I had a privileged introduction to Fellini's films. No, don't worry, I never met the director, but I watched for the first time many of Fellini's movies when I was very young during a film festival organised in my hometown in Italy and dedicated to Italian writer, screenwriter and Fellini’s collaborator Ennio Flaiano.
That, I guess, helped me shifting the perspective quite a bit from Federico to Ennio and grasp better the meaning behind some of Fellini's films, analysing the language behind them and trying to understand which witticisms, jokes or moving bits Flaiano had written.
I will definitely dedicate a few longer posts to Flaiano on this blog next year, since in 2010 Italy will celebrate his 100th birth anniversary. In the meantime, I would like to focus on Nine the latest film by Rob Marshall.
The film is supposed to be a sort of adaptation for the big screen of Arthur Kopit and Mario Fratti's eponymous musical (with music and lyrics by Maury Yeston) based on Federico Fellini's 1963 autobiographical film 8 ½, interspersed with some other references to Italian cinema from the 60s (that is a couple of hairstyles and costumes borrowed from Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers, the general atmosphere of La Dolce Vita, plus a fringe à la Audrey Hepburn circa Roman Holiday). Pause.
It's a shame I'm not filming myself while I'm typing this post since you're missing me shaking my head vigorously and cringing at the thought of such a hybrid.
I have watched 8 ½ in different contexts and different countries; I introduced it to a British audience who looked very interested and sat next to Italians who hated every single minute of it and shifted in their seats as if they had had enough about it after only 2 minutes.
Yet every time I watched it, I always got the same feeling, it would have been impossible to try and shoot again such a masterpiece for one main reason: Fellini was a uniquely visionary director surrounded by a few clever and witty screenwriters.
When Fellini first started working on 8 ½ he had in mind an ironic and funny film, a “magic kaleidoscope”.
Yet, in October 1961, things were still moving rather slowly and the director used to say he had a hole in his neck from which his ideas escaped.
Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli and Bruno Rondi had already written parts of the story at the time, while Fellini kept on taking notes on little pieces of papers that he kept hidden in a red folder in a drawer of his desk at his offices, and art director Piero Gherardi was researching the materials and the locations for various scenes.
In December 1961 Fellini announced he had chosen Marcello Mastroianni as the main character (he would have loved to have Lawrence Olivier, but he wasn’t available).
For the occasion Mastroianni was transformed into a neurotic man, clad in black with black glass frames, a few lines around his eyes and a sinister and melancholic look.
Soon news spread through the papers in Rome about Fellini looking for actors and actresses and letters and photos arrived from all over Italy and from other countries as well, especially by plump women who swore they incarnated all the qualities Fellini was looking for in the character of Guido's mistress.
A few months after, in April 1962, Fellini announced his cast was ready and shooting started a month after, in Tivoli, Filacciano, Viterbo, Ostia, Fiumicino and the wood around Rome’s EUR.
The provisional title was 8 ½: eight represented the number of films Fellini had shot, while half stood for Boccaccio ‘70 for which he had shot only one episode.
The plot of the new film revolved around Guido Anselmi, a director who goes to rest for a short period in a spa while preparing his new film.
Dreams, nightmares and memories from his past assault Guido, though, and he ends up finding himself caught up in a sort of visionary reality.
Italian journalist and writer Camilla Cederna visited the set and followed the shooting of some memorable scenes: the people at the spa wrapped up in white shrouds like souls waiting at the doors of Hell; the wine-making scene in the old farmhouse; the harem with lonely cabaret dancer Bonbon who manages to make everybody cry.
At the end of the shooting Cederna interviewed Fellini who confessed her he didn’t manage to make such a funny film as he would have liked to and that he had shot two endings since he didn’t know yet which one he may have used.
The film came out in 1963 with an evocative soundtrack by Nino Rota that reminded of circus music and it was a success: many critics saw it as the greatest film about films and cinema that could have ever been done.
A review stated it was a creative meditation on the impotence of creativity; Alberto Moravia wrote in an article in February 1963 that the film was “an interior monologue alternated to bits of reality”; for others 8 ½ confirmed Fellini as a wizard of cinematographic images, a conjurer of memories.
I should be happy to see Fellini’s films being rediscovered because of Nine, but I must admit this film makes me totally cringe for at least nine good reasons, which I'll briefly analyse here.
