I used to think I hated Fellini movies. This was thanks to some of his surreal movies of the 60s and early 70s. These are among his most famous and so I am wondering if I am some sort of Neanderthal because I am either indifferent to them or hate them (such as SATYRICON). However, in recent years I have seen several Fellini films I loved--such as Amarcord and Il Bidone among others.

The surreal aspects of 8 1/2 and LA DULCE VITA are present, but restrained. However, with follow-up films like JULIET OF THE SPIRITS and FELLINI SATYRICON, the movies just got more and more and more bizarre and self-indulgent. I suppose they were well-made technically, but I just disliked the VERY bizarre elements and found, for me, they just didn't have much of a payoff for watching them--plus after a while, they just seem overwhelming and tiresome. It was just weird with no apparent purpose. This is actually rather odd, because I really like paintings by Dali and Bosch. But viewing one of these Surrealist paintings is different than spending 90 plus minutes being bombarded with occasionally incoherent images as in these movies.

Juliet of the Spirits actually has very few "normal" moments, as it has a lot of the supernatural, weird imagery and symbolism starting about 10 minutes into the movie. According to IMDb, Fellini claimed to have taken LSD when making this movie. This is very easy to believe!

The weird images are indeed weird, but the "sexy" images and salacious aspects of the film seem very tame by today's standards. In other words, the characters in the movie talk A LOT about sex, but never seem to get around to having any! So, apart from a few random boobies thrown in towards the end, this is not an especially sexy movie about sex and desire.

It's very interesting that the lead in the movie is Fellini's wife, Giulietta Masina. This is because according to the DVD notes from Criterion, this story was a not far from life representation of the Fellini marriage--complete with infidelity by Federico and a strong love of mysticism and spiritualism by Messina. So, it's very hard to tell how much of this is a "tell all" about the Fellinis and how much is fiction.

It's also very interesting because I wonder if Fellini's casting of his wife might represent some sort of not-too-well repressed hostility on his part. For example, the team of Fellini (directing) and Giulietta Masina (leading lady) brought us Nights of Cabiria (where she played a prostitute),La Strada (where she was a waif who was beaten and verbally abused throughout the film) and Juliet of the Spirts (where she is a woman married to an unfaithful man). Even Dali's muse, Gala, was occasionally painted as the Virgin Mary among the thousands of paintings that featured her!

For those of you who love Fellini or have a very high tolerance for this sort of material, you may just love this film. However, the average viewer will most likely be bored by the film. It earned a 3 SOLELY for the beautiful color camera-work plus I threw in an extra point for Masina because I felt sorry for her.

I have a lot of admiration for Federico Fellini and his films. His style is not for everybody, people will find it fascinating complete with beautiful visuals, a personal and nostalgic sense of storytelling and characters that are not what they seem on first glance, but others may find him/them self-indulgent or dull. While I can understand the latter viewpoint, I belong in the those who find him/them fascinating camp.

Juliet of the Spirits is not my favourite Fellini film. My pick for best is between La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2, though I also give Nights of Cabiria a big shout out for being the film that resonated with me the most emotionally. Amarcord and La Strada are also splendid. In fact of the nine films seen so far(including this, Casanova, Roma and Satyricon) even my least favourite so far, Satyricon which I found his weirdest film and a little disjointed, have many points of merit.

A perfect film? Not quite for me. I did feel that a few scenes did feel less focused than others in terms of tone and that a couple dragged. Then again, like with all Fellinis, I think a couple of re-watches might do the trick.

But Juliet of the Spirits has many things to admire about it. While not all the scenes worked entirely for me, I found the mix of dreams, Jungian psychology, spiritualism and astrology very interesting, if perhaps not as spellbinding to watch as 8 1/2, and much more even and less jumpy in structure than Satyricon. The characters I was at least engaged with, I didn't quite identify the whole step of the way with the titular character completely like with Nights of Cabiria and La Strada, but again unlike Casanova I didn't find her a detached character either.

Visually, Juliet of the Spirits is stunning. The use of vibrant colours, beautiful settings and colourful costumes are as ever a feast for the eyes. Fellini's direction is overall superb, the films I cited as my favourites in the first paragraph, as well as Roma, had more of a personal and nostalgic value, but the sense of craftsmanship and care that goes in every film of his I've seen really shines through here. Nino Rota's score is bright, characterful and not too obtrusive.

Giulietta Masina is a big part of why Juliet of the Spirits works very well on the whole. Her ever expressive face makes for a both spirited and moving performance. The supporting cast support her well. All in all, an interesting and very good film if falling short just of greatness. 8/10 Bethany Cox

