Juliet of the Spirits | |
---|---|
Italian | Giulietta degli spiriti |
Directed by | Federico Fellini |
Screenplay by |
|
Story by |
|
Produced by |
|
Starring | |
Cinematography | Gianni Di Venanzo |
Edited by | Ruggero Mastroianni |
Music by | Nino Rota |
Production companies |
|
Distributed by |
|
Release dates |
|
Running time |
|
Countries |
|
Language | Italian |
Juliet of the Spirits (Italian : Giulietta degli spiriti) is a 1965 fantasy comedy-drama film directed by Federico Fellini and starring Giulietta Masina, Sandra Milo, Mario Pisu, Valentina Cortese, and Valeska Gert. The film is about the visions, memories, and mysticism that help a middle-aged woman find the strength to leave her philandering husband. The film uses "caricatural types and dream situations to represent a psychic landscape". [2] It was Fellini's first feature-length color film, but followed his use of color in "The Temptation of Doctor Antonio" episode in the portmanteau film, Boccaccio '70 (1962).
The film was shown in competition at the 26th Venice International Film Festival; and received Academy Award nominations for Best Costume Design and Best Set Decoration. It won the 1966 Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and Giulietta Masina won a David di Donatello for her performance. Woody Allen loosely remade it with his 1990 film Alice . [3]
Giulietta Boldrini, an upper-class housewife, attempts to deal with her mundane life and philandering, oppressive husband, Giorgio, by exploring the odd lifestyle of a glamorous neighbour, Suzy, and through dreams, visions and fantasies. As she taps into her desires (and her demons) she slowly gains greater self-awareness, leading to independence, although, according to Masina (Fellini's wife), the ending's meaning is debatable. [4]
Juliet of the Spirits was shot on location in Fregene, and at Safa-Palatino and Cinecittà Studios in Rome.
Fellini's longtime musical collaborator Nino Rota composed the soundtrack. Until his death in 1979, Rota wrote the music for every Fellini film except his directorial debut, Variety Lights . The music in Juliet of the Spirits contains circus themes, as in Fellini's 8½ , and also uses organ, cocktail piano, guitar, saxophones, and voices without words to convey Juliet's shifts in feeling. [5]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 79% based on 29 reviews, with an average rating of 7.3/10. [6] On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film's re-release has a weighted average score of 83 out of 100, based on 9 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". [7]
In The New York Times , Stephen Holden wrote of a revival in 2001: "Fellini went deliriously and brilliantly bananas with the color to create a rollicking through-the-looking-glass series of tableaus evoking a woman's troubled psyche." [8] Roger Ebert gave the film four stars out of four and included it in his 2001 list of "The Great Movies". [9] Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times praised the film, writing, "Federico Fellini's 1965 Juliet of the Spirits remains a timeless, major work of a master, a portrait of a dutiful wife plunged into crisis that triggers her spiritual awakening. With Fellini's own wife, the great Giulietta Masina, as Juliet, and with his unique command of fantasy and spectacle in full force, Juliet of the Spirits, Fellini's first film in color, is at once an eye-popping display of bravura and a work of compassionate insight." [10]
The film was less well received in Italy. [11] Giovanni Grazzini of Corriere della Sera wrote, "It is known that Fellini's imagination, in recent years, has been unrestrained by a taste conventionally called baroque: ornamental delirium, decorative bliss. Juliet's marital crisis is thus suffocated by the scenographic luxury, the clamor or the tenderness of the colors, the bizarre splendor of the costumes; although sometimes there is an authentic heartbeat of humanity."
This section needs additional citations for verification .(June 2018) |
Institution | Category | Nominee(s) | Result |
---|---|---|---|
Academy Award | Best Costume Design | Piero Gherardi | Nominated |
Best Set Decoration | Nominated | ||
David di Donatello | Best Actress | Giulietta Masina | Won |
Golden Globe Award | Best Foreign Language Film | Won | |
Nastro d'Argento | Best Director | Federico Fellini | Nominated |
Best Actress | Giulietta Masina | Nominated | |
Best Supporting Actress | Sandra Milo | Won | |
Best Cinematography (Color) | Gianni Di Venanzo | Won | |
Best Production Design | Piero Gherardi | Won | |
Best Production Design | Won | ||
National Board of Review | Best Foreign Language Film | Won | |
Top Five Foreign Language Films | Won | ||
New York Film Critics Circle | Best Foreign Language Film | Won | |
Sant Jordi Award | Best Foreign Film | Federico Fellini | Won |
Valladolid International Film Festival | Special Mention | Won |
Federico Fellini was an Italian film director and screenwriter. He is known for his distinctive style, which blends fantasy and baroque images with earthiness. He is recognized as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time. His films have ranked highly in critical polls such as that of Cahiers du Cinéma and Sight & Sound, which lists his 1963 film 8+1⁄2 as the 10th-greatest film.
Giovanni Rota Rinaldi, better known as Nino Rota, was an Italian composer, pianist, conductor and academic who is best known for his film scores, notably for the films of Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti. He also composed the music for two of Franco Zeffirelli's Shakespeare screen adaptations, and for the first two installments of Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather trilogy, earning the Academy Award for Best Original Score for The Godfather Part II (1974).
Amarcord is a 1973 comedy-drama film directed by Federico Fellini, a semi-autobiographical tale about Titta, an adolescent boy growing up among an eccentric cast of characters in the village of Borgo San Giuliano in 1930s Fascist Italy. The film's title is a univerbation of the Romagnol phrase a m'arcôrd. The title then became a neologism of the Italian language, with the meaning of "nostalgic revocation". The central role of Titta is based on Fellini's childhood friend from Rimini, Luigi Titta Benzi. Benzi became a lawyer and remained in close contact with Fellini throughout his life.
