If “Juliet of the Spirits” is Fellini’s love letter to his wife Giulietta Masina, then it is the strangest love letter ever made. This remarkably surreal film with its haunting spectral beauty is a deliciously maddening portrait of love as seen through an other worldly lens of spirits, memories and religious symbolism.
A number of critics sight this film as the start of Fellini’s decline as a filmmaker, saying that “Juliet of the Spirits” lacks the autobiographical poignancy of his masterpieces “La Dolce Vita” and “8 1/2.” “Juliet of the Spirits” was made right after “8 1/2” in 1965, and it’s been said that this film is so frustrating because it feels like Fellini is going on autopilot with half baked visuals and symbols designed precisely to recall his previous films.
Yet Fellini just running on autopilot is a thousand times better than hundreds of other directors working at full capacity, and “Juliet of the Spirits” is so affecting because despite all the criticisms, it remains remarkably exotic, strange, nonsensical and yet all so infectious. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Juliet of the Spirits”