April 1981 continues with the year's second-best werewolf movie
Plus the film that Zack Snyder just can't quit
I know how tardy this is. I am horrified, but I swear there is a good reason. When I am able to share the reason, I think you’ll understand. I’ll talk about it a little bit in the next Formerly Dangerous, but for now, I’m determined to get you April and May as quickly as I can.
Considering there are only four films in today’s installment of the newsletter, it’s incredible that two of them are still discussed often and fondly. We’re only doing half the weekend, and two of the titles are iconic? Wild.
One of them is a Joe Dante classic that I’ve been itching to write about for a while now, and while I think there’s another film from this same year and this same genre that is a better film overall, that doesn’t take away from this film being a stone-cold classic. That speaks to the high quality of the work we were getting from some of our very best genre filmmakers during this year.
Exciting, right? Let’s get into it…
APRIL 10
City Of Women
Marcello Mastroianni, Anna Prucnal, Bernice Stegers, Jole Silvani, Donatella Damiani, Ettore Manni, Fiammetta Baralla, Hélène Calzarelli, Catherine Carrel, Marcello Di Falco, Silvana Fusacchia, Gabriella Giorgelli, Dominique Labourier, Stéphane Emilfork, Sylvie Matton, Meerberger Nahyr, Sibilla Sedat, Katren Gebelein, Alessandra Panelli, Nadia Vasil, Loredana Solfizi, Fiorella Molinari, Rosaria Tafuri, Sylvie Wacrenier, Carla Terlizzi, Jill Lucas, Vivian Lucas
cinematography by Giuseppe Rotunno
music by Luis Bacalov
screenplay by Federico Fellini & Bernardino Zapponi and Brunello Rondi
story by Federico Fellini & Bernardino Zapponi
produced by Franzo Rossellini & Renzo Rossellini and Daniel Toscan du Plantier
directed by Federico Fellini
Rated R
2 hrs 19 mins
A man travels through a surreal psycho-sexual landscape in which he examines his relationships with the women in his life.
I love long-term collaborations between actors and filmmakers. I love the way those collaborations can yield wildly different results over time depending on where each of the artists is in their lives, and the shared work that Federico Fellini and Marcello Mastroianni left behind is one of the richest and densest filmographies you could ever hope to dig into.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Last '80s Newsletter (You'll Ever Need) to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.