8½ is a 1963 comedy drama film co-written and directed by Federico Fellini. The metafictional narrative centers on Guido Anselmi, a famous Italian film director who suffers from stifled creativity as he attempts to direct an epic science fiction film. Claudia Cardinale, Anouk Aimée, Sandra Milo, Rossella Falk, Barbara Steele, and Eddra Gale portray the various women in Guido's life. The film was shot in black and white by cinematographer Gianni Di Venanzo and features a score by Nino Rota, with costume and set designs by Piero Gherardi.
La dolce vita is a 1960 satirical comedy-drama film directed by Federico Fellini. It was written by Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, and Brunello Rondi. The film stars Marcello Mastroianni as Marcello Rubini, a tabloid journalist who, over seven days and nights, journeys through the "sweet life" of Rome in a fruitless search for love and happiness. The screenplay can be divided into a prologue, seven major episodes interrupted by an intermezzo, and an epilogue, according to the most common interpretation.
Valentina Cortese, sometimes credited as Valentina Cortesa, was an Italian film and theatre actress. In her 50 years spanning career, she appeared in films of Italian and international directors like Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, Franco Zeffirelli, François Truffaut, Terry Gilliam, Joseph L. Mankiewicz and others.
Roma is a 1972 semi-autobiographical comedy-drama film depicting director Federico Fellini's move from his native Rimini to Rome as a youth. The film was directed by Fellini from a screenplay by himself and Bernardino Zapponi. It is a homage to the city, shown in a series of loosely connected episodes set during both Rome's past and present. The plot is minimal, and the only "character" to develop significantly is Rome herself. Peter Gonzales plays the young Fellini, and the film features mainly newcomers in the cast.
Nights of Cabiria is a 1957 drama film co-written and directed by Federico Fellini. It stars Giulietta Masina as Cabiria, a prostitute living in Rome. The cast also features François Périer and Amedeo Nazzari. The film is based on a story by Fellini, who expanded it into a screenplay along with his co-writers Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli and Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Giulia Anna "Giulietta" Masina was an Italian film actress best known for her performances as Gelsomina in La Strada (1954) and Cabiria in Nights of Cabiria (1957), for which she won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival.
La strada is a 1954 Italian drama film directed by Federico Fellini and co-written by Fellini, Tullio Pinelli and Ennio Flaiano. The film tells the story of Gelsomina, a simple-minded young woman bought from her mother by Zampanò, a brutish strongman who takes her with him on the road.
Ginger and Fred is a 1986 comedy-drama film written and directed by Federico Fellini and starring Marcello Mastroianni and Giulietta Masina.
Variety Lights is a 1951 Italian romantic drama film produced, directed and written by Federico Fellini and Alberto Lattuada and starring Peppino De Filippo, Carla Del Poggio, and Giulietta Masina. The film is about a beautiful and ambitious young woman who joins a traveling troupe of third-rate vaudevillians and inadvertently causes jealousy and emotional crises. A collaboration with Alberto Lattuada in production, direction, and writing, Variety Lights launched Fellini's directorial career. Prior to this film, Fellini worked primarily as a screenwriter, most notably working on Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, Open City.
The White Sheik is a 1952 Italian romantic comedy film directed by Federico Fellini and starring Alberto Sordi, Leopoldo Trieste, Brunella Bovo and Giulietta Masina. Written by Fellini, Tullio Pinelli, Ennio Flaiano and Michelangelo Antonioni, the film is about a man who brings his new bride to Rome for their honeymoon, to have an audience with the Pope, and to present his wife to his family. When the young woman sneaks away to find the hero of her romance photonovels, the man is forced to spend hour after hour making excuses to his eager family who want to meet his missing bride. The White Sheik was filmed on location in Fregene, Rome, Spoleto and Vatican City.
Il bidonea.k.a.The Swindle is a 1955 Italian drama film directed by Federico Fellini starring Broderick Crawford, Richard Basehart and Giulietta Masina.
Spirits of the Dead, also known as Tales of Mystery and Imagination and Tales of Mystery, is a 1968 horror anthology film comprising three segments respectively directed by Roger Vadim, Louis Malle and Federico Fellini, based on stories by Edgar Allan Poe. A French-Italian international co-production, the film's French title is derived from a 1856 collection of Poe's short stories translated by French poet Charles Baudelaire; the English titles Spirits of the Dead and Tales of Mystery and Imagination are respectively taken from an 1827 poem by Poe and a 1902 British collection of his stories.
Gianni Di Venanzo, was an Italian cinematographer.
Fellini: I'm a Born Liar is a 2002 French documentary film written and directed by Damian Pettigrew. Based on Federico Fellini's last confessions filmed by Pettigrew in Rome in 1991 and 1992, the film eschews straightforward biography to highlight the Italian director's unorthodox working methods, conscience, and philosophy.
"Juliet of the Spirits" is a song recorded by the B-52s. It is the second single from the band's eighth full-length studio album, Funplex. A digital single and remix were released on September 9, 2008.
In Search of Fellini is a 2017 American coming-of-age adventure film, directed by Taron Lexton, starring Ksenia Solo, Maria Bello and Mary Lynn Rajskub. The movie was inspired by the early years in the entertainment industry and a journey to Italy to "find herself" of Nancy Cartwright.
Federico Fellini: His Life and Work is a biography about the Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini, written by the critic Tullio Kezich. The first version of the book was published in 1987 as Fellini. A revised and expanded version was published in Italian in 2002 and English in 2006.