The opening shot of Fellini's "City of Women" is a train about to enter a tunnel, not exactly the subtlest shot to suggest a certain type of act, but in that case it works perfectly for two reasons: the POV is the train so we don't watch the phallic symbol but its 'target', plus the penetration into darkness foresees the trip into the hearts of darkness that awaits Guido, the film protagonist, played by an aged but still charming Marcello Mastroianni. That darkness is associated with women's liberation might divide opinions, but Fellini is not the man to say 'mea culpa'.
So the film opens in a train, Guido has a fling with a beautiful but rather severe-looking woman, he follows her to the bathroom, obviously not to talk about the latest dress fashion in Milan, the two conclude, the train stops, he follows her again, and finds himself in a feminist convention with the most incongruous set of female characters steaming off centuries of repressed anger and resentment against men and patriarchy, expressing in the most turbulent and truculent way their desire to build a more just society rid of phallocracy and ever archetypes that made Italy the Mecca of Latin seduction. And that's only for starters. If you're surprised by the aesthetics, then it's probably the first Fellini you ever saw, and then I'm afraid you didn't pick the right one.
Indeed, this is a film to satisfy the fans (mildly) and disconcert the newcomers, on the surface, like all Fellini movies, "Cities of Women" is a never-ending succession of disjointed vignettes forcing us to endure with enchantment, disgust, puzzlement and even embarrassment the shenanigans, not of a loony protagonist but of a gallery of female characters who cover the whole spectrum of women's attitudes, from the castrating to the nymphomaniac type, from the kitschy to the one who rhymes with it, from the frigid icy intellectual to the voluptuous matron. And in the content, I'm afraid the film doesn't provide more than a certain view of Fellini regarding the aggressiveness of feminism in the late 70s... and whether he sides with these women or looks at them with amused detachment isn't a matter of opinion, Fellini knows where he stands.
The film was made after his "Casanova", a critic against the Italian Don Juan who tries to pass as a sophisticated bourgeois in order to hide his crass obsessions. It's possible that Fellini had the same defiance against a certain hypocritical expression of feminism which, in the name of positive values: freedom, liberation, independence carried the same vulgar obsessions about sex. And in that cacophony of anti-men slogans, rapidly, a think-thank sessions turns into a heated debated where sexual positions and references to genitals are dropped, so it's not much Fellini criticizing the women that hate men, but the women whose hatred toward men cloud their judgment and bring the worst masculine traits in them.
In a way, every intellectual woman according to Fellini has her mind focused on her vagina or her relationships with men, seeing phallic symbols everywhere, and Guido embodies the point of view of men who, like Fellini, grew up with homely big-bosomed women incarnated by their mothers and aunts, came to age in the post-war era with sexually liberated women but then came the late 70s where religion and patriarchy stopped having a saying in everything. However, Guido doesn't handle the hostility with bad spirit but acts like a man visiting a curiosity, a zoo, and tries to understand with false benevolence what he believes to be a foreign language. To Fellini's defense, this misconception about feminism has hold up a long time until the 1990s... and to his defense again, the exaggeration wasn't that exaggerated.
To make a timely parallel, the film reminded me of Mr. Burns' visit at Yale ("The Simpsons"), Fellini at least had the guts to go against the stream and stick to his guns by expressing his nostalgia for the old-fashioned women, and he does so with the same flamboaynt bravura and extravagant flashiness that made his trademarks. And he does instrumentalize women like he did with his own wife Giuletta Masina in "Juliet of the Spirits", where she was given a rather ungrateful role in a movie that was also venturing in the fantasies of her husband, made of the same kind of attractive women, to whom she didn't belong. In "City of Women", women are all here, but for the biggest part of the film, they're not tantalizing him, "La Dolce Vita" had Anita Ekberg sensually inviting Marcello to "come here", this time, the invitation is reversed.
"O tempora! O mores" said the Romans, and Fellini takes us to a journey where women have seized the microphone. However, being the unapologetic macho he is, he proposes a second immersion in a universe where the roles are reversed again and that's where the film loses its pace. Guido visits the house of a man who had 10000 conquests and what follows is another "8½" fantasy ride, made of naughty games and an interesting trial that reminded me of "Pluto's Judgment Day". As to counterbalance his previous act, Fellini had to get back to another Casanova figure, without any sense whatsoever of restrain and measure, he's an artist so carried away by his instincts that he believes any idea that pops up in his mind deserves to be included.
Which makes the film like half an hour too long while it could have stuck to its initial idea and be a social fantasy-induced comment on feminism and a companion piece of "8½". "City of Women" has dazzling imagery, a wonderful set design, and reflects the powerful imagination of the director, what it lacks is just 'control' and a discipline. But it's still worth the watch as his last hurrah before the 80s, and seriously, it shouldn't offend much because the offensive parts are so cartoonish and over-the-top, they're no worse than a Benny Hill skit.
