http://bayimg.com/HAeDmaAdf

Ginger and Fred (1986) 

Ginger e Fred (original title) 
 
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091113/

Ginger and Fred (Italian: Ginger e Fred) is a 1986 comedy/drama film directed by Federico Fellini and starring Marcello Mastroianni and Giulietta Masina.

  Giulietta Masina  ...  Amelia Bonetti / Ginger  
  Marcello Mastroianni  ...  Pippo Botticella / Fred  
  Franco Fabrizi  ...  Show host  
  Friedrich von Ledebur  ...  Admiral Aulenti (as Frederick Ledebur)  
  Augusto Poderosi  ...  Transvestite  
  Martin Maria Blau  ...  Assistant director  
  Jacques Henri Lartigue  ...  Brother Gerolamo (as Jacques Henry Lartigue)  
  Totò Mignone  ...  Totò (as Toto Mignone)  
  Ezio Marano  ...  The Intellectual  
  Antoine Saint-John  ...  Bandaged man (as Antoine Saint Jean)  
  Friedrich von Thun  ...  Kidnapped Industrialist (as Frederich Thun)  
  Antonino Iuorio  ...  TV Inspector (as Antonio Iuorio)  
  Barbara Scoppa  ...  Journalist  
  Elisabetta Flumeri  ...  Journalist  
  Salvatore Billa  ...  Clark Gable  

The title is a reference to the American dancing couple Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. The two leads portray Italian impersonators of Astaire and Rogers who reunite after thirty years of retirement for a vulgar and bizarre television extravaganza.

The movie is a complex and coherent indictment of the shallowness of commercial television, which, eager to squeeze commercials across every possible kind of program, deadens the viewers' ability to appreciate complex or thought-provoking themes.

The television mogul "Fulvio Lombardoni" is an early and biting satire of Silvio Berlusconi, who at the time was building his monopolistic media empire in total disrespect of Italian laws about nationwide TV emissions.

Ginger and Fred (1986) was one of the last films made by cinema's unchallenged master of grotesque caricature, Federico Fellini. After a long career of brilliantly marching out spiritual, economic, and social charlatans for our scrutiny, it made sense that Fellini would finally get around to taking aim at that towering repository of all-encompassing phoniness - television. Paradoxically enough - and after years of begging from advertisers - he decided to shoot Ginger and Fred shortly after helming his first TV commercial! (Pretentious cineastes can at least be thankful that he rejected an offer to direct a Boy George video around the same time.)

Ginger and Fred tells the story of Amelia (Giulietta Masina, Fellini's real-life wife) and Pippo (Marcello Mastroianni) two aging, second-tier hoofers who used to go by the stage names of "Fred and Ginger." Years past their primes, and having completely lost contact with each other, they're invited to participate in a televised variety show that will include such "acts" as a priest who has married and will kiss his new bride on the air, a troupe of dancing midgets, a transvestite who offers sexual favors to horny prison inmates, and an inventor who eats his new-and-improved edible panties off of a model. (Any resemblance to the Fox network is purely coincidental...if not visionary.)

Amelia and Pippo try to rehearse, but it becomes clear that Pippo is an alcoholic who has only shown up for the quick money. Amelia grows less and less enthusiastic as the freak show nears; both Fred and Ginger seem unsure of whether they want to participate. The two will become nothing more than cogs in a bizarre, belittling ritual, exactly the sort of thing that Fellini could orchestrate in high style. Still, he knew how to tap very real human emotions amidst the foolishness.

In yet another paradox tied to this production, Ginger and Fred began its life as a concept for a TV movie. It was originally meant to be part of an anthology film in which Masina would play six different roles and be directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, Franco Zeffirelli, and Fellini himself. For his installment, Fellini created a character named Ginger, a sensitive former vaudeville dancer who became a grandmother and the owner of a small business. When Mastroianni agreed to play Ginger's over-the-hill partner, Fellini decided to turn the story into a feature film that would brutally dissect modern television. The final version is filled with ridiculous commercials, most of them for sausages, the implication being that the human participants in the TV show are nothing more than disposable products, pop cultural flotsam.

Fellini stated that he originally wanted to recapture "the essence of those old variety shows" that he saw when he was young, and that the story was to take place in "this labyrinth, enchanted palace of TV." This enchantment would not hold, of course. There were simply too many ripe targets waiting to be zapped.

Needless to say, the tube has grown even more Fellini-esque in recent years. Fellini was forever tapping into a more imposing zeitgeist than most audience members recognized on their own. During the filming of Ginger and Fred, critic Richard Corliss looked back on the director's storied career and noted: "What may once have looked like outrageous cartoons of sensuality and sacrilege have become, in retrospect, previews of a moral system spun wildly off its axis...his pictures celebrate what they criticize; they amount to a cautionary blueprint for survival in the Atomic Age."

In I, Fellini by Charlotte Chandler (Cooper Square Press), the director shared his own views on Ginger and Fred: "Our little picture was about people who worshiped Rogers and Astaire. The title Ginger and Fred was meant as a compliment, and I just could not believe it when I was told that Ginger Rogers had reacted with anger and was trying to stop the film from being shown. The damages being asked for were more than the cost of making the film. I never believed she was the one responsible. She must have listened to other people who said the film ridiculed her. Some critics even said I was making fun of Rogers and Astaire. I never mock what I do. I see what is funny about my subjects, but I never make fun of them. I laugh with my characters, not at them....The person who was really hurt was Giulietta, because she had so identified with Ginger, and the movie was really made because of Giulietta...In the Italy of the thirties, Ginger and Fred had comforted us, especially those of us who lived in the provinces. In the world of fascism, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers showed us that another life was possible, at least in America, that land of unimaginable freedom and opportunity."