Juliet of the Spirits is Federico Fellini's first color film, and it presents itself as a woman's version of 8 1/2. Giulietta Masina stars as Juliet, a middle-aged housewife who suspects her husband is having an affair. The film consists of trippy and dreamlike fantasy sequences, that are both illuminating and preposterous. Fellini's penchant for surreality, which always been bubbling under the surface, fully takes form here. This would be something, it seems, he takes with him for the rest of his career. Visually Juiet of the Spirits is absolutely striking and imaginative. The production design and camerawork are gorgeous. I love the element of the psychic, seances, and ghosts, which give the film an extra amount of spooky fun.
Juliet of the Spirits is a cascade of bizarre occurrences, but the heart of it is that it's a movie about marriage, a movie about love lost and independence found. But I think it lacks something. Critics have theorized that Giulietta's marriage in the film was semi-autobiographical to Fellini's own marriage to his wife and frequent star Giulietta Masina. It's hard not to see the parallel. But the dissonance of a man making a movie about his own marriage from the perspective of his wife who is played by his real life wife is hard to reconcile. There is still some distance with Giulietta the character; she feels more like Fellini's projection rather than an authentic dive into Masina's interior life. Perhaps Fellini is both too close and too far from the issue to see it clearly, I don't know. Some of that dissonance gives the movie its charms, because the film is loopy and running on dream logic. Juliet of the Spirits is a film I need to watch again. I enjoyed it but I'm not sure I got it.
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