The Voice of the Moon
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Synopsis
The swansong of the great Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini (La dolce vita, 8½), The Voice of the Moon emerged without fanfare: it played the Cannes Film Festival out of competition after its Italian premiere and failed to secure distribution in North America and the UK. This new restoration from the original negative seeks to right that wrong and provide the film with a second chance... Adapted from a novel by Ermano Cavazzoni, The Voice of the Moon concerns itself with Ivo Salvini (Roberto Benigni, Life Is Beautiful), recently released from a mental hospital and in love with Aldini (Nadia Ottaviani). As he attempts to win her heart, he wanders a strange, dreamlike landscape and encounters various oddball characters, including Gonnella (Paolo Villagio, Fantozzi), a paranoid old man prone to conspiracy theories. Concluding a career that had stretched back more than fifty years, The Voice of the Moon combines the nostalgia of Amarcord (the film is set in Emilia-Romagna countryside of the director's youth), the surreal satire of City of Women and the naïf-adrift-in-a-brutal-world structure of La strada. Plenty for Fellini fans to get their teeth into.
Picture 9/10
Arrow Academy presents Federico Fellini’s final film, The Voice of the Moon, on Blu-ray in a new dual-format edition, marking the 1990 film’s debut in North America. It is presented in the aspect ratio of 1.66:1 in 1080p/24hz on a dual-layer disc. The master is sourced from a new 2K restoration by Arrow, scanned from the 35mm original camera negative.
The film really isn’t that old but since the film was met with a certain disdain at the time of its release I guess I half expected it to have been in piss-poor shape. If it was initially, though, there is certainly no evidence to support this: thanks to Arrow’s usual attention to detail this looks wonderful, and that old cliché of “it looks like it could have been filmed yesterday” really holds true here. The first thing that struck was just how clean this was. I don’t recall a single blemish ever appearing, not even a small spec. If one did appear I absolutely missed it, but it was probably because I was also just bowled over by how film-like and clean this image is. This digital presentation is a real marvel, quite stunning from beginning to end. Though there are a lot of dark scenes the film is still very colourful, laced with some nice blues and reds and so forth. They really pop and look wonderfully saturated. The black levels are also quite strong, and though some darker scenes may struggle a wee-bit in the shadow details, I didn’t find crushing to be a concern.
In regards to the digital presentation itself I can’t fault for anything. It retains a film-like texture and is free of noise and other anomalies, rendering grain well while also cleanly rendering the smokier and mistier moments.
It’s a real wonder of a restoration and encode. I did expect it to look good, even if I was unsure of how the materials have held up, this certainly exceeded my expectations by a long shot. It just looks really, really great.
Audio 7/10
The film comes with its original Italian mono track, presented in lossless PCM 2.0 mono here (the back of the box says 1.0 mono). There’s some obvious dubbing going on and there can be a bit of a detachment at times because of it but in general I found dialogue to deliver decent fidelity and range, and the film’s music also comes off sounding fairly rich and deep. There also doesn’t appear to be any background damage of any sort.
Extras 5/10
Disappointingly there is really only one significant on-disc feature here, and that’s the making-of documentary Toward the Moon with Fellini, which looks to have been originally made for television, though by the looks of it based on some research I did it only saw the light of day over a decade ago. The 58-minute documentary is a bit Felliniesque itself, presenting the story of an American journalist played by Christina Engelhardt (and using that name) trying to get all the details on the latest Fellini film only to discover that most everybody she talks to doesn’t really know what the film is about. Even more oddly this fact doesn’t seem to deter them. Most of this is obviously scripted and set-up (to push home that the journalist is American she wears a Giants sports cap) but there is some genuine behind-the-scenes footage showing set construction and Fellini giving direction. As a making-of it covers all the bases you would expect but is fairly fun in its own right. This is also a fairly decent get for Arrow because, as I learned looking the segment up, it was made during filming of Voice of the Moon and intended as a promotional piece but was ultimately abandoned. Engelhardt actually put together a number of resources to get it completed and it was released briefly in the mid 2000’s, though by the looks of it it disappeared after that, so getting it on video should be a treat for admirers of Fellini.
Unfortunately that’s almost it. There is a decent gallery of Felliniana, showing various promotional pieces and even CD soundtrack art. The included booklet makes up a little bit in the lack of more scholarly material, featuring an essay on the film by Pasquale Iannone. In it Iannone covers its reception a little bit (addressing a few reviews) and talks about Roberto Benigni’s career to that point. He also does offer a bit of a synopsis that does actually clarify the film a bit. It’s only limited to first pressings but I’d say it would be worth picking up now for it if one was going to pick up the film anyway.
Again, wish there was a bit more considering it was Fellini’s last film but I enjoyed what ended up on here.
Closing
I’m really quite stunned this marks the film’s debut in North America, which was due to a poor initial reception. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere I’m not overly fond of Fellini’s films, really only liking a handful of them, but I was actually rather charmed by this one. I’m not sure why that is, though. The essay in the booklet suggests that the critical community at the time had grown tired of Fellini’s vignette-like structure and flights of fancy but I'm guessing in my case it has all finally just worn me down.
Though not a stacked edition I’m still very pleased with Arrow’s release. The included documentary is fairly fun but it’s the stellar presentation that really sells this edition, marking a hell of a debut for the film.
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