Nonureva Really Surprised!

Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

Noutions Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Casey Duggan It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Ovulus One of my friends saw this movie and derided it as just another quirky European message film. I offer the following interpretation to help people appreciate this wonderful story.In 1965, Italian director Federico Fellini directed his wife, Giulietta Masina, in an expressionistic soap opera about neurosis and the journey to healing. With her waif-like look of undying innocence, Masina was the perfect choice to represent the child in us all.In this film we see the world as Giulietta (Juliet) feels it: grotesquely distorted in lurid colors, peopled with posturing caricatures of human beings, and beset by hobgoblins from a past that refuses to die. Giulietta's friends are as neurotic as she is, only in different ways. Giulietta herself lives with a dull, constant, inner pain; yet her suffering can lead her out of psychic bondage should she ever summon the courage to face herself.As the picture opens, we discover that Giulietta's husband is heartlessly cheating on her with a younger woman. To avoid noticing, Giulietta dabbles in spiritualism. During a séance, in a rare moment of truth, Guglietta admits – or the spirits tell her – that she is leading a sham life, that no one loves her, that she is surrounded by false friends. The séance abruptly ends.Later, while sunning herself on a beach, she dozes off and dreams of a barge in the water just off shore. It is night, and people from Giulietta's decaying past crowd the barge, calling to her. Next we see her on the shoreline, trying to pull the barge after her by means of a long, thick rope. Then Giulietta wakes up. The film is full of these expressionistic touches.In another key scene, Giulietta consults a psychic – an elderly hermaphrodite. The psychic tries unsuccessfully to get Giulietta to face her repressed sexuality. Similarly, during a visit to the home of one of her escapist, pleasure-loving friends, Giulietta is paired with a real stud; but she cannot bring herself to enjoy sexual relations with him.Hobgoblin nuns in ominously hooded habits regularly haunt Giulietta's home – more ghosts from the past. They hearken back to a particularly painful episode in her childhood, when she appeared as a martyr in a religious pageant at a Catholic school. Only about seven years old, she was tied to a cross on the floor. Brightly colored crepe streamers simulating flames were taped to the cross, fluttering in the breeze from a nearby fan. Suddenly her grandfather bursts in upon the scene and angrily denounces the clergy for subjecting his grandchild to such cruelty. Untying her and taking her in his arms, he storms out of the room.At least someone in Giulietta's past cared about her. Certainly her frigid ice-maiden of a mother never did. We see the mother on a sunny day, colorfully dressed and looking like a surrealistic sherbet dessert.Finally her husband leaves her, depriving Giulietta of the last defense against her neurotic pain. Left alone in her large house, she is besieged by hooded demons everywhere she turns. Discovering a door without a handle, she tries in vain to pry it open. The voice of her mother booms, "Giulietta, do not touch that door!" With nothing more to lose, Giulietta suddenly stands tall and defiantly answers, "I no longer fear you!" The door opens by itself. Entering what looks like a ventilation duct, Giulietta discovers herself as a child, still tied to that awful flaming cross. In a deeply moving scene, she unties the child and hugs her, thereby effecting a true inner cure.Emerging from this secret chamber, Giulietta observes the hooded hobgoblins fading away. Then she walks outside into a peaceful rural setting, where everything once again looks natural.

steffism Many symbols in this movie really want us to embrace the 60s values: peace, love, liberation...emerging is the new spirit of Giulietta...Not in chronological order but just a few listed: 1. Ethereal, translucent white poppies of Suzy's garden symbolize peace. 2. The séance message: "love for everybody". 3. The martyr's rack represents an acceptance of her life sacrifice.Giulietta came to understand her need to love herself and release herself willingly from those bonds placed on her as a child.Overall, this is a message about overcoming the spirits...referring to a New Testament verse: "Try the spirits, whether they are of God or the Devil" (1 John 4:1-5).A key theme is Rota's masterful score: the music represents a parody of life, the circus-like performance that all people put on for the sake of appearances; Giulietta did not want to be a part of the charade of this staged life-style of wigs, make-up, costumes, affected glamour, etc. Rather, rooted in her domestic and maternal arts, she wanted to be true to her convictions albeit within the narrow confines of her guilt-ridden upbringing. When she faced the various spirits of the age, Giulietta came to see that they were all, according to their own opinions, trying to guide her to take their own various paths...but they were not paths she could choose...according to her own sensibilities she would be free from all of the externally imposed expectations others in her life seemed to desire for her...she found her own path in the end. She walks to stage right...into the unknown future, alone, but filled with a desire to take a break from her home and garden...to explore the world beyond the comfort zone of her own making...the knowledge of having made the decision to be true to herself, to make peace, love, and liberation her focus, filled her with a new spirit, that of unlimited adventure and hope.

