When he wasn’t creating top ten lists, director Federico Fellini filled his time by creating one of the most celebrated filmographies ever. Last week, everyone’s favorite boutique home video label Criterion released a lovingly restored “Fellini Satyricon” on Blu-Ray and DVD and now they have released a video detailing the three reasons you should part with your hard-earned cash for this beautiful release.
Running just under a minute and a half, the video does a fine job of highlighting the aggressively wild and surreal nature of Fellini’s self-described “science fiction of the past” milieu. The looks of “faces from another time” and the infamous “Roman appetites” for sex & violence seen in the film are some of the reasons listed to check out the film.
Even by today’s standards, Fellini’s film, which only included his name in the title so as to differentiate itself from Gian Luigi Polidoro’s “Satyricon,” which was rushed into theaters to beat Fellini’s film in order to legally claim ownership of the title, is a hard sell for most audiences, particularly in the U.S. Luckily, the fine folks at Criterion have shared two examples of the film’s marketing campaign in the U.S., which shows that United Artists were not afraid of steering into the skid of the crazy Italian arthouse vibe. The best part of the radio spot and trailer shared by Criterion? That would be the wonderfully aggrandizing tagline: “Rome. Before Christ. After Fellini.”
Pick up Criterion’s superb release of “Fellini Satyricon” on Blu-Ray & DVD in stores now, and watch the Three Reasons video and the original trailer (along with a radio spot) for the film below.
