With Juliet of the Spirits, Fellini took the autobiographical and phantasmagoric precepts with which he had dabbled in 8 ½ (1963), and expanded them, one would like to say, to their logical extreme. Unfortunately, the fascination that Fellini exhibited for fantasy and self-indulgence in Juliet of the Spirits turned out to be only an intermediate stage, as he then went on to wallow ever more shamelessly in unrestrained fantasy for the remainder of his career. Most reviewers acknowledge that they don’t fully understand what is being communicated in this film and I have to count myself among that large group. Fellini himself may not have known! The superlative Criterion DVD of Juliet of the Spirits includes a twenty-minute interview with Fellini in which he is quoted as saying, in broken English, “I have not the feeling that I am directing the picture, but I have the feeling that the picture is directing me. And I have only to follow my picture, to try to understand where the picture wants to go.” Is it reassuring that Fellini himself is as uncertain as the rest of us about the point of his film? Perhaps. Perhaps not! Let’s start with what appears to be most evident about this film and then discuss the numerous uncertainties.

The Story: The basic contours of the story are straight forward. Juliet (Giulietta Masina, Fellini’s wife), is a wealthy housewife with two maids but no children. She has prepared a lovely candlelight dinner for her husband, Giorgio (Mario Pisu), a successful public relations man, on the occasion of their fifteenth wedding anniversary and has purchased a beautiful gift for him. Giorgio shows up, having entirely forgotten their anniversary, with an entourage of a dozen or so noisy, garish, and eccentric friends. Juliet’s vision of a quiet evening together celebrating their marriage is shattered but she dutifully makes the best of it. She joins in a séance with several of the guests, which affects her mysteriously. She begins to hear voices and whisperings on the wind. After the departure of the guests, Juliet and Giorgio sleep in the same bed, but he wears nightshades and earplugs and rolls over and falls asleep immediately. Later in the night, Juliet twice hears her husband murmur a woman’s name, “Gabriela.” In the morning, Juliet overhears her husband talking intimately with someone on the phone, but he insists that he was merely confirming his wake-up call.

Juliet has two sisters, Adele (Luisa Della Noce) and Sylva (Sylva Koscina), who are shallow, self-absorbed and critical. She also has a rather ghoulish, well-preserved mother (Caterina Boratto) who is domineering and putdown-ish. At the urging of one of the sisters, Juliet hires a private detective to follow her husband and determine if he is having an affair. She is heartbroken when it becomes clear that he is. All the while, Juliet’s mental distress is rising and she begins to be visited by an assortment of intrusive characters of her fantasies and delusions that mock, mirror, and echo her mental ungluing. She seeks help from an American doctor. Later, on the advice of a friend, she attends a meeting held by the cult-ish medium, Bishma, an elderly androgynous fellow (played by the aging lesbian Valeska Gert, once famous in German silent films) and is advised, “Love is a religion. Your husband is your god.” The guru advises “fishnet stockings” to better ply her trade. Juliet gets similar if less perverse advice from her own mother: “Wear more lipstick!” Later, back home, a Spaniard and business associate of her husband tries to seduce her with mock toreador moves and the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca: “No one understood the perfume that came from the dark magnolia of your womb.” She demurs.

On the beach, one day, with her twin nieces, Juliet is assaulted by an array of delusions, from nuns on the beach to a boat-load of thong-clad men, looking like renegades from an S&M convention. A man in a red robe offers her a rope by which she could pull the raft ashore, should she be so-inclined. Later, Juliet observes as her neighbor, Suzy (Sandra Milo), arrives, carried in a canopied bed by an entourage of hearty servants.

Later, Juliet visits her neighbor’s home to return her cat. Suzy’s house is a monument to libertine, hedonistic pursuits, decked out much like a ritzy Parisian brothel, replete with both buxom prostitutes and a full selection of boy-toys. Suzy’s bedroom has a full overhead mirror for multiplication of love-making joys and a slide leading directly from one side of the bedroom to a spacious pool beneath. Suzy offers to be Juliet’s sexual guide and to loan her a slim, young, gorgeous half-Arab godson. Later, Suzy shows off a fantastic tree house decked out like a pleasure dome of Kubla-Khan. A basket on a rope hoists a couple of Suzy’s gigolos to her retreat for an afternoon of “full-fillment.” Juliet begs off.

Another portion of the story revolves around a traumatic childhood experience in which Juliet had been selected to be the martyred saint in a church play, complete with grill and artificial flames. She had been rescued from her role by her eccentric but loving grandfather. The grandfather later, according to Juliet’s fantasies or recall, ran off with a dancer from a circus, escaping in a decrepit circus plane.

