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?

Welcome to the House of  Fun...

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...

Modern times… La Dolce Vita (1960), Fellini Centenary Season at the BFI

Some films you just have to see screened in cinema and Fellini’s epic is a key text, a fulcrum of the artform released sixty years ago at pretty much the mid-point in cinema history. Stylistically, La Dolce Vita has more in common with say Bait or The Irishman than Georges Méliès A Trip to the Moon or Alice Guy Blaché’s early films, which says as much about the influence of the Italian’s film as the maturation of cinematic language and technology. It is a massive film, three hours long with dozens of characters all revolving around Marcello Mastroianni’s central character over seven main sections.

Original producer Dino de Laurentis had apparently wanted Paul Newman for the role of gossip journalist Marcello Rubini but Fellini wanted the subtler presence of Marcello Mastroianni rather than the Hollywood star who in this film featuring actual characters, would have been the subject of press attention rather. Mastroianni perfected the role of sold out-burned out writer for Michelangelo Antonioni too in La Notte, but it started here; his character only able to communicate with women through sex or, as he falls, physical intimidation. He still manages to attract our sympathy (mostly!) and, dear reader, I feel more than a little sell-out Rubini myself from time to time…

Last year we were treated to an Antonioni season at the BFI and this year we have Fellini – two giants of post-realism with distinct voices. Fellini differs from Antonioni in his sense of fun and outrageous ambition; Michelangelo would never start his film off with a statue of Christ being flown through Roman skies or finish it off with the dead-eyed stare of a massive weird fish all via a shedload of casual transvestism, prostitution and the earthy subjects that came to dominate later Fellini films. We can see all this for ourselves as the BFI, in addition to re-releasing this new 4k restoration, marks Fellini’s 100^th birthday in 2020 with restorations of ​8 ¹⁄₂, Juliet of the Spirits, I Vetelloni and The Nights of Cabiria as well as screening of his other key works.

La Dolce Vita is one of his most defining statements and is so opulent and inventive that it flies by even on four hours sleep after a full day’s work… that’s quite something given the episodic narrative but you hang on for the truth about Marcello and the main strands of a quietly devastating story. Fellini confounds your expectations at pretty much every level not least with his unheroic main character who sleeps with everyone but his girlfriend and at one point berates her violently as they argue in his Triumph sports car.

Maddalena and Marcello emerge into the light 

The film features uncredited contributions from Pier Paolo Pasolini and, having just watched Canterbury Tales on the new BFI box set of his life trilogy, you can see something of his influence especially in the second main section as Sylvia, a famous Swedish-American actress played, of course by the iconic Anita Ekberg, leads the dance in the Baths of Caracalla. There a mix of rich characters in the line which also brings to mind the knight and his soldiers dancing on the fateful shoreline in Bergman’s Seventh Seal. Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think, but this night in Cabiria ends only in damp disappointment for Marcello as he tries to catch Sylvia in her Trevi Fountain dance only to be absentmindedly dismissed. He also gets a thump from Sylvia’s alcoholic fiancé, Robert played by Lex Barker, a former Tarzan, a fact that is even referenced in the script.

Marcello is a confused individual, but he’s also remarkably pragmatic, he thinks nothing of calling occassional girlfriend, Maddalena (Anouk Aimée), to see if he can use her apartment for a liaison with Sylvia; using her just as they’d used the prostitute in the first segment; casually paying her to use her bed for their tryst. The morning after they drive off in her expensive car, their “landlady” delighted with her tip and the already run-down modern apartment buildings put into sharp relief by their “escape” after slumming it.

The man with a moving camera; Paparrazzo (Walter Santesso)

The film’s depiction of the media circus surrounding glamour is eternally resonant. Dozens of photographers like Paparazzo (Walter Santesso) swarm around the famous attempting to capture a moment or two of their time, whilst Marcello and other journalists live off this world whilst also wanting to be a part of it. Marcello is conflicted and faithless, torn between the needs of his lover Emma (Yvonne Furneaux) who tries to take her own life after his night with Maddalena, and the need for a connection with a star like Sylvia or even a deeper love with Maddalena. For the first he gets a smack in the stomach from the former Tarzan and for the latter he’s left humiliated – taking to her sat alone in a whispering gallery whilst she leads him on from another room as her new lover silently embraces her.

