Federico Fellini

Federico Fellini
Born
January 20, 1920 Rimini, Italy
Died
October 31, 1993 Rome, Italy

Federico Fellini or Frederico Rimini-Fellini, as his contemporaries referred to him, (January 20 1920 – October 31 1993) was one of the most influential and widely revered Italian film-makers of the second half of the 20th century.

Fellini is generally considered by film critics and scholars, as well as fellow film directors, to be one of the finest film directors of all time. Every decade, starting in 1952, Sight and Sound, the official magazine of the British Film Institute, has conducted a worldwide poll of film critics and film directors. In its latest such poll, conducted in 2002, Fellini was listed as #7 on the critics' list of the top ten directors of all time, and #2 on the directors' list. Fellini's movie 8½ was #9 on the critics' list of the top ten greatest films ever made, and #3 on the directors' list. So Fellini is highly regarded by critics, and even more highly so by his fellow directors. Important contemporary filmmakers such as David Lynch, David Cronenberg, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Tim Burton, Pedro Almodovar, Terry Gilliam, and Emir Kusturica have all cited Fellini's influence on their work.

Throughout the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s Fellini's films were widely acclaimed, and four of his movies won the American Academy Award (Oscar) for Best Foreign Film.

Fellini's films typically combine memory, dreams, fantasy, and desire, and there is frequently a strong autobiographical content and tone in them. His earlier films are seen as following in the genre of Italian Neo-Realism, and his later films as moving more into fantasy and symbolism. In fact, his films, especially the later ones, have led to usage of a term to describe his film style and that of others who follow or imitate him: Felliniesque.

Life and Work

Fellini's father Urbano (1894-1956) was a traveling salesman and wholesale vendor. In August 1918 he married Ida Barbiani (1896-1984) in a civil ceremony (with the religious celebration the following January). After Federico's birth in 1920, two more children arrived: Riccardo (1921-1991) and Maria Maddalena (m. Fabbri; 1929-2002). Urbano Fellini was originally from Gambettola, where the young Federico vacationed at his grandparents' house for several years.

Federico Fellini was born and raised in Rimini, and his childhood experiences would later play an important part in many of his films, in particular, I Vitelloni (1953), 8½ (1963), and Amarcord (1973). It is misleading, however, to assume that all his films contain autobiographical anecdotes and fantasies. Intimate friends such as screenwriters Tullio Pinelli and Bernardino Zapponi, cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno and set designer Dante Ferretti have insisted on how Fellini invented his own memories simply for the pleasure of narrating them in his films.

During Mussolini's Fascist regime, Fellini and his brother, Riccardo, were part of the Avanguardista, the fascist youth group that every adolescent Italian male was obliged to join. It must be clearly stated, however, that Fellini and his family were not fascists or in sympathy with fascism.

During the Mussolini era Fellini began writing for the production company of Vittorio Mussolini, son of Benito. Vittorio Mussolini introduced Fellini to Roberto Rossellini, the husband of Swedish-born actress Ingrid Bergman from 1950 to 1957, and one of the leading exponents of what came to be known as Italian neo-realist cinema; Rossellini is best known for his post WWII films Roma, città aperta (Open City) (1945), Paisà (1946), and Stromboli (1950).

After moving to Rome in the spring of 1939, Fellini landed a well-paid job writing articles for the hugely popular satirical weekly, Marc’Aurelio. During this time Fellini interviewed Aldo Fabrizi, inaugurating a friendship that would lead to professional collaboration and radio work. Of conscription age since 1939, Fellini had nonetheless managed to avoid being drafted through a suite of clever ruses. Commenting on this turbulent epoch, Fellini biographer Tullio Kezich notes that although "the Marc’Aurelio period was happy, the happiness masked a phase of shameless political apathy. Many living under the Mussolini dictatorship during its last years experienced the schizophrenic tug between official loyalty to the regime and the intrinsic freedom of humor."[2]

In 1942, Fellini met Giulietta Masina and a year later, on October 30, 1943, they were married. Thus began one of the great creative partnerships in world cinema. Several months after their marriage Masina fell down the stairs and suffered a miscarriage. Then, on March 22, 1945, Pierfederico (nicknamed Federichino) was born but died a mere month later on April 24. These family tragedies affected the couple in profound ways, particularly in the conception of La strada (1954). Giulietta Masina often appeared in his movies, especially La Strada (1954), Il Bidone (The Swindle) (1955), La Notti di Cabiria (Nights of Cabiria) (1957), Giulietta degli spiriti (Juliet of the Spirits) (1965), and Ginger e Fred (Ginger and Fred) (1986). Although they were not necessarily always faithful to each other, they remained a strongly devoted couple and lived together for the rest of their lives.

