"Nine"

The day after Xmas, I went with Ginny Zeitman & Ivo Adam, an Italian friend of ours who was a teenager in Milano in 1965, to see the new film "Nine" based on a newish play based on Fellini's film "8 1/2" (1965): Daniel Day-Lewis plays an anguished, imaginatively burnt-out Fellini @ 50 wonderfully; semi-clown Fellini would have envied looking as craggily anguished as Day-Lewis does. Ivo noted there are none of the usual Fellini clowns in it (unless, of course, you insist on considering Day-Lewis as a tragic clown.)

Here's Ivo's Italo-historico take on the film:

Bill, I think the reason "pundits - experts" fail to appreciate NINE is that they are looking at it as a musical without considering its Italian character.. For a (non-Italian) critic, this movie is a musical which could be set in the South Pacific...or Chicago... (but) it's Italian Teatro Del'Arte. When one sees Fellini, one sees a modern Goldoni, Servitore di due Padroni...rather than a "West Side Story"...I am glad we went...

Ivo Adam
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