Creative Marriages

Cinema’s great husband-and-wife carnival act, Italian maestro Federico Fellini and actress Giulietta Masina gave birth to a new form of filmic expression that blended earthy realism with extravagant flights of surrealist fancy. This double bill—two of the ten Fellini films that are available to stream on the Criterion Channel—captures the style that would come to be known as “Felliniesque” at its poetic roots in their international breakout La strada and at its colorful, kaleidoscopic extreme in the Freudian riot Juliet of the Spirits. Critic Michael Sragow explores the way that these twin masterworks document the evolving creative and personal relationship between two indispensable artists whose legacies are forever entwined.