DVDebut: Taron Lexton's IN SEARCH OF FELLINI proves (very) light on the Fellini

Can a movie get by almost exclusively on charm and visual beauty at the expense of any kind believable story line? Prior to seeing IN SEARCH OF FELLINI, the first full-length film from South  African-born Taron Lexton (below), I would have thought this pretty doubtful, but after viewing his said-to-be-based-"mostly"-on-a-true-tale movie, I've got to admit the film works well enough to garner an OK rating.  As gloriously shot by Kevin Garrison in Verona, Milan, Rome and Venice, Italy (oh, yeah -- and in Ohio, too), the cinematography is often so breathtakingly beautiful that you'll be swept away long enough to forget, or maybe just ignore, the rather saccharine and unbelievable tale told here.

As written by Nancy Cartwright and Peter Kjenaas, that story is one of a young girl (played in adulthood by the very lovely Ksenia Solo, below), so pampered and secluded from real life by her mother (Maria Bello, shown at bottom, right) that the poor thing is completely unsuited for autonomous adulthood. So what does she do? She leaves her dying mother to head for Italy all by her lonesome and there to somehow meet her new hero, famed filmmaker Federico Fellini, whose movies she has suddenly discovered via a Fellini festival in her home town. (The film takes place a couple of decades back, as Fellini died in 1993.)

Too dumb to get to Rome where the filmmaker resides, she ends up in Verona, then Venice, before finally arriving at her real destination. But that's all to the good because, along the way, she and we get to view a raft of fabulous locations and also meet and fall in love with what must be the sweetest and most handsome straight male in all of Italy (Enrico Oetiker, below, with Ms Solo).

But onward she must go toward Signore Fellini, and so she also almost gets raped-while-being-filmed by a nasty hunk named (against type) Placido. Not to worry, despite its R rating, this is a feel-good movie par excellence, so when our heroine finally does encounter her hero, it is in perhaps via the most gorgeously lit and filmed restaurant scene in movie history -- with no dialog yet, so that we can instead imagine what is being shared by the two.

Yes, indeed, this is all so silly that it would defy belief -- were it not so lovely to look at. All the leads are super-attractive, and Italy, well, come on: You know how visually enchanting that country can be. So I would suggest placing you brain on hold for the film's 103 minutes and just giving yourself over to its many visual pleasures.

Inter-cut into the film are many moments from the real Fellini catalog. And while Mr. Lexton's work apes the master's, he has filmed his movie with mostly gorgeous actors, while Fellini preferred much more bizarre-looking casts. Both filmmakers give us fantasy based on reality. The master created his films from someplace deep and humane, while Lexton, whose view may be prettier, offers up what might best be called Fellini-light.

From Spotted Cow Entertainment and running 103 minutes, the movie -- after hitting VOD and digital outlets last month -- reaches DVD this coming Tuesday, January 23.

Federico Fellini's CITY OF WOMEN makes its Blu-ray and DVDebut this coming week

CITY OF WOMEN (La città delle donne), from 1980, is among the final few full-length films from Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini, pictured below, and although TrustMovies could have sworn he'd seen it around the time of its original release, it turns out he had not -- until now via the new Blu-ray and DVD which hit the street this coming Tuesday, May 31, courtesy of the Cohen Film Collection's Classics of Italian Cinema. This is a most welcome release, and not simply because it will add to the catalog of a filmmaking master. It is also one of Fellini's better works.

Yes, it is full of the filmmaker's signature content and characters: Here we have the leading man who's a sexist pig par excellence, surrounded by all kinds of women -- especially those on the corpulent side who possess a very large butt, which they know how to move. His leading man is again played by his actor of choice, Marcello Mastroianni, below, who was in his mid-50s at the time and still looking terrifically good of figure and face. On a trip by train to somewhere or other, our "hero" proves to be quite taken with the woman who sits across from him and whom he becomes intent on seducing.

If only. That would-be seduction leads Snàporaz (surely one of the least becoming names in the history of leading-man characters) into a kind of Grand Hotel in which a feminist convention is taking place.

As the only male to be found (other than the hotel's staff), Snàporaz is subjected to all kinds of contempt and humiliation -- much of it creepily enjoyable, particularly as it comes from a filmmaker whose own sexism was, well, rather heavy-duty.

Clearly Fellini was trying to come to terms with feminism, which had been on the rise for some time and was intent on displacing, or at least rejiggering, the current state of Italian patriarchy. While you have to give the guy credit for handing us a leading character whose male chauvinism borders on the hugely unappealing, Fellini was so besotted with his would-be alter ego, Mastroianni, along with his needs and desires, that the filmmaker's entire identification goes to and with the man.

The women here are all, with the exception of the elderly mother/grandmother figures, sex objects or scary bitches. The old Madonna/Whore syndrome is in full Italian flower. If this lends the film an uneasy duality, it also adds the kind of tension that only a secure and talented filmmaker would risk.

