Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

City of Women Blu-ray Movie Review

The feminine mistake.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 1, 2016

Any parent will tell you that there comes a time when behaviors which were tolerated or even encouraged in their children suddenly become a “no no” as the kids age, due to either social propriety or simply the fact that it’s time to “move on”. Could something at least slightly similar be analagous to responses to the latter day films of Federico Fellini? The excesses that made 8½ one of the most iconic films of its era (and probably beyond) became increasingly tiresome for at least some viewers as Fellini moved on to the late sixties and then the seventies, with films like Fellini Satyricon (frankly one of my personal favorites) leading even some longtime fans to say, “Well, now he’s really gone off the deep end”. It’s not hard to see 1980’s City of Women as a kind of 8 ½: The Next Generation, as it were, with an addled Marcello Mastroianni once again portraying a man who is both surrounded by and completely confounded by those of the opposite gender. City of Women has much of the same dreamlike quality as 8 ½, but it’s filtered through a more cynical middle aged ambience that seems to want to make The War of the Sexes into a carnival ride. The film is so rife with stereotypes that it would be facile to call it misogynistic or frankly anti-chauvinist, depending on how ironically one feels Fellini is offering up the almost (gender appropriate) Alex in Wonderland-esque adventures of a man who has gone down a veritable rabbit hole to confront the vagaries of his own Id.

Newcomers to the often surreal world of Fellini frequently have a “wow” moment early in their viewing experiences. For me, it was that vision of the floating man above the traffic jam in 8 ½, a film which was my personal indoctrination into this filmmaker’s highly distinctive narrative style. The hazy, quasi-hallucinatory ambience which increasingly became Fellini’s individual cinematic patois is firmly on display in City of Women, but this film actually takes a while to deliver some of its most trenchant visual information. The whole dreamscape aspect is in fact handled more literally in City of Women than in other Fellini films, especially in a final “Boolean loop” that sets the film back to its beginning point, which is on a train where aging lothario Snàporaz (Marcello Mastroianni) is attempting to snooze despite what seems to be an almost comically bumpy ride. While Fellini’s visual imagination hasn’t yet reached full flower, there are hints of typically Felliniesque “oddness” right off the bat, with a gaggle of excited schoolchildren jumping up and down outside of the train compartment that Snàporaz shares with a woman (Bernice Stegers) he finds irresistible.

When Snàporaz’s attempt to sexually accost the woman in a humorously tiny train bathroom doesn’t pan out, he follows her out the door and through the woods, in a gender reversed take on Lewis Carroll’s famous fantasy (is there perhaps a subliminal hint that the rabbit has become a “bunny”, so to speak?). The woman isn’t exactly shy about leading Snàporaz on, and in fact it’s a luscious kiss she gave him in that train bathroom that has excited him so, but she does seem to be somewhat of a tease, as evidenced by her priming the poor guy for an assignation, but then leaving him high and dry (so to speak) in the woods after telling him to close his eyes, and then up and disappearing. Snàporaz isn’t one to relent that easily, and he soon forages through the forest to find a hotel where there’s some kind of convention that seems to be restricted to female participants (though there are a few other men in attendance).

That leads to a series of vignettes that are intentionally dreamlike, and in fact the entire “narrative” (if it can truly be termed as such) plays like one of those dreams where you’re trying as hard as you can to get somewhere, or reach some goal, but circumstances seem designed to prevent you from achieving that result. Over and over again Snàporaz simply wants to get back to the train station to continue his journey, but a series of improbable, and often sexually charged, adventures keeps providing detours. Fellini isn’t especially subtle in his detailing of various peccadilloes and maybe even perversions shared not just by Snàporaz, but by a number of the women with whom he comes into contact, as if to suggest that the “demons” of human sexuality are not necessarily the sole domain of males.

Fellini suggests that if there are occasional armistices between the genders, they’re typically short lived and often predicated on the promise of future “rewards”. The film cartwheels from episode to episode, with things getting more and more outlandish both in terms of visual delights and basic storytelling artifices, as the meandering “plot” continues. Audiences and critics alike have often described Fellini’s film world as “dreamlike”, and with City of Women, Fellini seems to be saying, “You want a dream? Okay—here goes.”

City of Women Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

City of Women is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cohen Film Collection with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. Cohen is usually not shy about promoting new transfers and/or restorations, and without any such comments attending this release, I tend to think this is probably culled from the same master as the French release from Gaumont which Svet Atanasov reviewed for us several years ago. That said, I noticed little if any of the sharpening Svet mentioned, though a bit of high frequency filtering may have been applied. What I did notice were some minor occasional and fairly tangential hurdles in compression and/or grain resolution (see screenshot 7). That said, the bulk of this release boasts a very natural looking and nicely suffused palette, with an organically resolving grain field and a good, stable image. Detail levels are generally very commendable, with some of the more outré production design elements popping quite nicely, especially in close-ups.

City of Women Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

I joked a while back that someone at Cohen needed to start paying attention to my reviews and stop authoring their discs to default to lossy Dolby audio instead of also included lossless options, something that finally did occur (well, they started authoring their discs to default to lossless audio, anyway). Well, now for the second time in as many releases (the first being The Films of Maurice Pialat: Volume 1), Cohen has released a Blu-ray that has only a lossy Dolby track, in this case a Dolby 2.0 mono mix in the original Italian. Since the French release of this title boasted not one but two lossless tracks, I have to believe that this is some kind of QC problem in the production chain where somehow available lossless audio is not being included on releases. So, again, I (kind of) joke: Cohen! Wake up! The lossy track is not a huge letdown, though the boxiness of the score may have been ameliorated in a lossless environment. As is the case in many Italian films, much of the production was post-looped and there are attendant sync issues which are obviously neither helped nor hurt by the lossy audio. Fidelity is fine if a bit underwhelming.

City of Women Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Dreams of Women (1080p; 30:30) is a fascinating documentary by Dominique Maillet that features some excellent interviews and background information on Fellini generally as well as at this stage of his career.


• Interview with Production Designer Dante Ferretti (1080p; 21:24)


• Interview with filmmaker Tinto Brass (1080p; 11:10)


• Original Italian Trailer (1080p; 3:41)


• Original French Trailer (1080p; 1:39)


• 2016 Re-Release Trailer (1080p; 1:30)

City of Women Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I'm not quite as in love with City of Women as Svet seemed to be (based on his 5.0 score for the French release). The film is a typical Fellini-esque riot of imagination, but I found a lot of the proceedings overly forced and ironically less "dreamlike" than merely chaotic. That said, Mastroianni is superb as the put upon hapless male, and the supporting cast is wonderfully eccentric and colorful in traditional Fellini fashion. Video has a few temporary obstacles to overcome, but the lack of lossless audio is a disappointment. Along with lossless audio, the French release also evidently includes a lengthy documentary on the making of the film which is not included on this release. Therefore, I'm recommending that those with a region free player consider the French release. For others who are not put off by lossy audio and the lack of at least one supplement, this release (with caveats) comes Recommended.