Marcello and co race off to bear journalistic witness to two children who claim to have seen the virgin Mary. It’s a chaotic scene as the rain ours down and the crowd, a mix of the curious and those hoping to be cured, follows the children as they try to summon the apparition; turns out she’s no less substantial than Sylvia at least in terms of meaning.

Promised you a miracle

Marcello also has the hope of writing more seriously – he has a novel on the go - and looks up to his old friend, the intellectual Steiner (Alain Cuny) who has seemingly both material and cerebral grace, the family ideal achieved along with career success on his own terms. Sadly, Steiner has thought himself into a hollow existence and all is not as it seems at his elegantly intellectual party.

Marcello takes himself away to the beach for some peace and quiet with his typewriter. He encounters a young girl, Paola (Valeria Ciangottini) who seems to represent the ideal of innocence and the (illusory) potential of unformed youth. He calls her an angel and then asks if she has a boyfriend… typical Marcello. This being Fellini she turns on pop music on the jukebox, Marcello’s thoughts grounded to Earth.

Marcello’s father (Annibale Ninchi) comes to visit and we quickly see that his son is a chip off the old block who just wants to party, dance with young women and generally join in. But father cannot keep up with the pace anymore and is taken ill late into the night, returning home with an indication of the finite nature of Marcello’s lifestyle.

Nico arrives.

Then we have an injection of the 21-year old Christa Päffgen aka Nico – future singer with the Velvets and beyond but then known mostly as an actress. She adds energy to a sequence that ends up with an all-nighter at an aristocratic party, wearing a knight’s helmet as the revellers dance till dawn, get drunk and look for the dead. As they wander bedraggled in the early morning, they encounter some locals off to church; there’s faith and there’s hope.

Then the film turns on one truly tragic event and we will see which way Marcello will take himself. Paola returns at the end for a wordless conversation with Marcello, highlighting what Robert Richardson calls the film’s "an aesthetic of disparity”, the difference “…between what life has been or could be, and what it actually is". The film is over and Marcello may well be but Paola’s smile is sweet as she looks on with knowing, almost parental, exasperation.

La Dolce Vita is sprawlingly intense and I took far more from it on the big screen. I’m going to see it again and would urge you to not miss this rerelease or, indeed, any of Fellini’s extraordinary cinematic statements over the next few months.

Full details are on the BFI site. What a way to start the new Twenties!

FF + MM = 8½ (1963)

Of all the accolades for this film – and it’s on pretty much every “best of” list – perhaps the Vatican’s ranking it among the best films made in the first century of cinema is the one Federico Fellini would have been most amused by. Who knows? But the answer might well be in 8½ itself, a film that is entirely about the question: “why make a film?” and about which it is probably impossible to say anything new.

So, why bother trying? There are choices to be made and this is one you can just watch, enjoy and leave alone, you’re not going to add anything to a pile of opinion 52 years deep and yet, why say anything about any film unless you feel you’re either a valuable show off of you just have to make a note of your personal response.

On the way to work

I’m sat on a train, heading down to work, it’s a sunny morning after the rain before and it’s either this or a spread sheet… Having sat in the same room as Federico and Marcello for over two hours, it would be rude not to acknowledge their presence.

Hang on… isn’t that Claudia Cardinale smiling at me over the ranks of Italian tourists packed onto the Gatwick Express? She’s leading me on.

Claudia

8½ is the most numerically-accurate film in history: the precise number of films it’s director had made up to that point with one co-direction preventing its being rounded up to an even 9.

It is ostensibly a film about a director, Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) trying to overcome his doubts about his own credibility in order to make another movie. Throughout he’s pestered by producers and performers all anxious to work as well as an intellectual film critic Carini Daumier (Jean Rougeul) whom at one point he imagines being silenced by "hanging" (don’t worry he returns).

Rossella Falk and Anouk Aimée - funny and serious

It takes a lot to take the mickey and yet still produce such a powerfully-immersive film as 8½ but Federico also manages funny and serious, imagined and real and counter-balances everything impossibly well all through the intense focus of his remarkable star.

