Federico Fellini’s final film was a surreal, chaotic protest against the modern media age
In short: Before his death in 1993, legendary director Federico Fellini released his final masterpiece, The Voice of the Moon. It is a fever dream of a film that follows a man recently released from a mental hospital as he wanders through a landscape drowning in television commercials, political propaganda, and noise.
Released in 1990, The Voice of the Moon serves as a poignant, acerbic critique of the postmodern world. Based on Ermanno Cavazzoni’s 1987 novel, Il poema dei lunatici, the film depicts a society where the natural world—represented by the moon—is captured, caged, and exploited by politicians and priests for propaganda. Fellini, revisiting the provincial atmosphere of his early works, uses this narrative to assault the pandemonium of contemporary mass media, which he believed drowned out the silence necessary for true wisdom.
The production was as unconventional as the film itself. With no completed script, Fellini improvised scenes daily on a massive set built outside Rome, treating his actors like puppets in a doll's house. The project was financed with fifteen billion lire by producers Mario and Vittorio Cecchi Gori, despite internal disputes that led to the departure of set designer Danilo Donati. Principal photography began on 22 February 1989, culminating in a final troupe dinner in mid-June where star Roberto Benigni recited an impromptu poem to commemorate the experience.
While the film was a commercial success in Italy, grossing $5.1 million, its reception abroad was polarized. Critics in France, such as those at Les Cahiers du Cinéma, praised it as a brilliant diatribe against the society of the spectacle. Conversely, many North American critics at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival were baffled or bored by its surreal, episodic nature. Ultimately, the film remains a testament to Fellini’s belief that if humanity could only quiet down, we might finally understand something of the world around us.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: The Voice of the Moon
- Also: Wikidata — The Voice of the Moon · CC0
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