The Fascist regime fell on July 25, 1943, and the Allies liberated Rome on June 4, 1944. During that euphoric summer, Fellini set up The Funny-Face Shop with his friend De Seta, drawing caricatures of Allied soldiers for money. The shop contained works from Fellini and De Seta, Verdini, Camerini, Scarpelli, Majorana, Guasta, Giobbe, Attalo, Migneco (all writers, directors or otherwise intellectuals working for Italian cinema). A major inspiration for Fellini was Goethe.

During this time Roberto Rossellini came to see Fellini about his project, titled Rome, Open City (1945). Rossellini wanted the young man to introduce him to Aldo Fabrizi and collaborate on the script (with Suso Cecchi D'Amato, Piero Tellini, and Alberto Lattuada). Fellini accepted, contributing gags and dialogue.

Fellini was never a cineaste in the way that many other directors, including especially the members of the French New Wave, were. Instead, Fellini was a cartoonist and creator of drawings and comic sequences before he became a filmmaker, and he would continue to create such drawings throughout his life. His drawings (mostly pencil on paper) were often humorous portraits. Through these works young Fellini encountered cinema: his first success was in drawing advertising pictures for movies. He also much preferred the movies of the American comics: Keaton, Chaplin, the Marx brothers, Laurel and Hardy, etc. to the cerebral movies loved by the Italian critics.

In addition to making films, Fellini also wrote scripts for radio shows, for movies for other directors (mainly for Rossellini), and comic gags for well known actors like Aldo Fabrizi. Fellini also took part in writing another of Rossellini's movies, Paisà. He wrote also for other directors such as Alberto Lattuada, Pietro Germi, and Luigi Comencini.

Other actors with whom Fellini frequently worked include Marcello Mastroianni, Alberto Sordi, and Anita Ekberg.

In 1948 Fellini acted in Rossellini's Il Miracolo.

In 1991 Fellini's text "Trip to Tulum" was translated into English by Stefano Gaudiano and published in a graphic form in the magazine Crisis with artwork by Milo Manara.

In 1993 Fellini received an Oscar for his lifetime achievement; his wife Giulietta Masina was at the ceremony with him and broke out crying when he was on stage receiving the award. In his brief remarks on that occasion, Fellini said:

I would like ... to say a long, long thanks. What can I say? Well, I really did not expect it, or perhaps I did. But not before another twenty-five years. I come from a country and I belong to a generation for which America and the movies were almost the same thing. And now, to be here with you, my dear Americans, makes me feel at home. I want to thank all of you for making me feel this way. In these circumstances, it's easy to be generous and thank everybody. I would like, naturally, first of all, to thank all the people that have worked with me. I cannot name everyone, only one name, of an actress who is also my wife. Thank you, dearest Giulietta. And please stop crying. (Quoted in Chandler, 362-363.)

Although many people did not realize it, both he and Giulietta were quite sick at the time. He died that same year in Rome at the age of 73; Giulietta Masina died less than five months later on March 23, 1994.

Federico Fellini, Giulietta Masina, and their son Pierfederico are buried in the same tomb in the main Cemetery of Rimini. Their monument, sculpted in iron by Arnaldo Pomodoro, is shaped as a prow in the water and is located at the entrance of the cemetary.

The Federico Fellini International Airport in Rimini, is named in his honor.

Some Fellini Films

Fellini's first solo-directed film was Lo Sceicco Bianco (1951), with Alberto Sordi, was written by Michelangelo Antonioni and Ennio Flaiano. In making this movie Fellini met Nino Rota, the musician who would follow him for the successful remainder of his career. This comedy-drama deals with the first two days of a marriage. Ivan, the new husband and a clerk, brings his new and virginal bride to Rome for a honeymoon; they are also to have an audience with the Pope, and Ivan also wants to present her to his uncle. They arrive early in the morning, and, while he takes a nap,she sneaks off to find to meet "The White Sheik," the hero of a soap-opera photo strip. Djr od star-struck and ends up 20 miles from Rome on a boat alone with the sheik. Ivan covers for her by claiming that she's ill. In their wandering the streets alone that night she is tempted by suicide, he is tempted by prostitutes. Their papal audience is at 11:00 the next day and the question is whether things can get righted so they make it.

