Comparison · 3 shared techniques

City of Women vs Twelve Monkeys

City of Women (1980) and Twelve Monkeys (1995) share 3 techniques. Here is how each film uses them.

City of Women (1980) poster

City of Women

Federico Fellini · 1980

Twelve Monkeys (1995) poster

Twelve Monkeys

Terry Gilliam · 1995

Shared

Same technique, two films

Circular Structure

Ending the film where it started, or with a scene that echoes the opening. The repeat shows what has changed, or suggests the cycle will keep going.

City of Women

The film begins on a train and ends back there. The return tells you the whole adventure may have been in Snaporaz's head.

Twelve Monkeys

Cole keeps dreaming of a man shot in an airport while a small boy watches. The ending returns to that airport and turns the dream into a memory. The loop tells you his path was fixed from the first scene.

Unreliable Reality

Keeping it unclear what is real and what is imagined in the film's world. You end up as unsure as the main character.

City of Women

Snaporaz follows a woman off a train, and the film keeps slipping between hotel, mansion and nightmare. At the end, you learn it was a dream.

Twelve Monkeys

Doctors in 1990 listen to Cole describe a plague and a future and treat him as delusional. Even Dr. Railly, who later helps him, has to ask whether he is mad. You stay unsure whether he is a time traveler or a man who invented the future.

Production Design as Psychological Space

Designing the sets to reflect what is going on inside a character. The place they live in tells you things about them that the dialogue doesn't.

City of Women

The mansion of Dr. Katzone has walls covered in photographs of his sexual conquests. The set shows the host's vanity in one glance.

Twelve Monkeys

The 2035 prison world sits beneath the ruins of Philadelphia, a cramped maze of cages, pipes and makeshift machines. The mess shows a society that survived but never recovered. You understand why Cole would risk anything for a pardon.

Different

Where they split