman, Donatella (Donatella Damiani) who seems friendly enough but soon has him on roller skates as dozens of other women come into this new room and skate at and around him.

He is helped escape again this time by a large woman (Iole Silvani) who finds him fallen at the bottom of the stairs and then offers to take him to the station on her motorbike. It’s a ruse though and she tries to have her wicked way with him in a greenhouse before being chided by her mother. It’s role-reversal for Snàporaz but things get even worse when he is rescued by girl gangs who drive too fast and eventually at him.

It's a trap and there are too many of them to quote George Lucas.

He seeks refuge at the large country house of Dr. Xavier Katzone (Ettore Manni) the ultimate woman hunter who has a hall of remembrance where he has recordings made of his 9,999 conquests… In the main hall Snàporaz finds his wife Elena (Anna Prucnal) who may become the 10,000^th and he even has a cake to celebrate. Yet, whilst noting this impressive record, the priapic Doctor is now resolving to say goodbye to women… Then the police arrive, made up of the women from the hotel including the frisky motorcyclist and inform him that one of his precious pet attack dogs has died, a very male breed, a hunter for a hunter.

Dr. Katzone’s house is bigger than the hotel where the women convened and it contains a hall paying tribute to every conquest; pictures with recorded highlights which delight Snàporaz, who flicks them on and off with glee savouring their reduction to recorded signifiers of male dominance. There’s no love just lust and conquest. The film snowballs, and there’s no let-up in the escalation of the director’s cavernous visions. Fellini’s flash can be off-putting – Roma on the small screen is a tough watch; too much to squeeze through - and yet seeing it in cinema contains the exuberance rather than magnifying it. Either way, you have to tuck into Federico’s feast even when, cinematically speaking, you may just want to enjoy a contemplative sandwich.

But on it goes as Snàporaz’s unrepentant and, to be honest, almost uncomprehending, sexual attitudes are examined by a swirling array of larger than life women including his own wife, arrived to sing operatically and to throw herself at her reluctant husband:“I want to make love!”...“But it’s raining…” comes back his excuse as he looks for the younger women.

She’s less chance of lighting his fire than setting the drenched woodlands ablaze; he wants the ones he can’t have and he wants them all. As in a dream he chases two nearly-naked nubiles – including the ever-smiling Donatella until, unable to sleep in the huge bed provided for himself and his disappointed wife, he crawls underneath and through a hole to find a fairground in Katzone’s unfeasible basement.

As he descends on the slowest of helter-skelter slides, he sees his romantic life played out in front of him and his restless search for the perfect woman becomes a trial with the reward of a giant inflatable balloon variant of this impossible creature. Once more Marcello takes to the skies in a Fellini dream… or… is it?

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Roger Ebert concluded his review in 1981 by saying the City of Women was ” …worth seeing because it's a bedazzling collection of images, because at times it's a graceful and fluid celebration of pure filmmaking skill, and because Fellini can certainly make a bad film but cannot quite make a boring one.”

City of Women is certainly not that and whilst it doesn’t have many answers it at least raises the questions. It deals with the feelings and, as with all feelings, they are not always rational or explainable. If nothing else we get to see Marcello dance like Fred Astaire… he’s the most charming of rogues and no one ever coped with the dual pressures of likable and roguish quite so well!

The BFI Fellini season continues for the rest of the month, full details on their website.

Silent film clearly was a strong formative experience for young Federico...