If you read my first post on this thread, I did write
However, after "Orchestra Rehearsal," (which is, coincidently, when Fellini's composer Nino Rota died) everything I've seen (which is everything but "Voice of the Moon") is a mixed bag, or worse.
though I wasn't as broad about it because music was one of the better things (if not the best thing) about his 80s work. But I'm speaking strictly of the music itself, not of how it goes with the films, so I will very much support your hypothesis because his
use of music in the 80s was uncharacteristic of him, especially compared to such perfect work with Nino Rota.
Directly after Rota died Fellini hired Luis Bacalov to score "City of Women" (for no reason other than that one day while recording "Casanova" Nino Rota said to Fellini that Bacalov was good). Bacalov wrote a wonderful score which was released on CD, but very strangely more than half of what he wrote isn't in the film. More suspicious is that there are countless scenes without underscore in the 140 minute film where music feels desperately needed (and this had never been a problem with Fellini movies before), so I'm not sure what the hell happened (as I said in my above post, "City of Women" feels like a rough cut to me, and the near absence of music in most of it adds to that).
Rota certainly had as much to do with Fellini as Herrmann did for Hitchcock, and when you watch "Torn Curtain" or "City of Women" you most definitely feel the loss of the composers (though at least "City of Women" has good music in it, there's just not very much of it). "And the Ship Sails On" only used adapted classical, which is all great music, but it also might've helped make that film kind of sluggish, lacking the energy of those otherworldly Rota-esque melodies ("Ship" is certainly the best of his 80s films, but I just find it to be an okay film...like "City of Women" it's just too long).
But starting with "Ginger and Fred" Fellini found the very talented Nicola Piovani, who has a very distinct style but is also often inspired from Rota, and Piovani wrote some nice music for those last three Fellini movies...but the problem is the way the films (or the two I've seen) treat the music, which is exclusively as background music, which is something else that strikes me as strange and uncharacteristic of Fellini. I mean, where's the choreography (to be fair, "Ginger and Fred" did have Piovani adapting Irving Berlin's music for the final dance scene...and he really Rota-izes "Let's Face the Music and Dance," in particular)? For me, Piovani's delightful music is still the only truly Felliniesque thing about those films, but in the 80s music just wasn't the true heart and voice of these worlds, and for what reason I'm not sure, but the lack of a musical heart in the later films certainly contributed to their overall failures (even if the music itself was good).
As far as "Ginger and Fred" looking 'ugly,' it's pedestrian cinematography was just one of the things that added to it being (for me) severely lower-tier. Many of my favorite movies have little to no sense of style (particularly a lot of early Hollywood films) and I don't mind at all. But someone like Fellini, of course, has a very apparent style, even the non-cinematically virtuoso ones are very proficiently shot films (I Vitelloni or La Strada, for instance), and I'm always shocked when I glance at "Intervista" or "Ginger and Fred," which look like they could've been made by anyone (and I'm speaking in terms of everything, not just style).
As I've said, Fellini is without a doubt my favorite director, I love him, but in my opinion he did lose his magic in the 80s (though once again, I haven't seen "Voice of the Moon"...as soon as somebody releases an English subtitled DVD I'll buy it). But he had a wonderful, wonderful run from "Variety Lights" till "Orchestra Rehearsal," and that's almost 30 years of consistency. He truly was the greatest, even if his later stuff isn't so hot.
Dylan
Great news. I'll have to pick up "Ginger and Fred"; thanks for the heads-up.
