For anyone who loves old movies, the names Ginger and Fred automatically mean Rogers and Astaire, the most fabulously gifted dance team in Hollywood history. But for admirers of Federico Fellini, the names also mean Amelia Bonetti and Pippo Botticella, an Italian dance team that's a lot less gifted, to put it mildly. They're the heroes of Fellini's comedy-drama Ginger and Fred, released in 1986 and available on DVD from Warner Bros. Home Video.

Ginger and Fred are the stage names used by Amelia and Pippo in their act, where they mimic the American originals as well as they can, like the music-hall equivalent of a tribute band. They made a living this way in their younger days, but that was long ago, and at the beginning of Fellini's movie they're about to see each other for the first time more than twenty years. The occasion is a TV show focusing on imitators and look-alikes, so they'll be sharing the stage with everyone from "Bette Davis" to "Marcel Proust."

Amelia's reunion with Pippo was arranged after her agent talked her into accepting the TV show's invitation to appear on its Christmastime program, and much of the film's poignant humor comes from the fact that neither of them is sure this is a good idea. They clicked with audiences in bygone decades, but it's far from certain they can remember their old moves, to say nothing of gracefully pulling them off.

The only definite thing is that however much they once looked like Rogers and Astaire, the resemblance has faded to zero. Amelia has become a well-preserved old lady, and Pippo isn't even well preserved. Seeing him rehearse is like watching a coronary itching to happen.

Although three writers are credited with the screenplay, including Fellini himself, Ginger and Fred doesn't have much of a plot. It's more of a mood piece than a conventional comedy-drama, relying on the charisma of its two excellent stars - Giuletta Masina as Amelia and Marcello Mastroianni as Pippo - and on the Felliniesque atmosphere, dreamlike and surreal, that underlies every scene. What story there is centers on Amelia's arrival in Rome, her first glimpses of Pippo in less-than-prime condition, his attempts to rekindle their old magic, and finally their rehearsals and the long-awaited show.

The movie's centerpiece is a lengthy scene where the show's assorted guests mingle in a large room at the TV station, producing zany confusion as they vie for attention and praise. Pippo tries valiantly to be the life of the party-his specialty is smutty little rhymes-but there's too much competition for the old guy to make much of a splash. In addition to its lively visual interest, this sequence is very prescient about the future of television; it's not much of a leap to see the likes of American Idol and The Anna Nicole Show being born in this strange assemblage of mostly untalented show-offs.

Given the film's dim view of television, it's mildly ironic that it was made for TV, with Radiotelevisione Italiana as one of the producers. Fellini always appreciated irony, though, and he was always flexible when an interesting challenge came along. He started his career as a neorealist, with pictures like the 1954 road movie La Strada and the great 1960 epic La Dolce Vita, then turned to the world of his own imagination in such '60s masterpieces as 8½ and the short Toby Dammit. He also made well-received documentaries in the late '60s and early '70s.

But after the nostalgic 1973 hit Amarcord, which was based on his "invented memories" of childhood, he appeared to lose touch with the richest parts of his talent. Of his late movies, from Casanova in 1976 to The Voice of the Moon in 1990, Ginger and Fred certainly has the widest appeal.

It may also be the most personal. Fellini must have realized that pictures like And the Ship Sails On and City of Women didn't have his former zing, and he may have identified with over-the-hill Pippo more than he cared to let on, carrying this into the movie itself. Mastroianni played his alter ego in 8½, after all; Masina was Fellini's wife off the screen just as she's Pippo's partner in the film; and Fred could almost be a nickname for Federico.

Mastroianni provides the movie's most impressive performance, giving Pippo a subdued melancholy and all-but-faded allure that makes him the story's most well-rounded character. Masina has a natural charm that served her well in many Fellini films, and it remains strong here. Perhaps too strong, since Amelia is so effortlessly appealing that it's sometimes hard to remember she's a has-been. Then again, the real Ginger Rogers didn't see it that way-she found it so offensive that she sued the producers and distributors for false advertising and violating her privacy!

Fellini always saw the world - especially the Italian world - as a blend of boisterous circus, darkly amusing freak show, and wellspring of strange, exotic visions dredged up from memory and the unconscious. He explored these most exuberantly in introspective movies like 8½ and Amarcord, and he returns to them with more restraint in Ginger and Fred, helped by the sideshow ambience he finds everywhere from the TV studio to the nighttime Roman streets.

He gets first-rate assistance from his cinematographers, Tonino Delli Colli and Ennio Guarnieri, and from composer Nicola Piovani, whose music uncannily recalls the Nino Rota scores that enhance so many Fellini classics. Ginger and Fred isn't a great movie, but in its own quiet way it's Felliniesque to its bones. It's good have a well-produced DVD edition, although more extras than just the theatrical trailer would have been nice.

For more information about Ginger and Fred, visit Warner Video. To order Ginger and Fred, go to TCM Shopping.

by Mikita Brottman and David Sterritt