Part of Essential Fellini.
Federico Fellini partnered with wife and muse — actor Giulietta Masina — for this phantasmagoric character study, the director’s first color feature. Drawing on details from her personal life, Masina plays a woman dabbling in spiritualism whose hold on reality begins to slip when she learns that her husband is having an affair — sending her on a hallucinatory journey of self-discovery in which memories, dreams and supernatural forces merge in a kaleidoscopic gestalt. With virtuosic cinematography from Gianni di Venanzo and a fearless lead performance by Masina, JULIET OF THE SPIRITS is one of Fellini’s most visionary films, an opposite number to 8½ that examines the director’s central preoccupations — sex and love, life and death, fantasy and reality — from a woman’s perspective.
Restored by Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia – Cineteca Nazionale from elements provided by RTI-Mediaset and Cineteca Nazionale. Supervised by Gianfranco Angelucci.
“JULIET remains an absorbing film in its own right, not only as a milestone in the development of a great artist, but as an anthology of visual delights that displays the Fellini team of performers, writers, and designers at full and exhilarating stretch. ” —John Baxter, Criterion Channel’s The Current “...An imperial-sized fantasy of a physical opulence to make the old Vincente Minnelli Metro musicals look like army training films.” —Variety (Dec 31, 1964) “Fellini's best movie…. Lore has it that the master made JULIET OF THE SPIRITS as a gift for his wife. Like many husbands, he gave her the gift he really wanted for himself.” —Roger Ebert (Aug 5, 2001)
