Giuliette Degli Spiriti aka Juliet Of The Spirits (1965)

3 out of 3 people found the following review helpful:

A one-off

A Customer from Saffron Walden, England, 10th November, 2005

Giuliette Degli Spiriti is a very strange film indeed. The title character is a fairly affluent housewife who suspects her husband is having an affair. The rest of the film sees her use dreams and mystical experiences to come to terms with the situation. Surreal interludes seem to pop out of nowhere to variable effect. It's sometimes disturbing, sometimes enchanting but it's certainly never dull. The performances were good, the sets and costumes amazing, but I absolutely hated the incidental music (which I found to be far from incidental) but that's just me. It's unlike any other film I've seen (including other Fellini films) and is probably worth watching for that reason alone. Unless you're fluent in Italian I'd recommend turning the sound down though.

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Dis-spirited ...

Nigel Wilson from Helmsley, North Riding of Yorkshire, 14th September, 2008

This is a personal rapid reaction - I only saw the film through once - rather than a.considered criticism. Largely, although I use different language, I agree with the cruel comments by 'Penguin Egg' in a review for Amazon ... and I too always found 8½ hopelessly over-rated ... Giulietta is full of gorgeous images and excellent filming, yet it seems somehow to have an empty centre. Fellini is, perhaps, too much engaged in re-working his earlier concerns and themes without really achieving anything fresh? Giulietta Masina here, as always, is unforgettable: she has the wide eyes of the involved, and more or less oppressed, observer. As in Notte di Cabiria, or La Strada , or as Marcello Mastroianni plays in La Dolce Vita, all great films, she is a still and simply enduring centre to an unhappy whirl. She is surrounded here by taller, noisy, self regarding, fashionable figures ... sharply and beautifully filmed ... and she takes it all in. She reminded me inescapably of our own good Queen, who also has to receive unappealing visitors (Thatcher, Bush, Ceasescu, Berlusconi ...) with stoic calm and quietly closed lips! A film worth seeing again, but yet oddly vapid.

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Genius as always, pero...

A Customer from London, UK, 4th May, 2006

I can see what people mean by this being a female '8 and a half'. But it doesn't have the flow and grace of that film. Seen from a 'visual art' perspective it's fascinating - many of the scenes, while being overtly 'fantastical', actually take place in brightly lit rooms and come over as doubly unsettling for it. Although I'm no Fellini scholar [yet!] it seems like this is edging towards the kind of no-holds-barred imagination overload that Satyricon reaches [terrible film!!!], and at times I'd have liked a little more restraint on content [crazy characters, costumes, etc] and more focus on dynamic. Nevertheless there are some killer scenes, particularly the flashbacks to her childhood - the school-play martyr scene is utterly sublime and worth the whole film. Masini is so much better in this than La Strada [never worked for me], but I do get a little tired sometimes of how she's always a victim - the only human in a world of monsters. G degli S manages to keep things *just* the right side of being utterly depressing and hopeless - often it's just too funny and ridiculous for that.

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Felliniesque Fellini

A Customer from Sheffield, England, 20th February, 2006

What can you say about Fellini films which probably hasn't been said before and analysed and speculated upon. Needless to say the visuals of this film are stunning, the cast and the acting are as you would expect very weird and very good and the plot is absolutely bonkers.

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