CITY OF WOMEN [LA CITTÀ DELLE DONNE / LA CITÉ DES FEMMES] (Masters of Cinema) (Blu-ray) [1980]

Fellini is commonly regarded as one of the top five greatest film directors who ever lived. In addition to that honorable distinction, he also holds the number one rank for many as their all-time favorite. He is responsible for at least six of the greatest films ever made: I Vitelloni; La Strada; Nights of Cabiria; La Dolce Vita; 8½; and Amarcord. Despite some truly memorable visuals and classic set-pieces, Fellini's City of Women is not one of his best films, but it is far from the travesty that some people (including Andrei Tarkovsky) have made it out to be.

What started out as an aborted collaboration with Ingmar Bergman (another top five greatest film director candidate), City of Women, released in 1980, is best considered an episodic satire on the women's lib movement and stereotypical Italian Male's obsession with the opposite sex. Fellini and his screen alter-ego, Marcello Mastroianni, are reunited again for the first time in a feature film since 8½ (1963). Here, Mastroianni plays a slight variation on the bemused film director character (based on Fellini himself) he played to such legendary perfection in their previous collaboration. We're not sure what his character's profession is in City of Women, and it doesn't really matter. What matters is we know he loves all women and is willing to risk his own well being for even a brief encounter alone with one of them, be it in a bathroom on a speeding train or in a strange woods.

As he steps off the train for an unscheduled stop, Fellini and Mastroianni lead us on a surreal and somewhat nightmarish odyssey through a dreamworld populated almost entirely by the fairer sex. What begins as an amusing sex comedy quickly succumbs to an overindulgent and tiresome fantasy with too much going on and too little to say. The film lacks the emotional punch and artistry of his great works, or even the gentle mysticism of Juliet of the Spirits. I found City of Women to have the most in common with Fellini's I Clowns and Ginger and Fred. I Clowns was a semi-documentary produced for Italian television (later released to theaters) but it became a meditation on Felllini's own childhood and lifelong obsession with the circus clown. In the film, Fellini himself admits that his obsession started out as a fear. I think this observation could be true of City of Women also. The women on display are meant to be feared, not gawked at or adored. Structurally, the film shares the most in common with Ginger and Fred (produced just six years after City of Women), another minor Fellini vehicle for Mastroianni and the luminous Giulietta Masina (Mrs. Fellini). Fellini allegedly had a longtime affair with one of his frequent players (Sandra Milo) yet his wife always remained by his side. City of Women seems to be another example of Fellini exorcising his own demons (like he did in 8½) by admitting his faults and infidelities on camera, especially in the final set-piece when Mastroianni is essentially put on trial. Unlike 8½, where he bravely cast his real-life mistress as his onscreen mistress, City of Women seems less insightful and far more abstract.

The Blu-ray is a revelation in picture and sound. This truly is the definitive release of one of Fellini's most promising and perhaps trivial works. And let it be said: even a trivial Fellini film is still worth the price of admission.

Apparantly that is what the papers said upon the film's release at the Cannes Festival in 1980. My favourite director Andrei Tarkovsky, in Rome that year for the pre-production of Nostalghia, noted in his diary that City of Women was a fiasco: "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." Well i must say it is not 8 1/2 which remains to me one of his most beautiful films but it is still worth watching and even more i dare to say that it is even a joy to watch on Blu-Ray. It is a trip which starts with a train entering a tunnel and you drown into talking and chatting women all the way through the film. The colours of this Blu-Ray version are beautiful too.
So i do not consider this one as a total disaster or garbage. It is a nice entertaining and funny film to watch. Not the masterpiece you might expect from Fellini but still a typical Fellini film.

Je n'avais pas revu la cite des femmes depuis les annees 80. Mais la magie et l'exuberance de Fellini sont toujours la. Ce film a fait tiquer certains groupes feministes a l'epoque, et l'on
parlait de l'obcession du maitre pour les attributs avantageux de certains caracteres feminins de ses films. Il n'est pas le seul dans ce cas (regardez donc quelques films de Tinto Brass, beaucoup plus "exlicites"!), mais meme apres presque 30 ans, j'ai encore succombe a l'atmosphere
fellinienne, comme je l'ai fait il y a deux ans en revoyant Amarcord. Des flashes de son enfance, des traits feroces, bien que sur le mode humoristique, envers certans travers de l'etre
humain, le tout dans une atmosphere mi reve mi realite. Et puis,ces immenses plateaux/decors illumines ou plonges dans la penombre, ces fantastiques places de villes italiennes! Decidemment, oui , quand on est tombe dans le monde de Fellini une fois, on ne s'en remet pas. Allez-y, vous verrez...