6. Federico Fellini's La voce della luna
Federico Fellini has dabbled in just about every different type of character and narrative throughout his life which only makes La voce della luna a more fitting testament to his brilliance. The film is a dramatic comedy, which is a conventional genre, but Fellini's film is anything but conventional. The way he subverts the more basic elements of the story to bizarre effect proved that he only had more to show us when he made this movie. His last effort as a director features the cerebral nature he was known for but also has a more personal side to it since it continues themes that he explored with La Strada 36 years earlier. Fellini's movie is a parable about two men who go exploring around the Emilia-Romagne countryside where he grew up and end up discovering a dystopia of wonders and unnatural phenomenon. They find themselves enveloped in a world of fascism, Catholicism and paganism that all counteract with one another making the film very potent and engaging. The world that the two men encounter is basically the mind of Fellini himself and the two men basically represent the two sides of Fellini's artistic nature. La voce della luna is full of beauty but also signs of darkness and pain that permeate all of his work. Fellini went out in grand fashion with this film by returning to the more personal themes that he started out working with and by suggesting that beauty can be found anywhere, even in the darkest recesses of one's mind.