Word: masina
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...short, it is business as usual around the television show We Are Proud to Present, which provides a few minutes of celebrity to the unusual or notorious. On the face of it, Pippo (Marcello Mastroianni) and Amelia (Giulietta Masina), would seem to fit right in. Back in the '40s they were a minor but prosperous dance team, imitating the high romantic style of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in provincial Italian nightclubs and variety houses. Pippo and Amelia are long retired, but their one-shot TV comeback will be a treat for old fans and an astonishment to the younger...
...younger directorial stars. Certainly he insists on pumping out more of the "Felliniesque," his trademark blend of the grotesque and the surreal, than we need to get his point that TV is vulgar and coarsening. More moving is his presentation of two carefully imagined archetypes of aging. Masina's Amelia is a woman grown more emotionally compact with the years, defending herself against their onslaught with a sort of neat, perky reserve. Mastroianni's Pippo represents the opposite extreme, vulnerable dishevelment. She wins sympathy by asking no favors; he gains it by begging for it. These are lovely performances, observant...