The Voice of the Moon
With Roberto Benigni, Paolo Villaggio, Nadia Ottaviani.
Italy/France, 1990, DCP, color, 118 min.
Italian and Japanese with English subtitles.
DCP source: Luce Cinecittà, Cineteca di Bologna and Cineteca Nazionale
In his extravagant and melancholic swan song, Fellini envisions a small town in the north of Italy gripped by tradition but under siege on all sides by modernity. As a gnocchi festival-cum-beauty pageant dominates the attention of the village people in the cacophonous town square and a mob of leather-clad Gen X-ers rage to Michael Jackson in an abandoned barn in the countryside, wandering poet Ivo Salvini (Roberto Benigni) escapes into his memories, which play like a stream of Amarcord castaways. Tying these buoyant recollections together is Ivo’s quaint concept of the moon as a mother—not to be confused with the literal moon that will later be tugged down to Earth for a cameo appearance at a public forum—who speaks in monosyllabic whispers and provides him counsel through a rapidly developing modern world. Loosely based on Ermanno Cavazzoni’s novel The Lunatics’ Poem, The Voice of the Moon’s narrative tracks Ivo’s growing friendship with the alley-dwelling raconteur Gonnella (Paolo Villaggio), but its procession of jaw-dropping spectacles is justified less by this relationship than by the whims of an aging artist who’s gassing his imagination and memory for one last time.
Part of film series
Screenings from this program
La strada
Variety Lights
Juliet of the Spirits - DCP
Juliet of the Spirits - 35mm
Variety Lights
Casanova
Fellini: A Director's Notebook
Satyricon