1) Fellini’s film was "a film about a film about cinema", this is a movie about a musical and a film about cinema, a hybrid product in which some of the most significant bits out of 8 ½ such as Guido’s visions, memories and fantasies - parts supported by a great script in the film - were turned into silly music videos. Some of Guido's visions were based on Fellini's memories (his childhood spent at the country house of his paternal grandmother in Gambettola, Romagna; the rumba dancing prostitute Saraghina; the stifling and at times comical Catholic education he received based on the dichotomy between guilt and fear and so on) - Nine makes sure all these parts are filtered through a sort of demented music machine to provide the viewer with some much needed sing-along fun;
2) Guido's women: was throwing together some beautiful actresses enough to recreate Fellini’s cast? Well, unfortunately no, and while picking Sophia Loren (the only real Italian in the film) as Guido’s mother and updating Claudia (Nicole Kidman) a bit by turning her nationality from Italian to Swedish, was probably only logical to Marshall, such expedients do not really help the film much, besides Fergie's Saraghina basically lacks all the fantastically grotesqueness the original Saraghina has.
3) 'Be Italian' – The poster for this film should feature a simple warning “Contains very annoying music”. While Fellini’s 8 ½ featured Nino Rota’s unforgettable score, Marshall’s film is full of bombastic pop numbers, imagine watching Fellini’s 8 ½ in colour with no sound but with the dialogue and music from Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge remixed with Madonna's 'Vogue'. In a nutshell, every 5 minutes you get the impression somebody may pop out of a curtain clad in a red satin corset and start a cringing number à la 'El Tango de Roxanne’. The leading song, ‘Be Italian’ is also infuriatingly annoying for the fake Italian accent and lyrics (Fact: being Italian doesn’t make you automatically stylish, beautiful or intelligent, otherwise you would have got an entirely Italian cast), though this is definitely not the fault of Marshall as the tracks was originally taken from the musical.
4) The cameo role by Dolce and Gabbana starring as priests. In the last few years many directors/costume designers opted for some clever product placement, but why having the product when you can have the designer(s) himself (themselves)?
5) The fashion/style connection this film tries to flaunt. Extremely annoying. Fellini’s films were unintentionally stylish. Clothes and accessories were used to actually create a character, but Fellini wasn’t trying to sell a product nor to launch a lifestyle or an attitude. Fellini was also a liar and a cheater and before La Dolce Vita hit the big screen, there was no “sweet life” in Rome, it was basically created after the film came out. This demented connection between Nine
and fashion has already generated quite a few photo shoots inspired by
this film, Fellini and Italy in the 60s on various publications.
6) Reason number sixth is actually strictly linked to number 5. One of the MOST annoying thing in Marshall’s film is in fact Kate Hudson who plays a Vogue staffer obsessed with Guido's style. Being the film supposedly based in Italy in the 60s, Hudson launching into a music number entitled 'Cinema Italiano' on a mock runway ending up looking like a crossover between a Dolce & Gabbana perfume ad and a Beyoncé video is slightly anachronistic and also proves nobody involved in this film ever watched any real Italian film from the 60s.
7) Penélope Cruz thinking she’s a number out of the Cirque du Soleil in tacky lingerie and corsets, would please somebody take her away? Definitely a hit with male reviewers/members of the audience, though.
8)The harem scene. Guido’s dream of owning a sort of harem featuring all the women he loved/hated in his life is replaced by a sort of silly dance routine (read pop music video).
9) Daniel Day-Lewis is usually a convincing actor, as Guido/Mastroianni walking on sofas like Benigni at the Oscar awarding ceremony, I just can't stand him.
8 ½ was a film about power, art, loneliness, morals, money, love, friendship and ambition, a film about that circus called “the world of film-making” and a director who finds himself lost in his illusions; Nine is a bit like "Fellini for Dummies", it's a vapid version of the real thing for a fun Saturday night out, a pastiche of the best and worst “Fellinisms” in a trashy modern key.
Like La Dolce Vita, 8 ½ was a series of frames linked one to the other by a sort of association of ideas, Nine is exactly the opposite, an annoying connection of frames, chewed masticated and vomited for a modern audience with no cinematographic education. That is why it will probably be successful.
Fellini stated 8 ½ was “a beautiful chaos” in which he felt alive. Nine is a visually beautiful expensive and redundant chaos. While deep down in my heart I wish this is the last time Hollywood ruins such a seminal film, I perfectly know there will always be time and money for horrid remakes, updates and follow ups. Hopefully I will never live to see Pasolini's 120 Days of Sodom turned into a pop music video though.
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