Ginger and Fred
(Ginger e Fred)
With Giulietta Masina, Marcello Mastroianni, Friedrich von Thun.
Italy, 1986, 35mm, color, 125 min.
Italian with English subtitles.
Fellini brought Giulietta Masina and Marcello Mastroianni together here for the first time in their careers in the roles of Amelia Bonetti and Pippo Botticela, two retired Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers imitators who are reunited after thirty years for a nostalgic TV variety show. Masina, serene without being coy, and Mastroianni, flabby and balding, are a delight as the past-their-prime partners who are able to relive their former glory for a few magical moments. Ginger and Fred reveals Fellini in a paradoxical mood: soured in the way he portrays television as an inimical purveyor of garbage and Rome as a putrescent dump; mellowed in the way he depicts his protagonists as finally capable of affection and fleeting tenderness in the crass world that surrounds them.
Part of film series
Screenings from this program
La dolce vita
Juliet of the Spirits
La dolce vita
8 1/2
Casanova
City of Women
Ginger and Fred
8 1/2