Juliet tries to confront her rival, Gabriela, at her home, but the model, knowing her lover’s wife awaits, simply chooses not to return home. She offers, over the phone, that she doesn’t enjoy seeing another person’s defeat. Meanwhile, Giorgio prepares to leave on a “business” trip to South America, which Juliet now understands will include Gabriela. She allows her husband to depart without confrontation or entreaty. In the closing sequence, Juliet dispatches her demons and walks off into a woods of towering trees to commune with nature.

Ambiguities of Meaning in the Film: One impediment to understanding this film is the question: To what extent is this film autobiographical? On the surface evidence, there can be little doubt that Fellini drew heavily from his own troubled marriage with Masina for the substance of Juliet of the Spirits. He didn’t so much as disguise that obvious fact, giving the same name to the lead character (Juliet in Italian is Giulietta) and having the character played by his wife. It was well known among their circle of acquaintances (actually circles, since the two had largely separate groups of friends) that their marriage was on the rocks due to Fellini’s constant philandering. Federico and Giuletta occupied the same house but lived on different floors and slept in separate bedrooms.

A second related question is Does the film genuinely reflect Giulietta’s struggle with Fellini’s infidelities? Are we watching Giulietta’s actual naked anguish over her marriage? Roger Ebert wonders, for example, if Giulietta Masina doesn’t “seem unhappy throughout much of Juliet of the Spirits?” It is Guillietta Masina who provides the emotional center to this picture and its only real stability. She is the only element that seems consistently real, in her open sincerity and understated outfits. It is her pain combined with warmth and sincerity that earns our involvement in the film. Whether her portrayed pain is carryover from the real pain of her marriage is, in a way, a moot point, since actors and actresses routinely draw on the emotions of their own lives in order to depict those emotions in the characters they play.

Does this film, instead, reflect Fellini’s distorted view of Giulietta’s issues or what HE hopes for by way of resolution? To my eye, what we are watching in Juliet of the Spirits seems less like the recesses of the female psyche than a man’s fantasies about those recesses! Masina, for example, was adamant that Juliet’s toying with the notion of bedding the young half-Arab godson of Suzy was certainly not a fantasy she herself harbored. Fellini’s resolution – greater independence between husband and wife – seems far more the resolution he desired than one to meet her needs.

Is the character Juliet actually partly Fellini rather than Giulietta? Many believe that, in fact, Juliet is as much a surrogate for Fellini as for Giulietta. Fellini was known to be uncertain and struggling in his own gender identity and sexual preferences and he may have been exploring his own feminine side through the character Juliet as much as the psyche of his wife.

To what extent are the events depicted supposed to represent reality and to what extent dreams, fantasies, or supernatural events? The line between reality and fantasy is continuously blurred in this film so that each viewer must decide on his own which is which. With Juliet of the Spirits, Fellini made his fullest break to date with his roots in Italian Neorealism and becomes the master experimenter with gaudy images and lavish sound. Fellini had a rich fantasy and dream life, stating, “I go to sleep and the fête begins.” His career, his fame, and prominence all hinged on his special ability and willingness to exhibit his rich fantasies in public. Why, then, wouldn’t he give free range to his fantasies and let them run wild? He was making a living off them. If there is a core message to Juliet of the Spirits, it is embrace your fantasies! Few of us can afford to do so as fully as did Fellini. Fellini and Masina shared a love for the occult and a belief in the supernatural. Fellini liked nothing better than to cast occult characters in his films so that he could keep himself surrounded by outlandish people while he was working on his sets.

Fellini had multiple affairs with the actresses and models who frequented his sets. One such affair was reputedly with Sandra Milo, the actress who played the voluptuous neighbor, Susy, in Juliet of the Spirits as well as Guido’s mistress in 8 ½. About the time of the filming of Juliet of the Spirits, Fellini also increasingly took up with a succession of young gay assistants and later more fully assumed, for awhile, a predominately gay lifestyle.

What is Fellini saying about the marriage relationship? Certainly, the marriage of Federico and Giulietta was unconventional at this stage by any standard. Was it merely unconventional or was it also failing? Personally, I’m open-minded about alternative lifestyles but not about dishonesty or bald-faced rationalization. I’ve experienced one open-marriage and observed several others. I have no moral objection if two people choose to marry on the basis that each is free to pursue romantic and/or sexual involvements as each sees fit. I believe that such arrangements are inherently unstable and inevitably fall apart, but Fellini is known to have had little enthusiasm for the permanence of intimate relationships. If stability is not of concern, open-marriages can be just the ticket if the needs of both parties are well served.

