Federico Fellini
Ginger e Fred

It is likely not Fellini's best film, but we don't care much. In the full swing of the Eighties, after an impressive sequence of masterpieces (from "La strada" to "La dolce vita," from "8½" to "Amarcord"), a little creative crisis can happen. It's not the end of the world. Perhaps you might get a bit frustrated watching the forcedly discordant dream delusions of "Intervista" (perhaps the worst film of the Maestro from Rimini), yet the viewing of "Ginger e Fred" is quite satisfying.

As mentioned, "Ginger e Fred" is not a masterpiece; it comes close, but it's not. Because it is a bit messy, unnecessarily long, too decadent and not dreamy enough, cynical like a film by Ciprì and Maresco (who at the time were still almost children), but subtle and elegant as only Fellini knew how to be. It was meant to be the great comeback after the half misstep of "E la nave va" and an awfully incomplete work like "La città delle donne": in reality, "Ginger e Fred" proves to be a film unto itself, close to none, capable of speaking about Italian society in the mid-Eighties and looking towards the future, the harsh Nineties.
To play it safe, Fellini recruits his two favorite actors: the alter-ego Marcello Mastroianni (also in a decadent phase), and Giulietta Masina, a great actress and also his wife. From the title alone, the intent is clear: to speak about cinema. Ginger, like Ginger Rogers, and Fred, like Fred Astaire. And so, the melancholic story of two dancers forgotten after years of great success and hastily called back to work by a modern, gigantic, arrogant, television network, transforms into a subtle reflection on love, show business, and the often barbarous power of television.

The two protagonists, famous in an era young people tend to forget, overshadowed by numerous starlets unable to string two words together, reunite for one final emotional show. Show business, the one that forces you to continue, to stop, to die, as long as "the show must go on," and that all producers and executive directors are happy. Television is viewed as the devil's other face, a brain-crushing and history-killing device, a means that erases collective consciousness and memory, in favor of simple-minded and national-popular shows (these were the years of "Portobello" and "Fantastico"). The dance of Ginger and Fred, more than melancholic, is total, definitive, the end of a dream and the beginning (maybe) of reality. The power of television is ruthless, Fellini seems to tell us, and his vision, so to speak, is avant-garde, a vision so clear that even time hasn't diminished its force, if anything, time has reinforced its thesis.
Mastroianni and Masina fly lightly over a vulgar and foolishly capitalist world, they are the true spectacle, not the advertisements that have ruined at least two generations. One is reminded of Pier Paolo Pasolini, when a journalist, asking the director what he thought of Carosello, received the reply: "A stupidity!". It's likely that Pasolini's judgment was overly harsh, but it's sure that the subsequent advertisements were indeed a stupidity. And Fellini mocks them: he includes many of them (all fake, all shot for the occasion) within the film. Then, immediately after, the camera focuses on the two protagonists. Stronger and more 'sensational' than all the advertisements in the world.

Then, sure, even Masters can sometimes be betrayed by consistency. And Fellini, at the end of the Eighties, would shoot a famous commercial that went down in history (remember? The train in motion and the quickly changing backdrops), but he did it only because he was forced to. In a country like Italy, where one can be proud of having had an enviable cinematic tradition and a star system that for nearly thirty years (from the early Fifties to the mid-Seventies) made the American studios pale, mediocre films like "Nuovo cinema Paradiso" are financed and there is no courage to produce a Fellini film. Yes, because that's part of the story too: at the end of the Eighties, Fellini couldn't find any producer willing to fund a film for him. He had to find the money himself. How? By shooting commercials.
"Ginger e Fred" is also something else. It's the film you'll never see and never talk about if you adhere to Forza Italia. Because, for historical accuracy, this was precisely the film that first mocked and fiercely attacked the figure of Silvio Berlusconi, at the time not yet involved in politics. The attack on commercial TV that Fellini launches within the film is the first recorded act of insubordination against the Great Leader of Arcore. In stark contrast to Moretti and his "Il Caimano" and all those who think attacking Berlusconi requires resorting to unnecessary vulgarity: here, "Ginger e Fred" is the example of how satire can be made with class and with absolute elegance.

Pessimism looms, but it's mandatory. There's no hint of protest against the overwhelming power of television, the audience doesn't even flinch once, a pessimism, if you will, almost chilling: it's as if the brains of the Italian population have been barbarously killed, and, like during the Nazi era, everyone obeys the leader without even moving a muscle. There was no need for Daria Bignardi or Pietro Taricone: Big Brother, Fellini had already invented it. But then there remain indelible emotions: the faces of Mastroianni and Masina (excellent), the soothing music of Nicola Piovani, all the scenographic craft of Dante Ferretti, and the wonderful cinematography of Tonino Delli Colli. Then there's Fellini. That's ample.