TheLittleSongbird I am a great admirer of Federico Fellini and his movies. While not among my favourites of his movies like Nights of Cabiria, La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, Amarcord and La Strada are, it is a wonderful movie. The start of the movie is a little too in-your-face for my tastes, but everything else works like a dream. As with all Fellinis, it is beautifully made, gorgeous scenery, ravishing colour and dream-like photography are definite things to like when watching a film and Ginger and Fred is exactly that. The music is beautiful and bounces along, while the dancing is sweet and as light as a soufflé. Fellini's direction as ever is superb, while the story has a nostalgic tone with the satirical elements on tacky television manages to be both wounding and deliciously comic. I love both Marcello Mastroianni and Giulietta Masina, and both are just wonderful in Ginger and Fred. Both give performances among their personal best, being funny, charming and moving, proving that human emotion is more than enough to make a performance work.All in all, wonderful movie. While not among Fellini's very finest for me, it is one of his better later movies. 9/10 Bethany Cox

michelerealini I think this is the last great Federico Fellini picture. Maybe it's not as classic as "I vitelloni", "La strada", "Le notti di Cabiria", "La dolce vita", "Otto e mezzo" and "Amarcord", but it's a return to a more comedy style and it's one of the most accessible works of the Maestro as well."Ginger e Fred" (1985) comes after a series of more experimental films from Fellini. In this satirical comedy about TV power, a couple of old dancers reunite for a Christmas show. They enter a world where everything is taken for making audience, the two and their art are just caricatures... But who cares? The only important thing is audience.In this feature Fellini warns about TV dangers -in a very sarcastic way he anticipates what TV is today with all these Reality shows.The film is a typical Fellini picture -the story has not a real plot, it's a voyage where strange people (also in a physical way!) meet, we always can find exaggerated and ambiguous situations...At the same time there's a lot of tenderness between the two dancers, superbly played by Marcello Mastroianni (who starred in several Fellini works) and Giulietta Masina (the actual Fellini's wife). It's useless to say that the chemistry between the two main actors is rally great.It's quite a nostalgic movie -it seems that Fellini looks back and thinks about a world in which fantasy and creativity could be expressed in a better way, whereas TV kills everything.The two subsequent films of the Italian director ("Intervista" and "La voce della luna") are rather minor -although poetic they're not as fresh and simple as "Ginger e Fred".We miss Federico, Giulietta and Marcello.

jaykay-10 Fellini had at his disposal a small, sharply focused, touching story about two unexceptional people whose time has passed - a time in which they were recognized for their imitation of others' style and talents. Each is lonely and presumably much in need of what the other can offer, but we are left with the feeling that, despite her hesitant offer, they will not get together.Unfortunately Fellini's self-indulgence turns what might- have- been into a sprawling, overdone satire of commercial television in which the story of those two is buried. There are two pictures here, and Fellini emphasizes the wrong one. Granted that his direction, in and of itself, is often brilliant, he is too inclined to make every film a tour de force. His segment of "Spirits of the Dead," which I recently saw for the first time, suffers in the same way.

cwitt Ginger e Fred is much more a film about the Italian psyche than a film about an old dance team that reunites after 40 years to appear on a TV variety show. It takes place at Christmastime, and having spent Christmas in Rome, the fun-insane carnival atmosphere Fellini depicts is pretty accurate, but exaggerated for film. Walking around Rome I found subconscious playing back bits of the soundtrack and it was only then that I realized how much I love this film. It's also about people who time leave behind. And about two people who are tragically unable to say how much they do love each other. It's also very very funny. Fellini go the idea for the film after seeing his older films butchered on Italian TV. A highlight is an old woman who was paid not to watch TV for a month. She's brought into the studio a mental wreck, swearing she'll never do it again and promises to watch more and more TV.