Mastroianni is a wonder throughout and has qualities akin to Gish and Huppert – he can show interior worlds and hold Fellini’s contradictions within his character with a stillness that belies the conflict and moving with graceful transitions between the states of confusion, hope, desperation, pity and love. What can appear as a cool demeanor very soon dissolves into apathy and inertia.

Marcello not in neutral...

Very few men can act this way and carry it off – Mastroianni’s “neutral” is so poised that he is able to flex his mood far easier than other more overtly demonstrable actors.

Here he takes even the most unforgiving statements form his inner critic on his chin … He is apparently making a film full of “gratuitous episodes, perhaps even amusing due to their ambiguous realism. One wonders what the author’s point is… The subject matter doesn’t even have the merits of an avant-garde film…” No wonder he “hangs” him!

Lengthy queues for holy water

Guido is in a sanitarium in an attempt to recover his strength and find his movie-making mojo… his self-doubt (The Critic) is soon joined by his over-bearing mistress, Carla (Sandra Milo) who arrives by train to collect her man and her part… It’s hard to see what Guido sees in the obvious charms of Carla and it’s only when we encounter his wife that all makes sense.

Carla is straightforward, if demanding, and doesn’t pull Guido into the deeper waters of his marriage where Luisa Anselmi (Anouk Aimée) is every inch his match. But Carla is also crowd-pleasing cinema and that’s a place the director likes to visit even though he hates himself for staying there.

Carla being straightforward, not demanding...

He calls Luisa and asks her to come and join him – we know and he knows that it will make his life more difficult and that’s the challenge he’s seeking.

Before all this, Guido wanders through the the sanitorium-cum-holiday camp accompanied by his nagging arty conscience. He finds his friend Mario Mezzabotta (Mario Pisu) who is a similar age but has left his wife to be with a younger woman, Gloria Morin (splendidly played by Barbara Steele). Gloria is highly intelligent and an art-house dream of hipster fringe, darting glance and angular black fashion: the cutting edge Guido feels he may lack.

Gloria makes Mario move

Guido seems to relate to the world through the women in his life and imagination – he catches sight of a beautiful young woman (Claudia Cardinale) a vision in white who dazzles as she hands him a glass: the perfect woman for the film and for life?

Claudia (again)

Dreams lead the narrative; Guido ascends from a murderous traffic jam at the start and is pulled to earth by a rope attached to his ankle and then he dreams of his dead parents, visiting them in their graveyard where his mother turns into his wife as she kisses him: one for the Freudians no doubt. But, as one of his father’s minders says, don’t let him play with your emotions.

Guido bows in mock worship when his producer Bruno (Bruno Agostini!) arrives with his entourage but he pays homage only to buy time. As the film progresses though the money wants solid return and Guido is increasingly backed into a corner.

Earthed

He can’t decide on his cast and has only an outline for his story; something to do with man’s escape from the dying Earth in a massive rocket. We see the erection of the launch tower which will have the ship superimposed… it’s another chance to imagine a metaphor not just the hollow film inside the hollow tower but an escape from reality all round.

Luisa arrives with her best friend (Guido’s sister) Rossella (Rossella Falk) and the intimacy both bring make us focus on Guido’s weaknesses: he can kid us with his friends but not with his family.

Imagine space ship right here...

Then Guido has a spectacular dream with all the women in his life slaving over him until they become too old and are sent “upstairs” to retirement with the rest of the middle aged and faded… doesn’t happen in films much does it?

Time is running out but at the screening Beauty returns as Claudia arrives to discuss her part. Guido has pinned everything on her youth re-invigorating his project but, just as he realises that he cannot use her as a substitute for his own integrity, the producers arrive. There is no escape he must face the film crew on set – film or die.

The initial rushes don't look encouraging

8½ works on so many levels and despite what may appear a meandering narrative, always engages with its intelligence and observation. The music of Nino Rota is rightly lauded, matching Fellini note for note whilst Gianni Di Venanzo’s cinematography makes this one of the best looking films of the era: so much light!

But it’s the playing that holds the attention most of all – in particular Anouk Aimée is the perfect foil for Mastroianni and does much to reveal his character’s weakness and way forward.

