When I first read about Fellini five years ago in Kinn and Piazza’s Four Star Movies (2003) I was more than intrigued. The way that they described his work made me believe that it was what movie lovers dreamed of. Since that time, having seen many of his films, I’ve come to respect Fellini, but I don’t love him in the way that I was sure that I would. His work is more challenging than I was lead to believe, but that isn’t where the disappointment lies. To me, in both specific films and throughout his career, he is disjointed. I can’t see with him where one film meets another as I can with Scorsese and Kubrick and even Stone.
Fellini is in some ways, for me, the great disappointment (director wise) of this conquest of the 1001 list. Don’t misunderstand; he has made some spectacular films. La Strada (1954), Nights of Cabiria (1957), La Dolce Vita (1960), 8 ½ (1963), and Amarcord (1973) are all fantastic pieces of cinema, but I’m not sure that I like any of them as much as I’d hoped to, perhaps with the exception of the 1973 offering. That film spoke to me as an inspired vision of childhood, with all of its interests and misunderstandings, that I could feel the director guiding me through. 8 ½ is affective in quite the opposite way, as the audience feels as lost as the director protagonist. Thinking about these films and how I remember them, forces me to reiterate my comment that the Maestro’s work is fragmented. Even La Dolce Vita, his purported masterpiece, lacks cohesion, though intentionally.
Thus, Fellini’s lessor works which the list has prompted me to have in some ways been frustrations. Juliet of the Spirits (1965) felt forced and at the same time distant and I’m afraid his Satyricon (1969) follows this model more so than that of his great films. As I watched this film I again compared it retrospectively against the canon of films to come both before and after. I was cognitively engaged in an activity I’ve dubbed the “backdated pitch,” as in “it’s kind of a Ben Hur (1959) meets The Saragossa Manuscript (1965) meets Pricilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) sort of thing.” I think you kind of get where I’m going with this disjointed claim now.
Someone once told me that there are essentially only two stories; someone goes on a journey, and a stranger comes to town. Satyricon definitely falls under the first distinction, but it’s like few other journeys I’ve ever followed in film. The action commences in ancient Rome, where student Encolpio (Martin Potter) and his friend Ascilto (Hiram Keller) are fighting over the companionship of their young slave boy (Max Born) to whom they’ve both developed an attraction. This is about the most typical segment of the film in terms of both mores and narrative. From here it descends into an almost unending labyrinth that includes prostitutes, obesity, gladiators, gluttony, impotence, and a hermaphrodite oracle.
The work is based on the remaining segments of Petronius’ novella on life in the time of Nero, and thus, much of the onscreen hedonism seems justified by the source material. However, what is absent here is the same thing that initially appears to be missing from La Dolce Vita. Fellini does not seem to comment on the actions presented before the audience. He simply lets them be, and the sense of moral futility amongst the mob which is conveyed in that other film is, as a result, noticeably absent. This is a film that does not end. It feels to be going on forever for myriad reasons. As I was never able to relate the protagonists, I found it difficult to engage in their ever-shifting plight. As with many classic epics, the film gives the impression that it continues on even after the presented action ceases, going so far as to conclude mid-sentence. This might be reflective of the fact that portions of the original material have been lost, but in either case this entire film was lost on me.
Grade: 1 Hat Off
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