To me, this movie is perfection.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Trippy, Freudian comedy of manners. Fellini's first feature-length film in color. Reportedly told art director Piero Gherardi to avoid hues and materials appearing in nature. Fabulous lush cartoon-y result -- the movie is a work of intensely beautiful design. Nino Rota's music is 'swinging '60s' festive and creepy.Giuletta Masina (Mrs. Fellini) plays a neglected bourgeois wife whiling away her days in a chic seaside villa, ordering the pitying maids around and trying on tasteful outfits and wigs. She suspects her slick husband is cheating. Her glamorous mother bullies her for not working to be more sexually attractive, while her impossibly beautiful sister flutters about. The archetypal whore in the mansion next door (the glorious Sandra Milo) appears to be willing to share her life-as-continuous-kinky-sex-fantasy. A gallery of comic grotesques wander through: the clown-astrologer, the hermaphrodite mystic and smug entourage, the butch lady mod psychotherapist, the goofy-sinister private detectives -- and that impossibly handsome older man from 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' (José Luis de Vilallonga) -- and all offer, with absolute certainty, sketchy-to-confusing advice.Meanwhile, Juliet entertains visions and paranormal visitations with increasing frequency. She time travels to extended cracked-memory versions of her whacky Catholic girlhood. Shame and desire for liberation continually collide. Maintaining the respectable facade becomes increasingly difficult.Masina's fine performance is both hilarious and heartbreaking -- and smartly unsentimental -- her theatrical comic skills beautifully channeled as the matron with internal and external worlds sliding toward the edge with increasing velocity. Masina's work as 'Juliet' is mature artistry -- not as lauded as in husband Fellini's earlier neo-realism classics 'Nights of Cabiria' or 'La Strada' -- but no-less accomplished.The ambiguous comic-terrifying tone maintains through the closing credits: did we just witness a happy ending or a tragedy? I felt this when I saw the film as a kid fifty years ago -- felt the same on seeing it recently.

Visions, memories, and mysticism all help a forty-something woman (Giulietta Masina) to find the strength to leave her cheating husband (Mario Pisu).This was Fellini's first feature-length color film, and he used that color as best he could. Stephen Holden wrote, "Fellini went deliriously and brilliantly bananas with the color to create a rollicking through-the-looking-glass series of tableaux evoking a woman's troubled psyche." Roger Ebert wrote, "The movie is generally considered to mark the beginning of Fellini's decline... I think it's Fellini's best movie." Now, I would not necessarily say this is his best movie, but I also would not say it was not. Indeed, it has so much going on that it is hard to ignore. Not just the color, but the fantasy. As Ebert points out, this was supposed to be Fellini's film for his wife, but is obviously still told from his perspective...

Incredibly beautiful this film is, Fellini's first use of colour results in some of the best use of it ever committed to celluloid. With striking design and chic outfits to die for. Unbelievable hats. A witty and playful score, full of 60's European eccentricity.Many scenes are wonderfully conceived and made. Much is sexy - and fun. Fellini himself described "Guiletta of the Spirits" as a 'fairy tale for adults'. However, all of it is one long (I mean over-long long), narrative-free zone, a mishmash of supposedly Guilletta Masina's (Fellini's wife and long standing lead in many of his films) dreams and fantasies. She, as the overlooked wife of husband, played by Mario Pisu, who incidentally played Fellini in the previous film, the autobiographical 8 and a half, finds herself bored, becoming frumpy and unloved. Her friends are younger, sexually active and liberated and she, naturally is envious and frustrated.The actual events of Guilletta's life and her friendship get ever more blurred into fantasy and as the film progresses, this turns into either a self-indulgent slurry of incomprehensible images or dreams of utter beauty and imagination, depending on where your viewpoint stands - and indeed, where the film veers you.The thoughts and fantasies aren't all pleasant and dreamy; paranoid delusions appearing and telling her (the "Spirits" of the title, perhaps) that her husband is cheating on her and that her comfortable life is no longer quite so. Guilletta's acting in previous films had been outstanding, making them unforgettable and truly great. I'm not saying her acting skills are diminished in this, just that it's swamped by all the over-the-top sets and scenes that focus on the fantasy and not her.This viewing was my second and I was fairly determined to follow it and fathom what it all meant. No chance! Let it slip by and enjoy and appreciate the bits you like best. It's also a fairly common belief that the fantasies are Fellini's own and he used this vehicle as an outlet for them. Maybe, after inundating us so successfully and brilliantly in 8 and a half with his own inadequacies, feelings and complexes, found he had yet more that he simply had to get out of his system.Whatever was going through this genius of a director at the time, the film is a must for Fellini fans. For anybody else and especially those who haven't seen the likes of Il Bidone, La Strada, La Dolce Vita and Nights of Cabiria, watch them first. Then you might have a chance to understand - and follow, this master finally losing it. He does so brilliantly but brilliance without substance can get wearying after a while. Practically any other director doing the same would result in a total dud.In my view, a very flawed masterpiece. A contradiction in terms? Well, it is Federico Fellini we're talking about!

Juliet of the Spirits (1965)*** 1/2 (out of 4) Surreal classic has a wife (Guilietta Masina) fearing that her husband might be cheating on her. A group of spirits then try to convince her that she's better than the husband treats her and that she should leave him. This film has so much going for it that it was rather hard trying to keep track of all of it in my first viewing. I think the story is incredibly strong, as are the performances and the visual look. The surreal nature Fellini brings to the movie is top-notch and his first color movie certainly delivers one very impressive look. I think the story itself is probably the most important aspect because it's strong enough to hold up during all the strange visuals and other surreal things going on. Had the story been weak then I think it would have fallen and taken a back seat to all the visual stuff but since it didn't it just made the film twice as strong because we could care for the wife and feel her pain as everything breaks loose. Masina's performance is incredibly strong and I can't help but wonder why she didn't get more critical acclaim when the movie first came out. The way her character is at the start of the film compared to it at the end really makes it appear like two different characters. It's rather amazing to see how much the character changes from scene to scene yet Masina never slips into anything corny or unbelievable. She's perfect from start to finish as is Sandra Milo as her neighbor. The visuals in the film are all remarkable and the deep colors really jump off the screen and help create a surreal and fake like world. The cinematography and score are also perfectly done with one of my favorite shots being when Masina is at her husband's lovers house and goes to get on the phone with her. The shot is very simple and I'm not sure how many people would have noticed it but the camera pans to the left and instead of keeping the phone in the center of the frame, the director puts it in the far right. Why did this stick out so much to me? I'm sure I could over analyze it but I'll just leave it at saying it was refreshing not to see what most directors would do and keep the central character, in this case the phone, dead in the center. I wouldn't say the film is without flaws as I found the 137-minute running time to be a tad bit long but this is still a very impressive film that people should check out.