I vitelloni (1953), "young bullocks," is about four friends from a seaside province: Fausto (Franco Fabrizi) a womanizer, Leopoldo (Leopoldo Trieste) a would-be playwright, Alberto (Alberto Sordi), a mamma's boy who lives with his mother and on the wages of his sister, and Moraldo (Franco Interlenghi), the conscience and narrator of the group. Fausto tries to to avoid marrying Moraldo's sister after she becomes pregnant. He has many affairs after their marriage and is whipped by his father into behaving, at least for the time. Leopoldo thinks that a traveling actor is interested in his plays, but the actor really wants to seduce him. Alberto's sister elopes; this leaves him with no means of support, despite his empty proclamations about family honor. Fausto cheats with Moraldo's sister. In the end, Moraldo takes a train for Rome, forsaking his home and his fellow vitelloni.

Fellini called La strada (1954) "the complete catalogue of my entire mythological world." (5) It stars his wife Giulietta Masina as a clown-like waif, named Gelsomina, whose mother sells her to brutish Zampanò (Anthony Quinn), who has a small-time act as travelling strongman, and she accompanies his act on trumpet. A Fool (Richard Basehart) also accompanies them; his act is walking a tightrope over village squares. Zampanò accidentally kills the Fool and Gelsomina goes mad and dies. Although he had treated her brutally and with complete insensitivity, her death brings tears to Zampanò at the end of the film. This film is a emotional and expressive version of beauty and the beast, playing out a grim account of relations between the sexes, and dealing ultimately with salvation and conversion. The leftist-Marxist oriented critics hated the film and excoriated Fellini for abandoning the neo-Realism of his beginnings.

Il bidone (The Swindle) (1955), stars the American veteran actor Broderick Crawford as confidence man Augusto Rocca. He and his henchmen bury bones and bogus treasure on a provincial farm. Then they disguise themselves as a priest and his assistants and tell the poor owners of the farm that a thief has murdered his partner and buried his body and stolen treasure on their land and confessed this on his deathbed. They will receive the recovered treausure if they pay for very expensive masses to be said for the dead thief. So the farmers get together the exhorbitant fees for the masses, in expectation of receiving the stolen fortune. But after a successful sting Agusto has a pang of conscience when he meets his neglected daughter; she needs money to post bond for a job she hopes to get. Then a former victim recognizes him and he is arrested in front of his daughter. Finally he returns to doing the priest swindle again, but this time the daughter of the victim is crippled, and the money paid to the swindlers was intended for her support. Augusto tells his henchmen that he cannot go through with the swindle, and they stone him and leave him for dead, after finding the ransom. At the end of the film the mortally wounded Augusto, crying for help, reaches out to a passing religious procession. The film ends ambiguously without answering the question whether or not Augusto joins the procession after his death: is his salvation lost or gained?

In Le notti di Cabiria (1957), a Roman prostitute (Giulietta Masina) searches for love. The film opens with Cabiria taking a stroll with her lover in a scene that should end with a cliché kiss. Instead, he pushes Cabiria into the Tiber and steals her purse. Saved from certain drowning by some passing boys, she tells them to go mind their business by way of thanks. On Via Veneto, a famous actor having a spat with his girlfriend picks up Cabiria as consolation. They go to his place where the girlfriend turns up and Cabiria winds up hiding until dawn. On pilgrimage to a shrine Cabiria prays for change. Thrashed by the Left for the religious undertones of La strada and Il bidone, Fellini shows the shrine to be ineffective for a crippled man who falls flat trying to walk, and for Cabiria whose prayers go unanswered.

In her last attempt at happiness, Cabiria sells her shanty home to marry Oscar, a man who has convinced her he loves her. Oscar takes her for a cliffside view of the sunset where he robs her of her life's savings. In the coda, Cabiria clambers back to the nearby road where she hears music, then a band of singing youngsters accompanies her. Cabiria, unlike Augusto, joins the procession, for a Fellinian occasion of "music as salvation."