Here's hoping

It is an incredibly honest film and a brave one too: imagine if your film about writer’s block turned out to be the clunker that confirmed that, yes, you have actually lost it!? But no, Fellini always had it and he proved it again and again – I especially like Toby Dammit his quite stunning short film as part of Histoires extraordinaires (1968) but you know the rest.

There are many ways to consume 8½ - probably the best is from Criterion which is available direct or via Amazon. There’s also a British Blu-ray from Argent Films available here.

Not set in stone… La Notte (1961)

Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau

Why do we own the films we like? In many cases we’re defining ourselves through possession but in a precious few it’s because we have to watch them more than once… probably the very definition of a film you should own. This was the third time I’d watched Michelangelo Antonioni’s La Notte (The Night) and it won’t be the last.

There’s an interesting point made by Brad Stevens in his essay accompanying the Masters of Cinema release of this film, he’s seen the film many times and every time he watches it he sees new details and his view of the central characters shifts. Maybe this is down to the deceptive complexity of Antonioni’s films or it could just be his studious refusal to offer definitive narrative resolutions. Either way, his films reward repeated viewing more than most…

Marcello Mastroianni and Monica Vitti

But are they deep and “difficult” films… elitist works that can only be fully understood by those who recognise all of the subtext and influences? Antonioni refused to accept that “literary” cinema existed let alone that his own work be part of it and, whilst he was happy to discuss his work with intellectual rigour, he made no lofty claims in that respect.

You can watch his films for enjoyment and draw your own conclusions about precise meanings which may well say more about yourself than the subject.

It is contemplative cinema, as I’ve said before and not unlike silent film in many ways, with sub-titled dialogue about as helpful as inter-titles in determining the motivations and feelings on display. Jeanne Moreau might, in fact, be one of the greatest silent film actresses that ever lived with her stillness belying a peerless range of expression.

La Notte begins in the bright daylight high above a sun-soaked modernist Milan – even 50 years on, this still feels futuristic. The camera moves slowly from atop a skyscraper and gradually slides down onto the city against a backdrop of atonal electronic sounds. The director is taking us down into the story.

Marcello Mastroianni, Jeanne Moreau and Bernhard Wicki

We encounter a writer Giovanni Pontano (Marcello Mastroianni) and his wife Lidia (Jeanne Moreau) as they visit a clinic where there terminally ill friend, Tommaso (Bernhard Wicki) is being treated. There is the usual awkward visiting time conversation even as Tommaso orders champagne for his friends and mother.

Bad traffic

Lidia cannot take the bravado and weeps by herself outside. Meanwhile Giovanni is lured into a fellow patient’s room where a young woman offers herself to him, just as he responds she is restrained by staff… Honest emotion for one and the refuge of mindless sex for the other…

Strangely Giovanne confesses this moment to Lidia as they drive through traffic jams to a signing for his new book… Yet, Lidia’s reaction is not quite what you’d expect to this unnecessary revelation – is Giovanni trying to shock or just get attention. Poor Giovanni, to be so at the mercy of instinct and female forces beyond his control.

Remember paper?

At the book signing (filmed in a real publishing house with a real publisher and a real Nobel Prize winner… the illusory intrusion of the truth, natch…) Giovanni is fawned over – he is on the brink of great commercial success but doesn’t know what to do with it other than respond as he did to the advances in the hospital.

Lidia in the city

Lidia leaves and goes for her celebrated walk through the streets of Milan finding many things but not perhaps what she’s looking for. Here Moreau is shown dwarfed against the mighty slabs of Milanese modernism whilst she hugs a lost child, encounters drunks and then breaks up a fight only to have to flee from the amorous victor.

She is “lost” too and returns to the area where she and Giovanni used to live when she sacrificed her privileged comfort in exchange for life with a struggling artist. As she watches youths firing rockets Giovanni sleeps in their apartment…. the day’s events have exhausted him or perhaps he has nothing better to do.

Silence in the library

He is shown impassive and emotionless against shelves heaving with thousands of books – so much knowledge but what does he really understand?

Lidia has reached the suburb of Sesto San Giovanni and calls Giovanni from a run-down café. He drives out and the couple share brief memories of this place where their relationship grew.

Back in their flat they debate whether to go to the party of Mr Gherardini (Vincenzo Corbella) a wealthy industrialist who has taken an interest: “every millionaire wants an intellectual, he chose you” says Lidia.

