“Juliet of the Spirits,” Fellini’s first color feature, is also an exercise in psychoanalysis, this time around centering on the neuroses and anxieties, dreams, nightmares, and fantasies of a middle-aged woman (played by Giulietta Masina) who suspects her husband is cheating on her.
This was the last collaboration between Fellini and his longtime wife, who had earlier made together such masterpieces as “La Strada” and “Nights of Cabiria,”
It is a visually dazzling, nearly gaudy production with no coherent plot but many absorbing psychological and social observations. Giulietta was the last Fellini film to win nearly unanimous critical approval or popular success until Amarcord in 1973, which won the Best Foreign Language Oscar.
Oscar Nominations: 2
Art Direction-Set Decoration (Color): Piero Gherardi
Costume Design (Color): Piero Gherardi
Oscar Awards: None
Oscar Context:
The Art Direction Oscar went to “Fantastic Voyage.”
Elizabeth Haffenden and Joan Bridge won the Costume Design Oscar for Fred Zinnemann’s drama, “A Man for All Seasons,” which swept most of the Oscar in 1966.