La dolce vita (1959) takes up Italy of the economic boom - the late '50s through the '60s - and the rise of its consumer society and celebrity culture. It can be seen as a modified sequel to I vittelloni, with Marcello Rubino (Marcello Mastroianni) as Moraldo, now a photo-reporter in Rome. (7) The important departure point is Fellini's modernist approach to plot in cinematic narrative - circular structures no more. He modeled the film's form on its decomposition in the manner of Picasso. Plot and storyline give way to an emphasis on the composed image and an unrelenting narrative pace. The narrative follows Marcello, his affairs with his sometime mistress (Anouk Aimée); escorting a Swedish-American actress (Anita Ekberg) around Rome to wade through the Trevi Fountain; meeting up with his mentor Steiner (Alain Cuny); his coverage of a sighting of the Virgin by two children; attending a party of Steiner's that features vapid intellectualizing; wearing out his father in the course of the older man's short visit; discovering Steiner's suicide and murder of his two children; drunkenly riding a young woman on her hands and knees at a decadent orgy; and stumbling upon a monster fish on the beach at dawn. The story of "boom" life is told as tabloid events, flatlining intellectual debates, religion for exploitation value, and sterile love affairs. The opening shot of a helicopter towing a statue of Christ over the city and the final image of the massive dead fish offer two takes on symbols of Christ. The failure of Marcello to hear the words of the young innocent whose image concludes the film points to his unchecked descent and Fellini's increasing pessimism after the trilogy of grace.

La dolce vita marked a shift from location to studio shooting, and from the construction of real, public events to the private, inner fantasy of 8½ (1963). Fellini's turn toward dream, imagination and memory after La dolce vita, nascent in the earlier films, drew inspiration from the dream theory of Carl Jung. Causal relations and logical connections in storylines gave way to further interplay between fantasy and reality. For instance, the theme of 8½, the fictional tale of a director who no longer knows what film he wishes to make, was a crisis lived by Fellini concerning 8½ with the finished script in hand! The fictional crisis on film was a factual auteurial crisis of insecurity behind the camera. Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni), frequently interpreted as an autobiographical figure, was as invented as his story according to Fellini. Guido's two-week rest cure at the baths is the presumed "real" story of 8½ but his dream life (like the famous opening when he flies from his car in a traffic jam to be pulled down to earth by a rope around his ankle), and the presence of studio lights in odd locations, blur the line between reality and dream and designate both categories as cinematic illusion. His mistress shifts to whore; his mother turns into his wife. His childhood women, his nanny, his grandmother and La Saraghina, a prostitute who inhabited an abandoned beachside bunker in his youth, all march freely from Guido's subconscious across the screen. All his lovers converge for a harem sequence where they are all amenable to one another - or subdued with a whip as in La Seraghina's case. Temporal perspective is destroyed by characters appearing in 1930s and contemporary dress. Establishing shots are eschewed. Narrative flows between reality, fantasy and flashback. His wife, his colleagues, his work and its savaging by a French critic, the unfinished film, its set and screen tests - all form a uniform barrage of imagery from within and without Guido. His final reconciliation with all the "characters" who "star" in his life is Fellini's remedy of art as salvation.

Giulietta degli spiriti (1965) analyzes the identity crisis of identity of a middle-aged Italian housewife, almost a female counterpart to Guido, in Fellini's first color feature film. One of the first postwar Italian films about women's social status in Italian culture, it is structured after the story line of 8½. Giulietta's (Giulietta Masina) quest for psychic freedom is impeded by both her philandering husband and the critical, reprimanding women (her mother and sisters) who surround her. Her gift for seeing spirits summons a passel of them, all ghosts from her past with whom she must reconcile.

Fellini Satyricon (1969) adapted the fragmented original text to visual narrative with wholly invented material. Curing the central character's impotence not with the male lover of the original but an earth mother figure is a marked alteration. The Labyrinth and Minotaur sequence is Fellini's, figures of the psyche and its ferocious unconscious.

