The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, February 17-23
City of Women (1980)
Directed by Federico Fellini
Fellini made La città delle donne in 1980, once again returning to The Woman Question. Here, Marcello Mastroianni (aging well) is Snàporaz, a middle-aged Federico stand-in who follows a femme from a train, and is drawn into a series of fantastic encounters: with big and small women, old and young women, women in torch-bearing mobs and women alone, at the ends of long hallways. Between one lady who turns out to be a hot-air balloon and another who’s only a marble Mommy bust, a lot of lively flesh cavorts—but Fellini cares little for satirizing second-wave feminism, teen drug culture, or the machismo of a guy named Dr. Superdick. His true quest is still for pleasure—discovered in moments like the thunder of a train, the sunlight in a field. Elina Mishuris (February 19-25 at Film Forum; showtimes daily)