"Giulietta degli spiriti" is a co-production between France and Italy that is of course mostly in the English language, even if many other languages are used, most of them very briefly only though. This film is consideraly over two hours long and it is from 1965, so it has its 55th anniversary now in 2020. I personally think that it looks newer, which probably has a lot to do with the fact that is a color movie. The big name here is director Federico Fellini, who is also one of four writers in charge of the screenplay here. Fellini was in his 40s here, so this is not from his early days and not from his late days either, somewhere in the middle. Also in the 40s was lead actress Giulietta Masina. Most people immediately think of Marcello Mastroianni when it comes to Fellini films and it makes sense because he is frequently the director's leading man, but Masina is his leading lady in several projects too, even if she is not as famous as him, perhaps because her blonde (or red in this film) hair is very untypical for most Italian women. Also Masina was of course the leading lady in Fellini's life and when this film was made, they had already been married for over 20 years and in the end they made it to 50 years and one day exactly. I still felt somehow that Masina was older in this film we have here. probably just me. Oh yeah, to deal with all the Mastroianni right away, we have Ruggero Mastroianni as editor here and he is Marcello's brother. So a bit of a family affair even. Marcello is also in this movie in one scene and that is not uncommon at all. Fellini loved to cast his regular actors, even if it was just for small parts and also if they were big stars and sometimes they even played themselves. So also not a coincidence that Masina's character's name here is Giulietta. Sadly, there is not too much positive I can say about the film. Masina is basically sleepwalking her way through it and the consequence was that i was almost falling asleep indeed. I wanted this film to be considerably shorter. Then again, I am generall not the biggest Fellini fan, so others may think differently. It still felt a bit unusual for me because I have seen a lot from him and usually his works are black-and-white I believe. Anyway, Masina is in pretty much every scene here, but the film is mostly just her observing and interacting with other, frequently more colorful characters. Often also non-verbally as Masina has really not as many lines in here as you could guess from a film of this running time. And when she speaks, it's sometime also just one- or two-word responses. She is always there, but the film never really feels about her. Supernatural occurences or references are also nothing too unusual for Fellini and his films, even if he rarely goes all in the way he does here with the spirits. Sometimes, it almost felt a bit like early Exorcist on one or two occasions with the characters there. But yeah, also the human characters were very vivid and colorful like the woman who slides down into the water naked. Frequently, these characters keep talking and talking while Masina stays almost completely silent and maybe that is why she also felt older than early/mid-40s to me.

Okay, for some reason I remember one scene very well, one brief line in which a male character (they are clearly in the minority in this film) says there is a power outage and we saw that just seconds earlier when the lights go out. This scene stayed in my mind especially because the man's reaction made zero sense to me. The way he acted was as if it happened 20 minutes or more ago and now he is informing the other people nearby. However, it happened seconds ago. The only explanation for what he says and how he says to me is really that it happens on a regular basis, but I don't like that approach either. They always could have fixed it. This film is not set in the 19th century. Okay, as you can see this film was a big success with awards bodies. For some reason. It got in twice at the Oscars and honestly, even if I did not like the film a lot, I would not say the nominations for art direction and especially costumes are undeserving. What is highly undeserving in my opinion is the Golden Globe win for Best Foreign Language Film. I feel they just awarded the big name in charge here. Fellini was already a bit of a legend back then, even if this film did not give him one or more of his many (all unsuccessul) Oscar nominations. But both nominations went to Piero Gherardi, today not possible at all anymore for one person to work in these two different fields, but he was absolutely a Fellini regular and won for his costumes twice in the five years before that already. These two nominations here ended up as his final nominations. It is indeed a pompous movie. You could criticize it by saying that sometimes less is more, but if you know only a bit about Fellini, then you know that visually his films are almost always all in and this one here is definitely no exception. On the contrary, I have seen people call it his most stylistic work. I myself cannot hesitate to call it style over substance too. it is a bit on the shocking side for me how there is so little story in such a long film. Also I thought it was difficult to understand what was going on. Fellini's films are also known for being more of a collection of spectacular shots and scenes, but story-wise there is frequently not too much at the movies' core and this also very much applies here. Admittedly, it is probably also the approach here that subjectively was not to my liking here really and others may have enjoyed it more. Fellini sometimes truly went all in and further with the fantasy element. At the center of it all was a very realistic story though, namely the protagonist hears her man uttering/moaning the name of another female and a large part of the film is about her trying to find out who said woman is, maybe a prostitute? I will not give any spoilers. However, as you may have guessed from the description and review I gave here, it much more about the path to the truth and all the fantastic (in the sense of fantasy) things happening on the way there, then about a realistic solution, let alone closure. I already said that there are certainly more female cast members in here than males and I think people with big interest in Fellini or Italian cinema in general will recognize many of these. I ymself did not, so no further elaboration. One that definitely stayed in the mind though was the one who played the character wwith the really light hair in the middle of the movie or so. sadly, I cannot seem to find the actress' name in the cast list. She did not have too much screen time, but this applies to pretty much everybody her except Masina. And in addition, there were one or two other gorgeous women in here. Beauty is always there in Fellini's films. Same applies to comedy really, for example in the scene with the medium when have a character talk to a deceased character and the medium lets her know that the deceased may not be extremely happy about being contacted. Or at least not by that person. And profanity is the consequence. I cannot deny this was somewhat funny especially with the character(s) still acting so etepetete. Another typical aspectg from Fellini's works. His films or at least his most famous films, i.e. the ones I have seen, almost always deal with upper class. You will not find people, costumes, places etc. like the ones in here with the lower class. However, I don't think that I would have liked this film more had I been upper class or anything. I give ter outcome here a thumbs-down, however I am pretty sure you don't need my recommendation because if you consider seeing this one, then you most likely have seen some more known stuff from Fellini already in the past and can decide for yourself. Like I said earlier, I am not a huge fan of his works, so I was not too surprised that this film left me unimpressed too (except the visual side maybe slightly). If you think differently about his more known projects, then it may still be a good idea to watch this one here. I suggest you wait though until you get to see it on the big screen just like I did the other day because there it sure makes for a much more spectacular watch. I'm sure you won't have to wait for too long as there are constantly retrospectives going on with the one that many consider the perhaps best European (non-British) filmmaker that ever was. Or Bergman. Alright, that is all. If you really ask my opinion, then I say skip the watch. Drastically even because it was cloer to being a terrible film for me than being a good one, but in the end "weak" is the accurate term. Not a good start to get into Fellini by any means. Watch something else instead.