Giovanni and Lidia react in different ways

En route the couple attend a strange cabaret featuring two lithe black dancers in an overtly sexualised performance. With the backing of a modern jazz band, the girl performs amazing contortions with a full wine glass… Giovanni is unmoved, prompting Lidia to joke about having “a  thought…”

The couple arrive at Gherardini’s party which takes up the second half of the film and is a tour de force which took 35 nights of filming to complete. A series of hard night’s days...

Small talk

The party seems to be in constant motion with the guests barely establishing contact before moving on to something new. An old friend of Lidia’s is there – tremendously wealthy and incredibly bored. Her old life…

Gherardini has Giovanni shown around – he’s too busy to do it himself – and he encounters a woman who seems to prefigure the film’s possible ending when she talks about wanting to read a story of a marriage break-up with a woman sacrificing her own happiness for her husband’s future with a younger woman. But it’s not to be that simple.

A new game

Giovanni encounters Gherardini’s daughter Valentina (Monica Vitti) a 22-year old woman who his intellectual but un-focused, reading “improving” books, attempting her own prose yet happier playing a game of push-compact on the floor. Giovanni joins in but withdraws after their game has attracted the attention of other guests and high stakes.

Lidia looks on as Giovanni kisses Valentina

The night draws on and Lidia phones the hospital to find that Tomasso has died. Ashe falls back in desperation and is sparked into driving off with a racing driver who has pursued her, Roberto (Giorgio Negro). She wants to negate her feelings and the two are shown in silhouette driving slowly through the pouring rain… shared laughter in a thoughtless visceral encounter.

Slow drive in the rain...

But, as Giovanni’s attempts to pursue and conquer Valentina, Lidia cannot complete her infidelity and returns to the house.

Valentina helps her dry off and the two share a complicit understanding of the situation emphasised by Giovanni’s appearance at the bedroom door as they discuss matters with a directness beyond him in spite of all the verbal dexterity at his disposal.

In the end Valentina is left “exhausted” by both of them as they leave… bound together still in their silence. They are far too complicated for her to deal with.

Exhausting company...

Lidia asks to go for a walk and the couple wander onto a golf course as the film’s pivotal moment approaches… What remains of their love and are they now merely “in pity” along with the protagonists in L’Aventurra? Giovanni just can’t meet with Lidia on the same emotional terms and he tries to submerge rational debate beneath a thoughtless moment of carnal abandon?

As in the earlier film we are left with ambiguity… there’s the possibility that the marriage will continue and there’s even the chance that it may be saved. Tomasso’s illness has thrown them both into crisis what will remain for them after the shock of grief has passed.

Giovanni forgets...

Giovanni is ready to turn down the offer of lucrative work as Gherardini’s PR guru and so hasn’t given up on breaking through his block. Lidia repeats over and again that she doesn’t love Giovanni anymore and asks him to say the same… if it matters to her it means that she has doubts…

Maybe.

The three main leads are superb, Mastroianni rescues his Giovanni from being a hateful self-obsessed phoney by investing just enough spark and the occasional sliver of genuine feeling – why does he seek Valentina so readily? Is she the part of Lidia he wants to re-connect with?

Monica Vitti is excellent as the conflicted young intellectual, robbed of any drive or direction by the extreme wealth of her parents. She has tried to create but is happier playing childish games. She baulks at coming between the married couple and in the end you feel she has been abused by them both in their struggle to connect.

Jeanne Moreau

But it is Jeanne Moreau who is at the centre of things, her Lidia being a painful portrayal of a woman in early mid-life crisis, confronted by the death of a man who loved her and the disinterest of the man she gave up her position and privilege to support. Tomasso loved her unconditionally and encouraged her to develop but he was suffocating and she took greater strength from Giovanni’s self-interest.

Yet this once-reassuring trait has isolated them both and she mourns the loss of the man who loved her as she loved Giovanni.

The Masters of Cinema transfer is superb and much better than the previous DVD I’d seen. There’s no commentary but an extensive booklet from the aforementioned Mr Stevens and a long interview with Antonioni from 1961.


I'd buy you all a copy but you probably already have it...