Giulietta degli spiriti
Juliet of the Spirits(1965)

writer/director Frederico Fellini
starring Giulietta Masina, Sandra Milo, Mario Pisu
music Nino Rota

An evening seance reopens childhood visions and invites two spirits into the tranquil life of Giulietta, as her overbearing family force her to admit to problems in her marriage.

Already a master of sound with layers of dialog happening at once, and known for his sudden costumed fantasies, circus characters, and emotional depth, Frederico Fellini’s first color film is stunning. The hue pallets are so wild in one scene, restrained in the next, you get the feeling he was waiting for technicolor his whole life: translucent multi-color drapes are vividly lit by stained-glass peacocks, nuns in dark purple invade a garden of pale wisteria, and Juliet’s disapproving mother becomes a silent shreik of icy pastels.

Juilet of the Spirirts is Fellini’s most Fellini-esque movie, crossing back and forth into his fantasy worlds as never before. It is also called the female 8½, instead of Marcello Mastroianni hiding an affair amid the chaos of his work life, Masina’s Giulietta wants nothing but the calm of her domestic paradise and to remain ignorant of her husband’s cheating. She maintains an air of patient dignity in a hurricane’s eye of pop-spirituality and psychics, and submits under a family of pushy Amazons, but finally loses her cool when confronting his mistress. Two spirits play angel and devil in her mind, one urging her to please her husband with sexual favors the other urging her to please herself.