This legendary 1963 film from Federico Fellini was tough to get our head around on first viewing. We will need to give it another go some time. It is true that the plot sounds pretentious on first viewing, but there is most obviously something going on here.
This is the film where Fellini genuinely moves into surrealism, moves away from the straightforward linear timescale. His central character does have his fantasies. It is difficult at times to keep us with exactly where we are, which reality we are in.
It is the way this film looks that is perhaps the most famous, and indeed the use of shadows is striking, stark, more so than in other Fellini films. The rest of the direction is classic Fellini, the profile shots mixed in with those wonderful, classical, wide images. We enjoyed these most in any Fellini films outside of 'La Dolce Vita'; Fellini obviously has a visual eye, to say the glib very least, indeed he is able to put images together in the almost unrivalled way of a true visual artist.
As for the plot, we have the themes of the confusion of the central individual, which is well evoked. Fellini is wonderful at evoking sympathy for the not on paper sympathetic.
This film probably requires another look; for now, it seems to be an interesting piece that we haven't quite put together in our mind, however visually stunning.
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