Time and again I have written that after 8 1/2, a deeply flawed but suggestive satire and, in a scene or two, even affecting film, Federico Fellini was a burnt-out case. There were signs of decline even before that, but few major film-makers have, after two or three great films and as many estimable ones, gone on to a series of abominations comparable to what Fellini has spewed out since 8 1/2. This, for me, includes even his one subsequent success, Amarcord, which I found a gross, witless, ham-fisted rehash of earlier Fellini movies, especially the incomparable I Vittelloni. Whoever puts these two films side by side without perceiving the later work as a lumpish travesty of the earlier is, in my view, tasteless, mindless, or blind.

Now Fellini has become almost too obliging: As if to prove me right so palpably that even the tasteless, mindless, and blind can get it...