City of Women

I wish I could have followed Federico Fellini around the streets and countryside of Rome when he made the movie, 'City Of Women,' in 1963.

Fellini was intrigued by the feminist movement. He had an open marriage with an actress, Guilletta Masina, who starred with Anthony Quinn in another Fellini masterpiece, 'La Strada.' He wanted to explore the feminist movement through the eyes of the eternal womanizer, Fellini's altar-ego Marcello Mastroianni.

The sub-titled movie opens with Marcello on a train, a businessman on his way to work. Marcello is a womanizer -- he cannot keep his mind, hands and heart off women. Since he finds himself sitting in the same berth as an attractive, long-legged business woman, he makes a move on her and soon discovers himself lost in a forest.

The forest is the scene of a women's convention where they declare their independence from male domination.

When I saw 'City of Women' for the first time, I knew my marriage was falling to pieces. And it was precisely because I was the same womanizer Marcello portrayed in Fellini's film. The movie became an instant favorite of mine, especially a bedroom scene where Fellini portrays man's descent from life to death by having Marcello in a nightgown ride a chute from his bedroom window into a swimming pool.

'City Of Women' answered many questions for me, including the one, 'Is there such a thing as a perfect woman?'

Not according to Fellini. His perfect woman was a 50-foot long rubber blimp of a woman floating high in the sky. Fellini further destroys the myth by having a woman wearing a Nazi uniform blast the blimp out of the sky with a machine gun.

No, my idea of a perfect evening is to get a bottle of organic chardonnay wine, an impressionable woman, and a copy of 'City of Women.' The next two or three hours will take care of themselves.

Marcello Mastroianni identified his career with four films he made. Fellini directed three of them -- 'City Of Women,' '8 1/2', and 'La Dolce Vita.' Marcello also starred in Gabriela, with Sonja Braggia. Once you have seen these films, you won't care much about simplistic American movies anymore. Trust me.

What a love affair Fellini had with women! His films show the pinnacle of those affairs better than any true stories about him could have accomplished.

In 'La Dolce Vita,' Fellini has Marcello as a gossip columnist in Rome follow the voluptuous Anita Eckberg up a spiral staircase in the heart of Rome. Anita has the legs and the stamina of a gazelle as she bounds energetically up the staircase with photographers in pursuit.

Fellini and the leading men in his movies are always in pursuit of elusive women who manage to stay one step ahead of them. In one scene in '8 1/2,' Fellini has Marcello speaking by telephone to his lover who unknown to him is in the adjoining booth. While they speak, a man makes love to her.

No, Federico Fellini should have lived until he was 100, making movies that tell us who we really are and why. I wish he had used Marcello in a film based on the life of Leo Tolstoy, a gambler, a Cossack, and an author. That would have been a gambling story worth seeing.