ElMaruecan82 The 60's were a pivotal period for Fellini where he gained on international stature and self-confidence regarding his artistic talent, but while he managed to create situations I could respond to in his earlier works, the whole time I felt sorry for Guiletta Masina in "Juliet of the Spirits" and I don't mean Juliet, but Guiletta. Guiletta is not Gelsomina or Cabiria, the inspirational misfit who carries a whole film, embodying its emotional core. Guiletta is unusually passive, like carried away by the decadence of the high-class society she lives in, and much more, being probably the least desirable female character from the casting: two realities she can't do nothing about them. I understand the point was to make her look like an outcast, but even within the whole story, something was odd in her character. She was like prisoner in a dream that is not even her own, the dream of her husband, another Fellini's fantasy, using his wife as a ... sorry, for the term, as an excuse. I respect and admire Fellini, but I'm only speaking out of my love for Guiletta Masina, who looks particularly unhappy all through the picture. She creates a disturbing contrast between the dazzling colors that Fellini obviously experiments with a certain delight (it was his first feature film in color) and the dark torments filling her heart with an angry frustration, even more frustrating because she's resigned to keep her grieves silent. But her sad eyes convey this feeling of abandon, of being reduced to a negligible entity by her philandering husband Giorgio. Of course, this is not to say that Masina wasn't "good", her performance fitted the film's subtext, but something was cruelly lacking in her character, it's just as if her soul had no passion whatsoever. She was passive, had her share of disturbing visions, lyrical envies and mystical temptations but I'm sorry, I'm a guy, I'm 30 and I'm sure a woman like Juliet wouldn't have these sort of visions, but Master Fellini would. Damn, I can't believe there would be another film making me talk like a feminist, the first one was "MASH", but this one is much worse because it was presented as a sort of feminine version of "8½", where we'd discover the subconscious of a woman, and that her name is Guiletta leaves up no doubt that she's meant to be the alter-ego of Masina. But what's the deal with a woman capable to talk to some spirits, hiding her most repressed secrets, and being pushed to fulfill her own dreams when she only dreams of peace and stability? The movie could almost pass itself for an introspective journey into the inner torments of middle-aged bourgeois housewife, but this is too cerebral for a Fellini film. And I'm only saying this because if there is one thing I learned from Fellini, it is that he's an artist, a man of images. And looking at the images, I have no doubt this is Fellini's own fantasy speaking, and it's so upsetting that I tend to see Fellini as the alter-ego of the unfaithful Giorgio, Mario Pisu even looks like a clone of Guido, Marcello Mastroianni in "8½" who was supposed to be an alter- ego of Federico Fellini. Indeed, "Juliet of the Spirits" strikes by a dazzling and beautiful cinematography in color, but that's no surprise since the images speak more in Fellini's film than any intelligent or constructive idea. And in "Juliet of the Spirits", Fellini's fans would not be disappointed, they have their share of Fellinian imagery: the circus parades, people dancing in unison, women with voluptuous bodies, curvy forms and sensual lips awakening our most vicious appetites. At first, it pleased my eyes, then it puzzled my mind, then I finally got it and could watch the film, quite relieved: "Juliet of the Spirits" is a MAN's film. It says more about Fellini's personal fantasies than anything about both Juliet and Guiletta combined. Not that it bothered me or prevented me from appreciating it, but then the figure of Masina with her sad look, and resigned face killed some of the enjoyment. I even pitied her more than Juliet, because at least Juliet was still a character. Fellini is not just an artist, he's a complete Mediterranean hedonist, a man of flesh, body, sweat and music, sensations, fruits and wine, the sangria is made of both and tastes like the incarnation of Fellini's sensuality. In contrast, Juliet is a woman who drinks water, she likes transparency, serenity ... but water is also synonym of platitude, which in the context of the film, is synonym of dullness. The word 'Spirits' implies the greater contrast with her husband who's not turned on by things from the other side, but a woman like Juliet, who looks almost asexual with her elf-like looks can be associated to this world. I'm not diminishing Juliet at all, after all, she's classy and elegant and the only character with redeemable qualities, but it's pretty clear Fellini made her look diminutive compared to the other women, hell, she's towered by every one in the film, including her mother and sister. I'm not discussing the artistic value of the film, arty at its best, and if only for being the first Fellini in color and the last to give a prominent role to Guiletta Masina, it deserves one, two, as many viewings as it'd take. But this is not "La Strada" or "Nights of Cabiria", it's more of a colored "8½" using a woman as an excuse. As Fellini's film, it's a great one, but just because it was supposed to be a gift to Masina, to be a film about her, I can't regard it with the same passion. Well, I guess the appreciation of "Juliet of the Spirits" can be translated into one dilemma, to which sensitivity do you most relate to: Fellini's or Guiletta's?

jzappa Fellini fascinates me because there have never been any other films like his. As with the rest of his work that I've seen, with Juliet of the Spirits, he is cotton-dry, avoiding any intimacy or tenderness, his story is very abstract and must be told in the most purely cinematic sense. Fellini's extremely talented wife, Giulietta Masina, plays the title role, a mysterious nod to her own name. Giulietta explores her subconscious, having wild dreams, and finds herself partaking in the peculiar daily life of her neighbor, sexy Sandra Milo, trying to escape from the drearily tedious days she passes as the wife of her womanizing husband who oppresses her (perhaps based on Fellini himself, the connection that perhaps can be made between the familiarization of the title role with Masina herself?).The journey Giulietta takes is a psychologically elevating one, as she comes to know herself completely by working through her desires and demons, and Fellini takes us through it with some of the most inarguably beautiful cinematography I have ever seen in my life. The emboldened colors are given to great schemes and themes and his extended takes capturing constant activity result in incredible steadicam and panning shots.The largest role played in the film however is Fellini, the key to whose mystique lies in the distance he keeps between himself and the audience. So, he continues to beguile me as it's difficult to let this movie go once it's over.