I am a great fan of early Fellini, and as late as Amarcord I still find much to admire. After that, though, there seems to me to be an inexorable decline in originality. By the time we get to this film the decline is definitely in evidence throughout. Freshness has given way to trademark, vitality to predictability. Mastroianni is still there, as cool and enigmatic as ever, and some of the cinematography remains dazzling. But an air of staleness hangs over the whole film, which apart from its other defects is far too long. Fellini fanatics admire it, that much is obvious, and good luck to them. But most simple admirers will pass it by. It is worth adding that in the troubled and deeply unequal world we live in, Fellini's later obsession with the idle rich is looking increasingly frivolous. But maybe that's just me.

Big dream/nightmare vision of a man in late middle age (dapper hot daddy Marcello Mastroianni) about women, gender politics, and death.Midway through 'City of Women' we are introduced to one Dr. Katzone (literally 'Dr. Big-Dick'), representing the phallocratic, pig-man archetype. He drinks, he bullies, he shoots guns, he objectifies women. He lives in a castle comprising an assemblage of phallic symbols, wherein he has built a giant gallery/pantheon, where framed sexy pictures of his hundreds of 'conquests' light up and speak sexy talk when you push their respective buttons.Fellini cast tough-guy actor Ettore Manni as 'Dr. Big-Dick' -- reportedly to type: the character merely a slight exaggeration of the blustery actor. The Legend: the hyper-masculine Manni was in the habit of tucking a pistol in his pants. During the film shoot, Manni accidentally shot his genitals off and bled to death. Absolutely true? I like to believe it.Anyway, this is a helluva film -- hilarious, surreal, honest. Art director Giorgio Giovaninni deserves many medals.

Film Review, The City of Woman (dir. Federico Fellini, Italy, 1980) The City of Woman directed by Federico Fellini in Italy in 1980, was a unique film about men that treat woman like garbage and that there just here for looks but Fellini wanted to make the film so men can look at woman different not just some sex slave but to be treated with respect as woman back in those days were never treated with respect well most of them and is still like that today.Fellini's character who he played was very interesting and sexiest, as in interesting is in how he spoke to woman how he thought of woman and how his role of that character was to treat woman was played out brilliantly, I noticed how the movie went on and on Fellini's character started to treat woman with more respect, like at the start of the movie he was like all rude and thought woman were just some sexy toy and he was full rude and then coming to the end of the movie you saw how he wasn't as rude to woman.The acting in City of woman I believe was very well done by Fellini but some characters looked like they were acting but still very well done as some of the acting kind of weird me out as in the movie when Fellini is in the a car with a bunch of girls and they all start making sex noises while there listening to the music it was very disturbing.The music in this movie I believe was very exotic because there was always music where ever Fellini went but it got really disturbing when Fellini got in the car with a bunch of girls and they put the radio on and the music started to play and they started making sex noises it was really gross I didn't want to watch it because it wasn't really realistic to me and again disturbing but beside that the music was exotic through out the movie.The direction in the movie was very confusing as I did not know what was happening as the story scene kept changing like at the start he was on a train then he was in the woods and then he was at a place where all these woman were and then he was almost getting raped by some fat chick and then he was in a car and then he some how new some guy at this house and he had a wife or something and I was like what is going on here and then he was put to bed and then he heard some noises and he followed it under his bed, it was a bit weird don't you think and then he went down a slide and there were people singing it was just stupid.Well I believe that this movie is good but I didn't like it because it's not my kind of movie, as I find it very slow and boring as I'm into action, thrillers and horrors, but it is well played out and also interesting but that doesn't change how I think the movie is, I believe anyone who likes Fellini's movie's to watch this because I believe they would love it.

Although I was born in Italy, I never had the chance to see a movie by Fellini.Yesterday I decided to fill this gap, watching "La citta' delle donne".I was very disappointed, not only by the movie, but also by the commentaries included in the DVD (American edition).*** Some spoilers from now on *** The movie is a total mess. Everything is loud and exaggerated. There are no hints or subtleties. The message the movie aims at conveying, the difficulty of men to deal with women in the modern era with the men losing their predominant position, is screamed. For 20 minutes you can cope with such a visual and acoustic disorder, but I found 140 minutes definitely too much to bear.I did not find the movie funny either. For example, one of the character's name is Katzone (an Italian vulgar expression for big penis) and guess what? He is a womanizer, he lives in a house full of phallic shaped objects, he has taped the moaning of all women he has slept with, and so on and so forth. Maybe, you can laugh for one second about it, but everything is so obvious, trivial and vulgar that I found it very hard to appreciate.Mastroianni delivers a great performance, as usual. The problem does not lie in the actors, (actually most of them deliver great interpretations) but in the director's vision of the movie.The film does not flow. The sequences are not linked appropriately and sometimes are way too long: he could have obtained the very same result (shocking/amusing the audience) in half the time.Being the movie a dream by a man in his 50's, it is reasonable to express it in such a disorganized and convulsive way. However, I do not need to see a movie to get that feeling, my own dreams are enough.Fellini was very brave to propose such a theme, especially in a very rigid society as the Italian one. He wanted to be provocative and he succeeded in that dimension. However, he failed at making the audience think about those issues, being only worried at representing his own insecurities and fears.I also found the movie very arrogant, in the sense that it made me think that Fellini wanted the audience to believe that they were watching not only a movie but "art".Frankly speaking, this film is so bad that it makes any Tinto Brass production look like a masterpiece.In the DVD's commentary the people asked to comment on Fellini's work basically said that he was a genius. I think they do not understand what a genius is. Moreover, all the people interviewed do not explain or motivate why they think he was such a great artist.He might have had a different approach to things, he might have had a personal interpretation of facts, he might have broken the clichés of his time, but defining him a genius is way too much, at least for what he has done with this movie.I think that labeling him as a genius does not allow him to be pretentious and his movie to be pointless.I still hope that "8 1/2" is going to change my mind about Fellini's work.