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City of Women
La città delle donne
1980 140 min France, Italy R 18+
★7.0
Comedy, Adventure, Fantasy
Director: Federico Fellini
Trailers
Description
The charismatic Snaporaz encounters an alluring woman on a train and pursues her through a forest. He ends up at a hotel populated by women gathered for a feminist conference, where he is an unwanted presence. Snaporaz soon discovers he’s entered a phantasmagoric world where women have taken power.
US Gross:
$12,516
Starring
Marcello Mastroianni
Actor
Anna Prucnal
Actor
Bernice Stegers
Actor
Awards
6 wins total
Key opinion
Federico Fellini's 'City of Women' is a polarizing, dreamlike exploration of male subconsciousness and evolving gender dynamics. While some praise its surreal visual ambition and unflinching introspection, others find the narrative disjointed and the treatment of feminist themes to be reductive or caricatured.
| Acting | Marcello Mastroianni delivers a definitive performance as the director’s surrogate, capturing the persona of an infantile and self-absorbed bourgeois man. | |
| Production | The film utilizes a high-concept, surreal visual language to depict the protagonist's descent into a nightmarish, dream-like realm. | |
| Theme | The portrayal of 1970s feminism is highly divisive, sparking debate between those who see it as a biting, honest satire of power struggles and those who perceive it as an offensive or shallow caricature. | |
| Screenplay | The film's loose, dream-logic narrative structure is hailed by some as a bold artistic evolution, while others criticize it as incoherent and lacking the structural rigor of Fellini's earlier masterpieces. | |
| Pacing | The unconventional, episodic pacing is viewed as an immersive, contemplative experience by fans, yet is described as sluggish and exhausting by detractors. |