On the other hand, what virtually never succeeds is one party in a marriage behaving as though the marriage were open while the other believes or intends that the marriage be monogamous and exclusive. This appears to have been the case for Federico and Giulietta. The majority of viewers will view Giulietta as the wronged party since most people view fidelity as the only acceptable basis for marriage. I, on the other hand, view that aspect of this couple’s problem as one of incompatibility of marriage concepts. Fellini’s lifestyle could be respectable to me if it were by mutual agreement with Giulietta. Since we don’t know what was promised between the two at the time of their marriage or later negotiated, it’s hard to know who is to blame for the difference in what the two desire from marriage.

One thing that we do know, however, is that Giorgio, in Juliet of the Spirits, was not only having an affair but also lying about it and trying to hide it from his wife. That, by itself, identifies Giorgio’s affair as “cheating” or “philandering.” Giorgio’s relationship with his wife is dishonest, despite his once having told her that he would never lie to her. If we assume that Juliet of the Spirits is reflective of the relationship between Fellini and Giulietta, Fellini comes off as something of a self-centered cad, with little regard for even basic honesty in a relationship.

One Epinions reviewer makes a very well-argued case that Juliet of the Spirits has “strikingly spiritual feminist undertones” and was “ahead of its time” in promoting “female spiritual independence” and “sexual independence.” Let me say, in quoting this reviewer, that the ambiguities in Juliet of the Spirits are so pronounced as to give equal justice to a variety of interpretations. One view is as defensible as another. One could argue that Juliet comes to grips with her husband’s infidelities by learning to love herself rather than depending on her husband’s attentions for her self-esteem. That seems to qualify as a “liberation.” What exactly does the final scene of "Juliet of the Spirits" mean? What is the nature of the resolution? It is interesting, in that respect, that Fellini and Masina disagreed and argued about what the ending indicates. Fellini stated that it indicated that Juliet was now free, while Masina believed that it meant that she was now abandoned and lonely. It underscores the basic incompatibility of their concepts of marriage.

If a woman (or a man, for that matter) is liberated and largely independent of the spouse’s attentions (sexual or emotional) for self-esteem and fulfillment, then the spouse’s involvement with others (sexually or in time-consuming friendships) makes little difference. If, on the other hand, one’s conception of marriage entails a greater degree of interdependence, the absence of meaningful interaction within the marriage results in feelings of loneliness and abandonment. Fellini’s fantasy was for Masina to be more independent of him for her happiness so that he would be free to pursue his extramarital affairs. Fellini was effectively transferring the responsibility for the pain caused by his infidelities to Masina. All she needed to do, in his vision, was to face the false demons of her childhood and "misguided" expectations about a marriage relationship as a source of support, learn to love herself, and his affairs would no longer cause her pain. She’d have to change her approach to life because he wasn’t about to. Juliet of the Spirits, is, in my opinion, largely an exercise in self-justification on Fellini’s part. Fellini had, in fact, emotionally abandoned Giulietta during that phase of their lives. That they remained together until their near simultaneous deaths in 1993/4 was due mainly to financial necessity and health problems.

Production Values: This being Fellini’s first Technicolor film, one element of his extravagance was a gaudy display of lurid and supersaturated colors from every part of the visual spectrum. Hats, parasols, dresses, and furnishings alike are decked out in an array of sparkling hues that would put a peacock to shame. Fellini behaves in this film much like a child given its first box of crayons and a pad of blank sheets. Much of the décor of the dwellings of the film are reminiscent of a circus funhouse.

There is a recycling and expansion of the Fellini fixation with elaborate circus-like parades of flamboyant people, which were already a hallmark of earlier films like La Strada (1954) and 8 ½ (1963). One parade follows another. Fellini plays with symbolism, but mostly in obvious ways. The obscenely melodious score by Nino Rota is the equal to Fellini’s visual assault on our senses. It is ever so fantastic!

On one level, the script doesn’t put a lot of obvious demands on Masina’s talent, since all that she has to do is play witness to her own (or Fellini’s) fantasies and delusions. It is Masina, however, who confers whatever degree of deeper meaning exists in this film by her soulful portrayal of anguish, loneliness, and inner resolve. Her wide-eyed amazement at the phantoms tripping through the recesses of her mind mirrors our own.

Bottom-Line: Juliet of the Spirits is Fellini at his over-the-top, phantasmagorical best. This is pleasure for the senses though much less for the cognitive centers. Seldom will you find the realm of fantasies more ably displayed on celluloid. Juliet of the Spirits is in French with English subtitles. It has a running time of 137 minutes and would likely be rated R were it rated at all.

Recommended:
Yes

Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age