directed by Federico Fellini
written by Federico Fellini and Tonino Guerra

Yes, Criterion Collection #4.

A very sweet nostalgia piece. No plot, just a sequence of memories that create a feeling. I don’t think there’s more going on here than that, but that’s plenty. Someone in one of the documentary features on the second disc says that Fellini went through life collecting impressions and then building movies out of them. His impressions are sufficiently rich, and his moviemaking is sufficiently witty, that we need no more. There’s ample food for thought – or for, at least, aesthetic delectation – here.

I spent some time musing on the distinction between thought and delectation, actually, while listening to the commentary – I don’t feel I’ve really watched a Criterion Collection disc, you may have noticed, until I take in the bonus features – which is by two film professors, Peter Brunette and Frank Burke. Their discussion takes a completely “interpretive” tack, organized around a vague thesis that the film is actually a sad comment on the stunted, adolescent nature of all human interaction in this small town and in Italy as a whole during fascism. For example, whenever a woman’s derriere is the center of the camera’s attention – which is frequently – they comment on how seeing women as a collection of body parts, rather than as whole people, is a symptom of the lack of real human connection in the world that the movie portrays. They almost never talk about memory, or nostalgia, or what teenage experiences mean to adults looking back on them, or how, to adolescents, everything becomes imbued with the mystery and intrigue of sex. They don’t have a language for saying these things in any depth, so they end up saying quickly that scenes are “just wonderful” and then, after an awkward pause, fill their mouths with other business: academic sideshows. The guy on the left is worse about it than the guy on the right. I forget which was which.

I used to have absolutely no patience for that kind of analysis. This time I felt more sympathetic to it. It is not illegitimate to point out that the movie has very few deep human connections portrayed in it. But neither does Star Wars. The question is, what does it mean, if anything? The implication, when a film scholar says such a thing, is that it is part of the intended message of the filmmaker. However, these guys seem to know that’s not the case – at one point one of them says that Fellini would probably be infuriated by their commentary, because he didn’t like people claiming that there were “meanings” in his work – but the justification, as usual, is that even if the meanings are there only due to the filmmaker’s subconscious, or as a byproduct of his circumstances, they are still part of the work for the audience. There was a time when my response to that was “Oh really? So what you’re saying is that there’s no framework in which you, Mr. Professor, can ever be demonstrably ‘wrong’? Well isn’t that convenient!” Now my response is “Yes, that’s interesting, what you’re saying, but only in proportion to how much it is a part of my experience of this movie.” Guys like this are given a bucket of delicious fresh water and immediately start panning for gold, holding up the grains proudly. Yeah, you’re right, Mr. Brita, that stuff’s in there, but don’t you think Fellini probably wanted us to drink the water?

Again, this goes back to the wine-tasting concept. Sooner or later you get done with saying “yum, wine,” and start talking about everything but “yum, wine,” because you wore that out. The commentary was sympathetic to me this time because I could tell that these guys really liked this movie, but they blew out their “yum” a long time ago. It’s okay to go there, but it brings new responsibilities. Graduating to that next level means raising the stakes – you’re now responsible for both levels at once. I had to wonder whether these guys had, along the way, inadvertently lost sight of the first level and actually forgotten that this movie is not, in fact, a sad comment on stunted human interactions – it’s a sweet, comic, nostalgic memoir.

Another attitude toward criticism, which I am also amenable to, is that critics point out the non-obvious in order to make it available to others, who might then wish to incorporate it into their future experiences. The grains of gold are being pointed out so that we, the audience, have the option of consciously choosing to savor them, thereby (supposedly) enriching our experiences. In this philosophy, criticism is a service, not a conversation. The reader of such criticism is expected not to commune with the critic, or compare notes, but rather to consider his offerings as educational, a Sherpa’s suggestions of what paths to take next. But given the choice, I will always prefer being stimulated to deeper understand and identify my natural experience of a thing than be stimulated to have a new and unrelated experience. The essence of art is the experience of it, and the nature of that experience is uniquely specific to each person. And at the same time, most people can be expected to make the same basic choices – i.e. when given the bucket, to drink the water.

Though I think I am speaking for everyone, I speak at least for myself when I say that the bottom line is: I find delectation a much more essential vein of aesthetic experience than any socio-political or psychoanalytic thoughts could ever be. If a critic offers up a dessert menu of new interpretations, saying, “you might not have noticed, but this movie could actually be seen as being a critique of traditional conceptions of masculinity,” I am almost always going to say, “why would I want to do that?” The only case where I might order what’s on that menu is if I don’t feel full yet. But in this case I most certainly did.

And having watched the bonus features – some very nice, well-chosen interviews etc. – I feel sure that Sig. Fellini did too. Unlike the commentary, this material enriched and confirmed the experience I was actually having – of being dipped into a man’s deep, mixed, sacred feelings about his memories and about his hometown. I didn’t always know what everything meant, exactly, but I never doubted that everything meant something true and personal to him, and that was generally rich enough. I don’t think the ambiguity was really the point, but it wasn’t a problem either; he judged his work very sensitively.

I had never seen a Fellini movie before. The strength of personality behind everything is obvious; it was immediately clear to me why he has such an enormous reputation. The film was not shy about being DIRECTED. Films can work many ways, and sometimes the director is hardly central to the experience, but this one entirely presented itself as the work of an “auteur.” I have the sense that the art-house tradition is disproportionately built around such films because art loves a celebrity, because we’re still wading through these old ideas about geniuses. Because pretension gravitates toward personalities, basically. But that’s not in any way a knock against movies that are built on personalities. I really enjoyed this.

I was immediately struck, strongly, by how blatantly, directly, and repeatedly Woody Allen has ripped off Fellini, in style, technique, attitude, everything. And that’s just from this one movie. After a while I got over it.

Cinematography was very pretty. In this case I did get to watch the later, improved Criterion release, and I’m glad, because the beautiful colors and the fine image quality was a big part of the experience for me. Yes, even on the iPod screen. Also, this edition has a very fine, nicely-judged illustration on the package, which always pleases me.

Music by Nino Rota is absolutely vital to the mood, and thus the movie as a whole, and very charming. I kept mis-hearing the main tune as a hybrid of “Stay Awake” from Mary Poppins and “Big Stuff” from Bernstein’s ballet “Fancy Free.” But eventually it came into its own. Here it is for your Criterion Collection soundtrack album, straight ahead, as the Main Title.