Ginger and Fred
Ginger and Fred (1986) was one of the last films made by cinema's
unchallenged master of grotesque caricature, Federico Fellini. After a long
career of brilliantly marching out spiritual, economic, and social
charlatans for our scrutiny, it made sense that Fellini would finally get
around to taking aim at that towering repository of all-encompassing
phoniness - television. Paradoxically enough - and after years of begging
from advertisers - he decided to shoot
Ginger and Fred shortly after
helming his first TV commercial! (Pretentious cineastes can at least be
thankful that he rejected an offer to direct a Boy George video around the
same time.)
Ginger and Fred tells the story of Amelia (Giulietta Masina,
Fellini's real-life wife) and Pippo (Marcello Mastroianni) two aging,
second-tier hoofers who used to go by the stage names of "Fred and Ginger."
Years past their primes, and having completely lost contact with each other,
they're invited to participate in a televised variety show that will include
such "acts" as a priest who has married and will kiss his new bride on the
air, a troupe of dancing midgets, a transvestite who offers sexual favors to
horny prison inmates, and an inventor who eats his new-and-improved edible
panties off of a model. (Any resemblance to the Fox network is purely
coincidental...if not visionary.)
Amelia and Pippo try to rehearse, but it becomes clear that Pippo is an
alcoholic who has only shown up for the quick money. Amelia grows less and
less enthusiastic as the freak show nears; both Fred and Ginger seem unsure
of whether they want to participate. The two will become nothing more than
cogs in a bizarre, belittling ritual, exactly the sort of thing that Fellini
could orchestrate in high style. Still, he knew how to
tap very real human emotions amidst the foolishness.
In yet another paradox tied to this production,
Ginger and Fred began
its life as a concept for a TV movie. It was originally meant to be part of
an anthology film in which Masina would play six different roles and be
directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, Franco Zeffirelli, and Fellini himself.
For his installment, Fellini created a character named Ginger, a sensitive
former vaudeville dancer who became a grandmother and the owner of a small
business. When Mastroianni agreed to play Ginger's over-the-hill partner,
Fellini decided to turn the story into a feature film that would brutally
dissect modern television. The final version is filled with ridiculous
commercials, most of them for sausages, the implication being that the human
participants in the TV show are nothing more than disposable products, pop
cultural flotsam.
Fellini stated that he originally wanted to recapture "the essence of those
old variety shows" that he saw when he was young, and that the story was to
take place in "this labyrinth, enchanted palace of TV." This enchantment
would not hold, of course. There were simply too many ripe targets waiting
to be zapped.
Needless to say, the tube has grown even more Fellini-esque in recent years.
Fellini was forever tapping into a more imposing zeitgeist than most
audience members recognized on their own. During the filming of
Ginger and Fred, critic Richard Corliss looked back on the director's storied
career and noted: "What may once have looked like outrageous cartoons of
sensuality and sacrilege have become, in retrospect, previews of a moral
system spun wildly off its axis...his pictures celebrate what they
criticize; they amount to a cautionary blueprint for survival in the Atomic
Age."
In
I, Fellini by Charlotte Chandler (Cooper Square Press), the director shared his own views on
Ginger and Fred: "Our little picture was about people who worshiped Rogers and Astaire. The title
Ginger and Fred was meant as a compliment, and I just could not believe it when I was told that Ginger Rogers had reacted with anger and was trying to stop the film from being shown. The damages being asked for were more than the cost of making the film. I never believed she was the one responsible. She must have listened to other people who said the film ridiculed her. Some critics even said I was making fun of Rogers and Astaire. I never mock what I do. I see what is funny about my subjects, but I never make fun of them. I laugh
with my characters, not
at them....The person who was really hurt was Giulietta, because she had so identified with Ginger, and the movie was really made because of Giulietta...In the Italy of the thirties, Ginger and Fred had comforted us, especially those of us who lived in the provinces. In the world of fascism, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers showed us that another life was possible, at least in America, that land of unimaginable freedom and opportunity."
Directed by: Federico Fellini
Screenplay: Federico Fellini, Tonino Guerra, and Tullio Pinelli
Producer: Heinz Bibo and Alberto Grimaldi
Cinematography: Tonino Delli Colli and Ennio Guarnieri
Editing: Nino Baragli
Music: Nicola Piovani
Production Design: Dante Ferretti
Costume Design: Danilo Donati
Principal Cast: Giulietta Masina (Amelia/Ginger), Marcello Mastroianni (Pippo/Fred),
Franco Fabrizi (show host), Frederick Ledebur (Admiral), Augusto Poderosi
(transvestite), Martin Maria Blau (producer’s assistant), Toto Mignone
(Toto), Jacques Henri Lartigue (Flying Priest).
