Juliet of the Spirits. Italy's Federico Fellini is the Barnum of the avantgarde. In his apocalyptic La Dolce Vita, as in the wildly self-centered 8$, his flair for baroque theatrical effects seemed to be a secondary characteristic of genius, the manner but not the meat of it. In Juliet, his first full-length movie in color, effect is everything. Fellini puts on a psychic three-ring circus that promises profundity and delivers only a stunningly decadent freak show.
The Juliet of the film's title is Fellini's wife, Giulietta Masina, exercising all of her rueful, clownish charm...