(1980)
3.5
Craig Butler
By 1980, the brilliant Italian director Federico Fellini was in a bit of a slump. Although Casanova and Orchestra Rehearsal were good, they were not on the level of such triumphs as 8 1/2, La Strada or Amarcord. The ambitious City of Women deserves points for effort and for the breadth of imagination involved, but it ultimately is a major disappointment, a muddled, overlong and occasionally puerile meditation on women and men's (or at least on one man's) conflicting feelings about women. One of Fellini's more surreal films, the fact that the entire picture is presented as one long dream does not excuse its lack of cohesion and credibility, nor its sometimes simplistic look at relationships. It is missing the artistic magic that takes such personal material and imbues it with a larger meaning, with the result that it comes across as extremely self-indulgent and ultimately uninteresting. This is despite some truly remarkable visual moments that give the film a Wonderland-like quality. Marcello Mastroianni is good, although he is ultimately defeated by the script. Fellini would be in better, though still far from top, form in his next film, And the Ship Sails On.
City of Women on AllMovie
City of Women (1980)
