GINGER and FRED
Reviewing a Fellini Masterpiece
Glenn Halbrooks

From La Strada to Ginger and Fred, the career and imagination of director Federico Fellini has run the gamut from traditional realism to the decidedly bizarre surreal to this latest film, which in most technical respects defies categorization. Fellini shows a concrete development -- a growing maturity as an artist from film to film that far surpasses that of any of his screen characters. His techniques are at once more striking than previous endeavors, yet the feelings he wishes to transmit to his audiences are somewhat more subtle and refined. The beauty of Ginger and Fred is twofold: the portrayal of the artificiality of modern Roman life alone is excellent but what makes this film almost an instant masterpiece is the performance of these two characters, Ginger and Fred, as they exhibit their frustrations in trying to adapt to an environment that is completely foreign to the life they experienced in their heyday.

What should be most immediately disturbing to a 1980s audience is the bleak, meaningless culture that Fellini paints as Rome and for that matter, all of Western culture --it is indeed the saccharin of all Earthly cultures past and present. Television is shown to have a unbreakable grip on what we perceive as reality. Anywhere we see the characters, we see a television -- on the bus, in the hotel lobby, outside the train station. The people who watch the television (that's in fact all the characters and all of us) are so mesmerized by it that they find it difficult to turn around to the real world that is passing them by. The desk clerks in the hotel hardly know what's going on besides the soccer game and when they do recognize they have a real-world job to do, they still can't stop talking about what they have seen on TV. It's almost as if they are irritated that reality has interrupted their television viewing. In their defense, the soccer game they watched was probably the most significantly relevant image Fellini ever showed to be on Italian TV. From the exercise show to the music video to those wretchedly trivial (and unabashedly sexual) commercials, these broadcasts are a marshmallow world with no nutritional value whatsoever. No product or image is presented straightforwardly without some gross manipulation or exaggeration. Fellini's crowning achievement in his portrayal of our intelligence-malnourishment is the grand Christmas television show. It's all glitz -- there is no substance. No mention is ever made of the true meaning of Christmas (not even a nativity-scene fashion show with lighted swaddling clothes) and all the supposedly famous people are all fakes. The only true sentiment during the entire production is given to that poor, poor woman who believe it or not, actually went without television for a full month. Isn't it wonderful that she could stop her sobs long enough to belt out those notes? The environment shows Fellini's brilliance at showing a feeling or theme that is immediately recognizable to us and present it in a fresh format.

Enter Ginger and Fred, the children of the 1940s, that primitive time that existed before television ruled us all. Both characters show the agony of most older people that time has seemed to pass by. Ginger and Fred deal with this agony in two separate but obvious ways. Ginger is the one who underneath it all, would like to see time reverse itself back to the proverbial "good old days". Her existence is almost in a vacuum -- oblivious to the world about her. She's unfamiliar with the drivel that is on television and in the world around her. She doesn't even realize the alleged woman she meets arriving in Rome is a transvestite. Does she even know what the word means? However, she is perfectly happy that she lives in an age that most everyone has long since forgotten. Indeed, the assistant director that she must work with probably doesn't know such a simple time even existed. Ginger is content with the knowledge that she and her Fred are traveling through their imaginary timeline together. The problem is that he isn't -- Fred makes the effort to try to fit into the society that Rome has become. He's like "The Golden Girls" TV show – attempting to act in the way of those people forty years his junior with some success and some failure. He's sold his dancing school, which is an obvious try at ditching his past, but he's only selling encyclopedias. He's ridiculed for being the old-fashioned superstitious performer when his horseshoe sets off the metal detector. Then again, he's read the book that appears to be the rage of the younger generation. The mise-en-scene of that particular sequence when Fred (Pippo) talks to the author shows Ginger far behind Fred's shoulder --completely locked out of the conversation because she's locked out of the trendiness in modern Rome. However, it is Fred who's the one in crisis because instead of being content with his outdated place in life he tries to transcend time and be something he's not.

That fact makes Fred the character to watch throughout the film as he stumbles in his desire to be the Fred of the 40s and the new present-day Fred. In a sense, Ginger is a flat character; she's the object that reminds Fred of his past accomplishments and acts as dramatic foil to Fred's own desires to grow old with the style of somebody much younger. Ginger is happy with being old and antiquated, but she is somewhat saddened that Fred is not the same as he was forty years ago. She is the one who wants to practice continually, going over the musical score and all the steps so that her walk through the past will be perfect. All those feelings are wrapped up in the wig that she hesitates placing on her head in that roomful of mutant performers. Fred goes along with her game, but when the lights go out on their dance, the lights go on in his head and he realizes what a foolish charade it is that they're enacting. He wants to walk off the stage because he knows their time in the spotlight is forever gone; he may be in crisis but at least he discovers he and Ginger cannot try to remain the same in a world that is so different from their own. However, Ginger does begin to feel likewise as she hyperventilates on the steps after the dance, because she accepts the knowledge that she and Fred will probably never perform again. Somehow, though, it can be surmised that she'll hum the songs and comb her wig forever. Fred's bout with the past is over because the past is finished. He can now sell encyclopedias and live out his days trying to find a slot in the Las Vegas roulette wheel of the 1980s.

If Federico Fellini were to die tomorrow, Ginger and Fred would be a fitting tribute to his growth as a film director. The artistry is so masterful in this film that it is unclassable either as a realist or a formalist film. Through the mise-en-scene, it's obvious certain shots were carefully planned and executed, not in a haphazard cinema verite fashion, but with an intricate purpose toward furthering the action and feelings of the characters. On the other hand, Fellini doesn't shock us with any surreal flashbacks shot in grainy black-and-white fast stock film; we don't see a rhinoceros traipsing through Rome at the end of the movie with Ginger's wig upon its head. Fellini has found a middle ground that's more than just classical cinema because the antagonist in the film is not a mischievous villain, it's the characters themselves in conflict with their souls. The simple outside locations of La Strada have through the years given way to some of the most complex studio scenes in filmmaking. His shooting has moved from merely capturing the action to being sometimes more interesting than the action itself. The lighting of Fred's face when he was preparing to go on stage (with the face dark but the whites of his eyes distinctly visible) must have taken hours of careful preparation. Finally, his choice of characters, costumes, and locations remains impeccable. What makes Ginger and Fred so immediately meaningful to a college audience is that we live in the 1980s and can recognize Fellini's genius in capturing the essence of our age; we can only guess that Fellini did the same with his earlier films, because the times which he represented with La Dolce Vita for instance, are unknown to us. As good as this film may be, Fellini has demonstrated each successive effort becomes the pinnacle of his work. In the words of a cliché, the best is yet to come.