Despite the calm melancholy of the film’s end and the need for silence (a sentence in which the lunar hero is Fellini’s spokesman), in my opinion La voce della luna is Fellini’s saddest film. This holds true not only because of its death-related themes (echoing Mastorna’s works that Fellini had studied for decades), but also because of madness (reference is made to ‘Le donne libere di Magliano’ by Tobino – a film he did not want to make or didn’t succeed in making), old age, loneliness, dismay. In La voce della luna Fellini also makes some sad comments on the vulgar and terrible period he is living in. The shots of “Gnocchi” (Dumplings’) Day and Miss Flour election are very eloquent. La voce della luna is a fairy tale fighting against background noise.

Fellini’s very bitter fairy tale is based on an archetypal ‘village’ that is characterized both by unknown sweet traits and by the decay caused by prevailing consumerist attitudes. In a such a universe, only innocent Saturninus’ creativity can possibly lead to rediscovering man’s kindness, sincere and passionate love, and the ‘happy madmen’’ poetry. Other pure and simple characters are Salvini – who’s madly in love with foolish Aldina - and Gonnella who, after being denied any ‘power’, refuseseverything and everyone. Fellini is a great master and this film - despite all his surreal jokes and paradoxes - is still very tragic.

La voce della luna is one of Federico Fellini’s most fascinating and poetic adventures, based on smiles and jokes, and a disillusioned, heartbreaking and worrying vision of the world we live in. Through legends, fairy tales and oddities, Fellini presents his endless universe of symbols, memories, inventions; without ever repeating himself, he hints at all his films. In this last masterpiece, however, Fellini filters every stylistic element, and proposes other original elements, thus unveiling his amazing imagination. We find a a kaleidoscope of characters in a story that is made up of bitter, sweet and merciless traits, humor and melancholy, exuberance and elegance, psychological dreams and a great variety of themes. La voce della luna is a magic, hilarious, surreal and grotesque fairytale. It describes today’s myths and rites (television, fast-food, discos…). It hints at yesterday’s dreams (‘Bassa Padana’ or lower Po river area, the friendly attitude of Emilia-Romagna region’s inhabitants, country fairs, the Gnocchi (dumplings)’ Day, Miss Flour, jokes … ). If you consider Amarcord as the village of memory, than you can say that La voce della luna gives us a shelter in our contemporary world.