City of Women

“Sincere to the point of indecent” was how Fellini described 8 1/2; the characterization applies just as well to City of Women, a surrealist fantasia of female power and male sexual anxiety. Fellini’s aging alter ego Marcello Mastroianni wanders through a dreamscape populated by roller-skating feminists, new wave vixens, and one comically lascivious male seducer, eventually coming before a female tribunal assembled to judge him on crimes of masculinity. The film drew criticism for its cartoonish portrayal of feminism and women in general, but, as Seymour Chatman wrote, it represents “the struggle of one self-confessed codger, all too accustomed to enjoying the fruits of sexism, to ask himself where he really stands in our brave new world of gender awareness—a project that Fellini had clearly begun in 8 1/2 fifteen years before.”