Ginger, Fred and Federico

Next to Akira Kurosawa and Martin Scorsese, Federico Fellini ranks high on my list of great filmmakers who rarely disappoint me. Fellini's vast body of work only had two strikes from me in the past, "Il Bidone" and "Fellini's Casanova," and after hearing so much about "Ginger & Fred," I expected greatness. Unfortunately, the film wound up being strike No. 3. \nStrike No. 3 doesn't mean Fellini is out of my respected pantheon, but "G&F" is missing that wonderful charm that can only be found in a Fellini movie. "G&F" tells of two famous dancers, Amelia (Giulietta Masina, Fellini's wife in real life) and Pippo (Marcello Mastroianni), who used to imitate the tap routines of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Having not seen each other for 30 years, they are reunited for a TV special akin to the variety shows Ed Sullivan used to throw together. The Fellini trademarks, namely the episodic story structure and playful Nino Rota score, are completely absent. The first half drags on and on as Amelia waits in her hotel room in eager anticipation of Pippo's arrival, after which they are briskly escorted to the TV studio. There things finally pick up and we get the usual Fellini carnival of bizarre folks and unforgettable faces, but it disappears almost too quickly. It was beautiful to watch these two characters, now very much aged, together again for one last hurrah, but it lacks the emotional impact that Fellini's "Intervista" had when Mastroianni is reunited with goddess Anita Ekberg to watch their famous fountain scene from "La Dolce Vita." That was a brilliant stroke of self-reflexivity on Fellini's behalf; here we're given his two most famous players and the chemistry never fully reaches its potential. \nAny hopes of DVD extras being a benefit to this release are completely squashed with merely one supplement: The theatrical trailer for the American release. The trailer is awful, with an annoying American voice bantering on about how famous Fellini is and all his previous accomplishments. Even a featurette would've been nice and given the amount of Fellini supplements scattered across so many DVD releases of his films, one has to think Warner Bros. didn't bother to hunt them down. \nPerhaps I'm being a bit too rough on "Ginger & Fred." The film does perform an excellent job on expressing Fellini's distaste for what television had become in Italy and the film proudly wears its satirical smear across its sleeve. Like I said, after having seen so many great films, there are bound to be a few mediocre ones in the bunch, but even mediocre Fellini is still worth giving a look.