C-128m.
by Paul Tatara
Ginger and Fred
For anyone who loves old movies, the names Ginger and Fred automatically mean Rogers and
Astaire, the most fabulously gifted dance team in Hollywood history. But for admirers of
Federico Fellini, the names also mean Amelia Bonetti and Pippo Botticella, an Italian
dance team that's a lot less gifted, to put it mildly. They're the heroes of Fellini's
comedy-drama
Ginger and Fred, released in 1986 and available on DVD from Warner
Bros. Home Video.
Ginger and Fred are the stage names used by Amelia and Pippo in their act, where they
mimic the American originals as well as they can, like the music-hall equivalent of a
tribute band. They made a living this way in their younger days, but that was long ago,
and at the beginning of Fellini's movie they're about to see each other for the first
time more than twenty years. The occasion is a TV show focusing on imitators and
look-alikes, so they'll be sharing the stage with everyone from "Bette Davis" to "Marcel
Proust."
Amelia's reunion with Pippo was arranged after her agent talked her into accepting the
TV show's invitation to appear on its Christmastime program, and much of the film's
poignant humor comes from the fact that neither of them is sure this is a good idea.
They clicked with audiences in bygone decades, but it's far from certain they can
remember their old moves, to say nothing of gracefully pulling them off.
The only definite thing is that however much they once looked like Rogers and Astaire,
the resemblance has faded to zero. Amelia has become a well-preserved old lady, and
Pippo isn't even well preserved. Seeing him rehearse is like watching a coronary itching
to happen.
Although three writers are credited with the screenplay, including Fellini himself,
Ginger and Fred doesn't have much of a plot. It's more of a mood piece than a
conventional comedy-drama, relying on the charisma of its two excellent stars - Giuletta
Masina as Amelia and Marcello Mastroianni as Pippo - and on the Felliniesque atmosphere,
dreamlike and surreal, that underlies every scene. What story there is centers on
Amelia's arrival in Rome, her first glimpses of Pippo in less-than-prime condition, his
attempts to rekindle their old magic, and finally their rehearsals and the long-awaited
show.
The movie's centerpiece is a lengthy scene where the show's assorted guests mingle in a
large room at the TV station, producing zany confusion as they vie for attention and
praise. Pippo tries valiantly to be the life of the party-his specialty is smutty little
rhymes-but there's too much competition for the old guy to make much of a splash. In
addition to its lively visual interest, this sequence is very prescient about the future
of television; it's not much of a leap to see the likes of
American Idol and
The Anna Nicole Show being born in this strange assemblage of mostly untalented
show-offs.
Given the film's dim view of television, it's mildly ironic that it was made for TV,
with Radiotelevisione Italiana as one of the producers. Fellini always appreciated
irony, though, and he was always flexible when an interesting challenge came along. He
started his career as a neorealist, with pictures like the 1954 road movie
La
Strada and the great 1960 epic
La Dolce Vita, then turned to the world of his
own imagination in such '60s masterpieces as
8½ and the short
Toby Dammit.
He also made well-received documentaries in the late '60s and early '70s.
But after the nostalgic 1973 hit
Amarcord, which was based on his "invented
memories" of childhood, he appeared to lose touch with the richest parts of his talent.
Of his late movies, from
Casanova in 1976 to
The Voice of the Moon in
1990,
Ginger and Fred certainly has the widest appeal.
It may also be the most personal. Fellini must have realized that pictures like
And
the Ship Sails On and
City of Women didn't have his former zing, and he may
have identified with over-the-hill Pippo more than he cared to let on, carrying this
into the movie itself. Mastroianni played his alter ego in
8½, after all; Masina
was Fellini's wife off the screen just as she's Pippo's partner in the film; and Fred
could almost be a nickname for Federico.
Mastroianni provides the movie's most impressive performance, giving Pippo a subdued
melancholy and all-but-faded allure that makes him the story's most well-rounded
character. Masina has a natural charm that served her well in many Fellini films, and it
remains strong here. Perhaps too strong, since Amelia is so effortlessly appealing that
it's sometimes hard to remember she's a has-been. Then again, the real Ginger Rogers
didn't see it that way-she found it so offensive that she sued the producers and
distributors for false advertising and violating her privacy!
Fellini always saw the world - especially the Italian world - as a blend of boisterous
circus, darkly amusing freak show, and wellspring of strange, exotic visions dredged up
from memory and the unconscious. He explored these most exuberantly in introspective
movies like
8½ and
Amarcord, and he returns to them with more restraint in
Ginger and Fred, helped by the sideshow ambience he finds everywhere from the TV
studio to the nighttime Roman streets.
He gets first-rate assistance from his cinematographers, Tonino Delli Colli and Ennio
Guarnieri, and from composer Nicola Piovani, whose music uncannily recalls the Nino Rota
scores that enhance so many Fellini classics.
Ginger and Fred isn't a great
movie, but in its own quiet way it's Felliniesque to its bones. It's good have a
well-produced DVD edition, although more extras than just the theatrical trailer would
have been nice.
For more information about
Ginger and Fred, visit
Warner Video. To order
Ginger and Fred, go to
TCM Shopping.
by Mikita Brottman and David Sterritt