That risk pays off, as scene after scene pulls us in and leaves us amazed and amused. or shocked and thrillingly appalled. We go from spoofing the old Italian "white telephone" genre (below)

to the birthday party of a fellow who has supposedly conquered 10,00 females to finally a quest for the "ideal woman."

Yeah, right. Well, boys will be boys, and if their pursuits seem a tad trivial, they're also age-old and, for so many men, show little sign of abating.

And in the hands of a filmmaker as fanciful and imaginative as Signore Fellini, they are also eye-popping and thought-provoking.

If you've never seen a Fellini, City of Women is not a bad place to begin. If you've already seen this one, a revisit is probably in order. The Blu-ray transfer, while nothing special, is certainly adequate. In any case, the filmmaker's fecund imagination provides all the special effects and amazing visuals you could want.

Available via the Cohen Film Collection and running a lengthy but never boring 139 minutes, the film resurfaces this coming Tuesday, May 31 -- for purchase or rental.

8-1/2 is back in theaters: Is Fellini's film -- from 1963 -- the "movie" movie of all time?

Of course it is! Has there ever been a film more about film -- the making of it, the living it, the auditioning for it, the compromising, the pre-publici-zing, the thrill, the joy, the fear (mostly the fear) -- and all from the standpoint of the poor, put-upon director. But because that director was Federico Fellini, who cast as his star the classier, sexier, more handsome version of himself, Marcello Mastroianni, and then surrounded that charismatic presence with some of the most beautiful women in cinema at the time, the result -- 8-1/2 -- remains deservedly the movie to end all movies about movie-making.

It is certainly much better than the woeful and near-tuneless Broadway musical based upon the film and titled Nine, and perhaps one thousand times better than the dreadful movie musical then made from that Broadway show. No, Fellini (pictured at right) loved movies and understood how to make them, and movies are richer for that love and understanding. If you youngsters out there, who have only seen the musical and/or its accompanying movie, imagine that you know anything about the actual Fellini 8-1/2, it is time to indulge yourself in the real thing. Please.

Not having seen this film for literally decades, I was not quite sure how I would respond. I had mixed feelings about the film when I first saw it -- 50 years ago! I was too young and way too immature to understand a lot of what the poor Marcello/Fellini character (above and below) was grappling with, but I could more than appreciate the enormous visual energy and creativity with which this battle was being fought.

Seeing the film again, what most surprised me is how timely, how up-to-the-minute it remains, even -- maybe especially -- its visuals. That gorgeous black-and-white photography (by Gianni Di Venanzo) is still so ravishing that it might actually look nouveau to some burgeoning movie-makers, who, if we are lucky, will then try to reproduce some kind of equivalent in their own work.

It's all here again. From the traffic jam from which our hero, Mastroianni (playing Fellini), takes magical fight to that fabulous hotel (above) with the healthy water and all its guests, friends, relatives, business associates-- and actresses hoping to land a role in the film. And those women!

From cat-eyed Barbara Steele (above) to sad-eyed Anouk Aimee (below) through Sandra Milo (shown with Mastroianni in the penultimate photo) and Rossella Falk -- this array is as varied, stunning and perfectly chosen as a movie has ever given us.

Not to mention Eddra Gale as Saraghina (below) and Claudia Cardinale (shown at bottom) as a vision in white and then black, more purely shown here, I suspect, than anywhere else in her long career. For that "harem" scene alone, the movie's a must.

So, is 8-1/2 a great film? I don't think so. It's a great film about movies and movie-making, all right,  which is why it won a couple of Academy Awards the year it first appeared. It would win a slew more, were it to make its debut today, for Hollywood simply adores self-reverence: Look at The Artist, which won Best Picture last year, and Argo, which won this year. Both films had a lot going for them. But Best Picture? Really?

Still, 8-1/2 remains the movie-movie of all-time: as true (and false), pure (and crass), all-encompassing (and shallow) as the character of Guido Anselmi (Mastroianni/Fellini). It also gives us the-artist-as-asshole about as well as any film, while showing us the wonders that artist can produce. In its way, 8-1/2 has inspired moments or characters from everything from the original Broadway musical, Cabaret, to the film Joanna, while looking back to great movie art like The Seventh Seal. And it's about that eternal subject: the man who refuses to grow up -- again both the great strength and the mild weakness of this don't-miss, one-of-a-kind film.

8-1/2, from Corinth Films and running 138 minutes, opens theatrically here in New York City this Friday, March 22, at the Quad Cinema -- in a Restored, High Definition, Digital Cinema version that is said to look quite spectacular.

Update! I have just seen this new version, and it is indeed exquisite. The detail! The incredibly rich blacks! And every shade of gray under the sun! Even if you think you’ve seen 8-1/2, you haven’t -- until you’ve viewed it in this restored, high-definition, digital cinema version. If you love black-and-white cinema, here's a restored example that puts most everything else to shame.