Image over storyline is the continued practice of Roma (1972), a subjective collection of episodes and images reflecting Fellini's memories, opinions, and even a glimpse of the excavation of the Roman subway. A slide lecture to a schoolboy's class on Roman monuments is interrupted by a sexy slide of a near naked woman. Ancient Rome occupies his cinema screens. The schoolboy grows up and moves to Rome and his landlady's adult son curls up against her as she lies in bed. Fellini's Rome is a dominating maternal figure that infantilizes her males. Rome is "penetrated" by Fellini and crew's entry into the city on the autostrada in pouring rain, culminating in a traffic jam by the Colosseum, both autostrada and Colosseum fashioned at Cinecittà. Perhaps the pièce de resistance of Roma is the ecclesiastical fashion parade, from cardinals to pope.

Amarcord (1973) returns to the provinces of Fellini's childhood for a sampling of his "invented memories" of Rimini in the fascist era. The overt subject of Amarcord is a group caricature of the town's inhabitants, but its main thrust is its dissection of the origins of Italian fascism. Fellini juxtaposes a vignette of an individual character with sequences that show the consequences of his or her symptomatic behavior on a grander scale. When Gradisca (Magali Noël), the village beauty and object of masculine desire, catches a glimpse of the Fascist federale welcomed with a parade in the town square, she almost faints with sexual excitement. In the following sequence, main character Titta's (Bruno Zanin) family takes their "insane" Uncle Teo (Ciccio Ingrassia) from the asylum for a day excursion. Teo escapes, climbs a tree, and screams from the treetop, "I want a woman!" Without outlets for sexual drives, the townspeople go mad or displace their stifled desires onto political symbols manipulated by the regime.

La città delle donne (1980) takes up the adventures of Snàporaz (Marcello Mastroianni) at a feminist convention, showcasing male anxiety in the era of the women's movement. While Snàporaz represents the vulnerable, sympathetic aspect of male sexuality, his counterpart in Katzone (meaning "Big Cock") (Ettore Manni), lines his home with photographs of all the women with whom he has made love, complete with recordings of their cries of passion. La città delle donne is an inventory of Snàporaz' subconscious fantasies of desirable women and their opposites, as revealed by the framing device which, like the visit to Oz, reveals La città to be a dreamed destination.

Filmography as director

Links to Fellini's drawings related to single films

• Luci del Varietà (1950) (co-credited with Alberto Lattuada)
• Lo Sceicco Bianco (1951) [1] [2]
• I Vitelloni (1953) [3]
• L'Amore in Città (1953) (segment Un'agenzia matrimoniale)
• La Strada (1954) Oscar (best foreign language film) [4]
• Il bidone (1955)
• Le Notti di Cabiria (1957) Oscar (best foreign language film) [5]
• La Dolce Vita (1960) Oscar (best costumes)
• Boccaccio '70 (1962) (segment Le tentazioni del Dottor Antonio)
• 8½ (1963) 2 Oscars (best foreign language film, best costume design)
• Giulietta degli Spiriti (1965)
• Histories Extraordinaries (1968) (segment Toby Dammit)
• Satyricon (1969)
• I Clowns (1970)
• Roma (1972)
• Amarcord (1973) Oscar (best foreign language film)
• Il Casanova di Federico Fellini (1976) Oscar (best costume design)
• Prova d'orchestra (1979)
• La città delle donne (1980)
• E la Nave Va (1983)
• Ginger and Fred (1986)
• Intervista (1987)
• La voce della luna (1990)

See also

• Art film

Bibliographies

Fellini Bibliography (via UC Berkeley)

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Walter, Eugene and Katherine Clark (2002). Milking the Moon: A Southerner's Story of Life on This Planet. New York: Three Rivers Press. ISBN 0-609-80965-2.  The author describes his many years of working with Fellini in Italy.

External links

• Fellini's Foundation official site
• Federico Fellini at the Internet Movie Database
• Federico Fellini at the TCM Movie Database
• Federico Fellini at SensesOfCinema.com
• Various short reviews
• Watch Federico Fellini's film Il Bidone
• One of Fellini's artworks
• Images and Archetypes: A perspective on the work of Federico Fellini
• Site for the documentary film "Fellini Ungrateful Celebration", directed by: Eric Burritt
• In-depth excerpt from Fellini: A Life
• Researching and documenting the influence of Fellini on popular culture
• Federico Fellini: Interviews edited by Bert Cardullo
• Essay on Orchestra Rehearsal by A.Tylski
• Site Federico Fellini
• Federico Fellini: Old School Reviews

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