80% (3)  Juliet of the Spirits  137 min,  Not Rated,  [Comedy, Drama, Fantasy]  [Federico Fellini]  [03 Nov 1965]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 76%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 81%,   Metacritic: 83%,   External Reviews
Awards:  Nominated for 2 Oscars. Another 11 wins & 2 nominations.
Actors:  Giulietta Masina, Mario Pisu, Sandra Milo, Valentina Cortese
Writer:  Federico Fellini (story), Tullio Pinelli (story), Federico Fellini (screenplay), Tullio Pinelli (screenplay), Ennio Flaiano (screenplay), Brunello Rondi (screenplay)
External Links:  Wikipedia  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  Italian, French, Spanish, English    Country:  Italy, France
Plot:  Juliet lives in a beautiful house by the ocean. Her sisters, and especially her Mother overshadow her with their beauty. She is a spiritual, superstitious and naive woman. She visits a psychic seer who tells her she must follow the sex trade in order to be happy. Not long after she meets her eccentric and sexy neighbour, Suzy, who, by all counts appears to be a high class prostitute and encourages Juilet into sexual acts which make her guilty and nervous. A rare night when her husband is at home she wakes up to catch him talking to another woman on the phone. He calls out the name "Gabriella" while sleeping, but when she questions him he lies his way out of it. She finds out who Gabriella is and fears her husband will leave her. Juliet begins having visions who accuse and terrorize her. The pinnacle of the visions comes at the end where it is implied she realizes she would be better off without her husband and is ultimately emotionally emancipated.
Rotten Tomatoes:   Believing her husband to be unfaithful, Giulietta is advised by a mystic to "trust in the spirits." Before long, she is conjuring up the ghosts of past friends, who advise her to cut her matrimonial strings. But Giulietta is too reliant on her husband's approval to succumb to hedonism.
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89% (2)  The Nights of Cabiria  110 min,  Not Rated,  [Drama]  [Federico Fellini]  [16 Oct 1957]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 81%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 97%,   External Reviews
Awards:  Won 1 Oscar. Another 15 wins & 6 nominations.
Actors:  Dorian Gray, Franca Marzi, François Périer, Giulietta Masina
Writer:  Federico Fellini (story), Ennio Flaiano (story), Tullio Pinelli (story), Federico Fellini (screenplay), Ennio Flaiano (screenplay), Tullio Pinelli (screenplay), Pier Paolo Pasolini (collaboration)
External Links:  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  Italian    Country:  Italy, France
Plot:  Rome, 1957. A woman, Cabiria, is robbed and left to drown by her boyfriend, Giorgio. Rescued, she resumes her life and tries her best to find happiness in a cynical world. Even when she thinks her struggles are over and she has found happiness and contentment, things may not be what they seem.
Rotten Tomatoes:   Nights of Cabiria opens with Cabiria (Giulietta Masina) and her boyfriend playfully embracing by the seaside -- and then he shoves her into the water and steals her purse. Cabiria is revived by some local boys and runs off by herself, shouting. What follows is a series of similarly humiliating episodes, in which the defiantly positive prostitute Cabiria is hurt, but never broken. She gets picked up by movie star Alberto Lazzati (Amedeo Nazzari, doing a self-parody) and taken to his palatial estate. However, his mistress shows up and Cabiria gets locked in the bathroom all night with the dog. She then joins her fellow prostitutes for a blessing from the Virgin Mary, and ends up getting drunk and wandering into a local show, where the hypnotist invites her to join him on-stage. The audience heckles her, and she toughly reminds them of her independence and that she owns her own house. There she meets Oscar (François Perier), an accountant who romantically pursues her. Despite the warnings of her fellow prostitute friend, Wanda (Franca Marzi), she prepares to sell all her belongings and accept Oscar's proposal of marriage. After being ruthlessly taken advantage of once again, Cabiria walks off alone with a smirk of hope.
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89% (2)  La Strada  108 min,  Not Rated,  [Drama]  [Federico Fellini]  [16 Jul 1956]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 81%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 97%,   External Reviews
Awards:  Won 1 Oscar. Another 11 wins & 4 nominations.
Actors:  Aldo Silvani, Anthony Quinn, Giulietta Masina, Richard Basehart
Writer:  Federico Fellini (story and screenplay), Tullio Pinelli (story and screenplay), Tullio Pinelli (dialogue), Ennio Flaiano (screenplay collaborator)
External Links:  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  Italian    Country:  Italy
Plot:  Sad story of a waif, Gelsomina, who is sold by her mother to Zampano for 10,000 lire and a few kilos of food. Zampano is a traveling showman who exhibits feats of strength by breaking a chain wrapped around his chest. He performs in village squares and then passes the hat for whatever the normally small crowd is prepared to give. He teaches Gelsomina a drum roll as part of his introduction. He doesn't treat her well and when she tries to run away, he beats her. They eventually join a small traveling circus where they meet a tight-rope walker who convinces Gelsomina to question her choices.
