MisterWhiplash
The conceit and premise of City of Women, another film by Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini, is the kind that if Fellini didn't come up with, he'd take it and make it his own almost by principle. There's an absolutely wonderful sequence in 8 1/2 where Guido is having a very vivid dream where he is surrounded by women, seemingly ALL the women, that have made an impact in his life. Scorsese once noted about this scene that with Guido he can worship them, hate them, love them, ignore them, but he can't control them. This is very much true in that scene (which includes at one point Guido, played by Marcello Mastroianni, having to use a whip as if the ladies are literal lionesses), and it's the same in this film, where Marcello (this time named just that) gets off of a train (by accident, of course) to follow a rather seductive woman into the woods. This leads him into a giant house filled with... women, ALL the women, any kind that you could think of.Well, almost, anyway, the others are outside the house and Marcello will soon thereafter meet them too. But the point is, Fellini was bound to make a full-throttle, no holds barred cartoon on feminism, and City of Women is at its most, uh, Fellini-esque (that's a term, right?) when he just lets his women go into their mania and as he and cinematographer Giusseppe Rotuno try to keep up (or maybe the DP is trying to keep up with Fellini, if that makes sense). When Marcello arrives at the first place, there's seemingly hundreds of women, and by and large they're all out to pinpoint just what it is about men they can't stand... seemingly, it's all of it, but mostly it's their domineering sense of entitlement and how they go around thinking only with their genitals. It's so startling a place but Fellini keeps things moving by having it change from lots of women talking at once about what they would/could do to a man to take him down a notch or two, to being (somewhat) quiet while watching a film about old-time feminists in the movies.All the while Marcello watches and tries to be on the sidelines. When he is caught in the ladies cross-hairs (of course pictures were somehow taken of Marcello acting like he wanted to kiss the mysterious train woman), he leaves, and simply wants to get back to his train. As you can imagine, Fellini doesn't make it that simple, and City of Women becomes a sort of (mostly) rapid-fire odyssey through the wild and crazy ways of women. I think that because Fellini takes things to such exaggerated lengths - and it's almost to places he hasn't quite gone to before, simply with sexual content and innuendo, only Casanova comes close really - and it's so cartoonish that the satire works. Fellini has these garish, over-the-top figures of femininity, and there are even a couple that want to bed Marcello (like, say, the older lady who offers to first drive Marcello and proceeds to practically sodomize him, only for *her* much older mother to storm in to stop it). But mostly they're out to be at best beguiling and at worst murderous, such as the squad of teenage girls (some maybe younger) driving cars and blasting rock at night and making it so that Marcello has to run away from them driving after him.I think that two things make this madness work so well more than anything, and this is aside from the mesmerizing camera work and (as usual for this director) eye-catching and just magical production design: Mastroianni's performance, as he centers the film into something for us to react to - we may not totally identify with him (actually, I hope most men don't, he's basically a middle-aged horn-dog deep down), and that there are a few scenes in the second half where Marcello somehow (it's a long story) runs into his wife and they have a heart to heart about what's gone on wrong in their marriage. It's not that suddenly everything gets deathly serious, but the wife, Elena (Prucnal, a very good actress) is very drunk and expounds about all the ways that Marcello has disconnected from her. It feels real enough to suddenly make this more than just a series of episodes through the feminine ego-id-super-egos run amok.There are moments here and there where it comes close to lagging, or when Fellini is indulging himself so much in his set-pieces of female mania and their lines topping one over another and another. But there's so many brilliant little moments that add up to being an enjoyable, eye-opening experience that has poetic weight. Some of this is just Fellini having a gas; when Marcello is in a hallway and it's like an art exhibit, where he can flick a switch next to the 'canvas' and a woman's portrait pops up and her making sounds of orgasmic delight, and Marcello can't help but click one off and one on musically, it's among the funniest things Fellini's ever concocted. And it leads up to a sequence that is at first exhilarating in a semi-autobiographical way (it feels like a call-back in small part to 8 1/2 again, but more fractured) and then terrifying as him becomes basically the circus exhibit for an audience of women (maybe the same from before) to ogle and throw things at.In short, it's following Fellini, his alter-ego, and an entire cadre of gorgeous, funny, squealing, maternal, horrifying, garish, sexy, possessed and, of course, uncontrollable women in a spectacle that only sometimes takes itself seriously, which is enough to make its points about how, deep down, some of the feminist movement - when it takes itself too seriously - is apt for mockery.
Nathan Smith
Film Review, The City of Woman (dir. Federico Fellini, Italy, 1980) The City of Woman directed by Federico Fellini in Italy in 1980, was a unique film about men that treat woman like garbage and that there just here for looks but Fellini wanted to make the film so men can look at woman different not just some sex slave but to be treated with respect as woman back in those days were never treated with respect well most of them and is still like that today.Fellini's character who he played was very interesting and sexiest, as in interesting is in how he spoke to woman how he thought of woman and how his role of that character was to treat woman was played out brilliantly, I noticed how the movie went on and on Fellini's character started to treat woman with more respect, like at the start of the movie he was like all rude and thought woman were just some sexy toy and he was full rude and then coming to the end of the movie you saw how he wasn't as rude to woman.The acting in City of woman I believe was very well done by Fellini but some characters looked like they were acting but still very well done as some of the acting kind of weird me out as in the movie when Fellini is in the a car with a bunch of girls and they all start making sex noises while there listening to the music it was very disturbing.The music in this movie I believe was very exotic because there was always music where ever Fellini went but it got really disturbing when Fellini got in the car with a bunch of girls and they put the radio on and the music started to play and they started making sex noises it was really gross I didn't want to watch it because it wasn't really realistic to me and again disturbing but beside that the music was exotic through out the movie.The direction in the movie was very confusing as I did not know what was happening as the story scene kept changing like at the start he was on a train then he was in the woods and then he was at a place where all these woman were and then he was almost getting raped by some fat chick and then he was in a car and then he some how new some guy at this house and he had a wife or something and I was like what is going on here and then he was put to bed and then he heard some noises and he followed it under his bed, it was a bit weird don't you think and then he went down a slide and there were people singing it was just stupid.Well I believe that this movie is good but I didn't like it because it's not my kind of movie, as I find it very slow and boring as I'm into action, thrillers and horrors, but it is well played out and also interesting but that doesn't change how I think the movie is, I believe anyone who likes Fellini's movie's to watch this because I believe they would love it.
noirlover
Such a comedown from the Fellini of the 1960s! At a certain age, some artists have nothing left to offer, like Woody Allen today. They just end up recycling their previous ideas in increasingly crass ways. That's the case with City of Women, which is easily one of Fellini's worst films. It's crass, vulgar, and endlessly offensive and stupid. Whereas the harem of women in 8 1/2 was funny, a whole movie of cartoonish stereotypes of women (slutty, man-hating, and always one with enormous breasts - please!) and the man who's more afraid of them then in love with them. Do yourself a favor and just skip it. Or at least don't see this until you've seen every other Fellini movie first. I hate to think of anyone seeing this as their first Fellini movie because it would definitely turn them off all his other films!
