Ginger and Fred [1986] [DVD]

My copy was a Spanish one (a language I do not possess), and the Spaish translations overshadowed the delicate Italian text. The movie is moving and charming: the past, and the inevitable aging of the present, with past failures accepted. Do try to get the movie without subtitles or with English subtitles. It has lost none of its charm.

Fascinating

I have seen this film over 15 times.I cannot really see doing this with any other fellini film, though I'm no expert.Sometimes there are moments of wading through with his episodic films,no disrespect to them at all, but I felt I was through to the other side with this.I never like reviewing the contents of films I review, suffice it to say it's a desert island film.

Maybe you need to like Fellini movies, or quirky cult films in which nothing really happens, but now that I have bought this movie and have seen it, I realise I should have suspected it would be "rather unusual". It is after all Fellini, and he happens to be not-my-taste. It reminds me a little of the "cult" movie (which I do in fact love) called "King of Hearts" with Alan Bates (late 1960's, I think) - it too is a "foreign-language film" (French in that case; Italian in the case of "Ginger and Fred") and is very quirky indeed, but at least with that film it is often amusing, it has a storyline, it is very endearing, and it has several "messages" (anti-war is a mere one of them) - not that a message is by any means necessary, but it at least made that slightly bizarre (but somehow lovely) film more interesting than "Ginger and Fred", which didn't seem to say anything at all about anything or anyone. To be fair, it is atmospheric, and the costumes are memorable, as are some of the characters, and the acting is great, but none of that is enough to make up for its (in my view) defects. I watched this film to the end only so that I could be fair in my opinion about it, but in fact I didn't care for it at all. To me, "Ginger and Fred" is SO cultish and peculiar that it has very little appeal and also has hardly even a story - I was longing for a truly impressive dance scene, or a happy ending, or anything making me feel I hadn't wasted my time in watching it. However, I do want to be fair and admit that I am sure that if you like this sort of film in general, you will find that this one is well done and original, but as for being an entertaining film with a pleasing story line (the ending I can only call non-descript and disappointing), this isn't it.The main reason I am even bothering to write a review is not to write a critique but merely to be enable anyone thinking of buying the film to have a better idea of what it's like than I did when I was considering its purchase. So to me personally this is a one-star movie, or even no stars, but I am only too aware that this is purely subjective and that someone else might love the film; I imagine that lots of people no doubt do like it, and all I can say is that it's great that people have different tastes. So my message is simply this: - be aware that if you buy this film, it IS extremely unusual and not exactly fast-moving (!), but maybe you'll love it.

Don't be fooled by the title and cover picture for this dvd. It is not about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. I was looking forward to watching Fred and Ginger in action and instead was presented a very poor substitute.