Rotten Tomatoes:   Acclaimed Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini drew on his own circus background for this classic film. Set in a seedy travelling carnival, this symbolism-laden drama revolves around brutish strongman Zampano, his simple and servile girlfriend Gelsomina, and clown/aerialist Matto.
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86% (2)  The White Sheik  83 min,  [Comedy, Drama]  [Federico Fellini]  [25 Apr 1956]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 73%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 100%,   External Reviews
Awards:  1 nomination.
Actors:  Alberto Sordi, Brunella Bovo, Giulietta Masina, Leopoldo Trieste
Writer:  Michelangelo Antonioni (story), Federico Fellini (story), Tullio Pinelli (story), Federico Fellini (screenplay), Tullio Pinelli (screenplay), Ennio Flaiano (collaborator on screenplay)
External Links:  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  Italian    Country:  Italy
Plot:  Moments after the newlywed couple of the fastidious office employee Ivan and his young and pure wife Wanda arrive at a hotel in Rome for their honeymoon and a formal meeting with Ivan's uncle, the bride decides to sneak out of the room and leave unnoticed. Wanda, obsessed with the masculine "White Sheik", her idol and hero of her favourite romantic photonovel, and tempted by his fiery invitation, she decides to actually meet him in person just to show him a painting she made. Without a doubt, 20-year-old Wanda risks a lot, however, she needs to see him in all of his glory. Instead, she will reluctantly join the cast of the photonovel, she will even get a small part too, she will be seduced by the arrogant protagonist and ultimately, confused and disappointed, she will inevitably realise that she is all alone and so far away from Rome and her husband. Perplexed by Wanda's strange disappearance and unable to disclose the news to his family, Ivan will seek her in the streets of Rome during the night, counting backwards until their 11 o'clock appointment with the uncle and the Pope in the Vatican. What will the new day bring for the newlyweds?
Rotten Tomatoes:   The White Sheik (Lo Sceicco Bianco), Fellini's first solo flight as director, is a gentle lampoon of the idolatry heaped upon movie stars. An impressionable young bride, Wanda (Brunella Bovo) accompanies her husband Ivan (Leopoldo Trieste) on a dull honeymoon, full of meetings with family members and the papal father. Bovo fantasizes over matinee idol Fernando Rivoli, AKA The White Sheik (Alberto Sordi), the hero of a photo strip comic. She repeatedly drifts away from her husband and back, in periodic attempts to find The Sheik, ultimately repairing to the location site where Sordi's latest film, The White Shiek, is in production. Her inevitable disillusionment with the vainglorious Sordi is intercut with her husband's comic (and desperate) attempts to explain his wife's absences at family gatherings to his disgruntled relatives. After a comically inept suicide attempt, Bovo and Trieste are reunited. Featured in the cast is Fellini's wife Giuletta Masina as a prostitute named Cabiria, who'd be given a vehicle of her own, Nights of Cabiria, in 1955. Based on "an idea" by Michelangelo Antonioni, The White Sheik was the main inspiration for Gene Wilder's The World's Greatest Lover (1977).
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77% (2)  Ginger and Fred  125 min,  PG-13,  [Comedy, Drama]  [Federico Fellini]  [28 Mar 1986]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 73%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 82%,   External Reviews
Awards:  Nominated for 1 Golden Globe. Another 18 wins & 17 nominations.
Actors:  Franco Fabrizi, Friedrich von Ledebur, Giulietta Masina, Marcello Mastroianni
Writer:  Federico Fellini (story), Tonino Guerra (story), Federico Fellini (screenplay), Tonino Guerra (screenplay), Tullio Pinelli (screenplay)
External Links:  Wikipedia  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  Italian, English    Country:  Italy, France, West Germany
Plot:  Amelia and Pippo are reunited after several decades to perform their old music-hall act (imitating Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers) on a TV variety show. It's both a touchingly nostalgic journey into the past, and a viciously satirical attack on television in general and Italian TV in particular, portraying it as a mindless freakshow aimed at morons
Rotten Tomatoes:   Director Federico Fellini gently lampoons the world of small-time show business in Ginger and Fred. Giulietta Masina and Marcello Mastroianni star as Amelia Bonetti and Pippo Botticella, a onetime celebrity song-and-dance team. Having risen to fame with a dancing act where they recreated the acts of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire (hoping to become the Fred and Ginger of Italy), Amelia and Pippo parted company to pursue their separate lives. Neither one was particularly successful in other fields of endeavor, so when after many years Amelia is offered a guest-star gig on a TV variety show, she jumps at the chance. She also seeks out her former partner, Pippo, who may have looked like Astaire in his younger days, but now....The overall good cheer of the film was dampened when the real Ginger Rogers sued the distributors of Ginger and Fred for "defamation of character."
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