NINE

The other day I heard on NPR a critique on the movie NINE… It was late at night…(I usually fall asleep with the radio on…) so I only absorbed part of the critique… and it was bad, but it mentioned the fact that the film was inspired by Fellini’s film “8½” … Being of the opinion that Federico Fellini is the Grand Master of (Italian) Cinema… and “8½” on the top of the list… I decided to go and see it… and judge for myself on the quality of NINE…

So I emailed my friend Bill asking him if he wanted to go…knowing that he was a Fellini admirer…

Below is the email I wrote Bill a few hours after seeing NINE…(Taken from his blog…

www.costleybill7.blogspot.com)

The day after Xmas, I went with Ginny & Ivo, an Italian friend of ours who was a teenager in Milano in the early sixties, to see the new film "NINE" based on a newish play based on Fellini's film “8½” (1965):
Daniel Day-Lewis wonderfully plays an anguished, imaginatively burnt-out Fellini in his fifties; semi-clown Fellini would have envied looking as craggily anguished as Day-Lewis does. Ivo noted there are none of the usual Fellini clowns in it (unless, of course, you consider Day-Lewis a tragic one.) Here's Ivo's Italian take on the film:

I think the reason "pundits/experts" fail to appreciate NINE is that they are looking at it as a musical without considering its Italian character.. For a (non-Italian) critic, this movie is a musical which could be set in the South Pacific...or Chicago... but it's Italian Teatro Del'Arte...

When one sees Fellini, one sees a modern Goldoni, (Servitore di due Padroni)...rather than a "West Side Story"...

I am glad we went to see this parody...

And if you are curious enough and want to understand the meaning of Italian Neorealism… or just the beauty of Art in Cinema… go and enjoy seeing NINE…