City Of Women saw Fellini reunited with Marcello Mastroianni, who had so often portrayed the director’s on-screen alter ego. He plays Snàporaz, a man travelling by train who attempts to seduce the woman sharing his carriage. Following her when she disembarks, he is led on a series of surreal encounters in which he is forced to confront his relationships with and attitudes towards women. Typically of the director’s later work, the restrictions of a linear narrative are sacrificed for something more free-flowing, a series of vignettes that sees him working without inhibition in a film that the Wall Street Journal described as “a decidedly original mixture of nostalgia, poignancy, and joy that is unmistakably Fellini’s own.” 

Screening as part of the Federico Fellini retrospective, April 4th to May 10th.