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Federico Fellini _____________________ Italy (1920-1993 )  So distinctive and original is the vision of this Italian filmmaker that the adjective "Felliniesque," used to describe bizarre, colorful personages and events, has become almost commonplace. Indeed, it's even used by people who haven't seen a single Fellini film. This vision began taking shape early in the director's life when, as a youngster, he ran away from boarding school to join a circus. While he was retrieved after only a few days, the experience marked him for life; many of his best, most carefully realized works have the superabundant aura of a circus about them, and in 1971 he paid tribute to the big top in The Clowns. In his youth he also worked as a cartoonist, and maintained an interest in comic books even when he had become one of the world's most respected film directors. A friendship with Italian actor Aldo Fabrizi led Fellini into the theater, and during the 1940s (a records snafu kept him out of the military) he worked as a radio and film scriptwriter. In the latter capacity he collaborated with neorealist director Roberto Rossellini, earning an Oscar nomination as one of the writers of the seminal Open City (1945) and later working for the maestro as assistant director. Fellini codirected Variety Lights (1950) with Alberto Lattuda, beginning his association with life-as-performance themes, then took solo credit for The White Sheik (1951), a farce about fumetti actors (fumetti are comic books with real actors in still photographs rather than hand-drawn panels) and a honeymooning couple. His third feature, I Vitelloni (1953), about a group of young men coming to terms with the approaching end of their easy adolescent lives, was an inspiration for many films to come, including Barry Levinson's Diner. It was also the first Fellini film scored by Nino Rota, who composed haunting and memorable music for every one of the director's films thereafter, until Rota's death in 1979. La Strada (1954), with Anthony Quinn as a brutish strongman who takes simpleminded Giulietta Masina (offscreen Mrs. Fellini) with him around the countryside, is generally acknowledged to be Fellini's first great film, and it won him his first Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. It was followed by Il Bidone (1955) and, later, The Nights of Cabiria (1957, his second Oscar), a prostitute-with-heart-ofgold story that provided the inspiration for the Broadway (and film) musical "Sweet Charity." While La Strada contained more than its fair share of symbolism, most of Fellini's other works of the 1950s emphasized gritty realism, albeit with more than a touch of compassion and empathy. La Dolce Vita(1960) didn't explicitly enter the realm of the fantastic, but it marked the beginning of a period wherein the director's skewed sensibilities would be fully realized. It also marked the beginning of his longtime association with actor Marcello Mastroianni, who played a shallow reporter bored with the superficialities of contemporary Rome. 8 1/2 (1963, third Oscar), generally considered to be Fellini's masterpiece, presented a dizzying mix of memory, fantasy, and realism, and followed the travails of film director Guido (Mastroianni) as he attempted to get his latest movie off the ground. Widely regarded as autobiographical, it inspired imitations from directors as diverse as Paul Mazursky, Bob Fosse, and Woody Allen-none of whom, it must be added, have come close to duplicating the original's élan. Fellini's first color feature, Juliet of the Spirits (1965), did for leading character Masina, a bored, bourgeois housewife, what 8 1/2 did for film director Guido: open the door to a phantasmagorical inner world. This movie united Fellini's critical coterie worldwide, although a few observers responded more skeptically: director Luis Buñuel, for example, dismissed it as an exercise in "technical trickery." Fellini contributed the best sequence to Spirits of the Dead (1968), entitled "Never Bet the Devil Your Head," and then made his name part of the title for his next effort, Fellini Satyricon (1969), a ribald look at ancient Rome that featured then-corpulent fitness guru Richard Simmons (who at the time was appearing in Italian TV commercials) in a small role. Indeed, Fellini's films became a haven for all sorts of peculiar types, who were central to his hyperbolic way of looking at things. In the 1970s critics began to accuse Fellini of self-parody, and indeed some of his films seemed like pale imitations of earlier works, but his vivid and nostalgic reminiscence, Amarcord (1974), was a great success, and earned him his fourth Academy Award. Fellini's Roma (1972), Fellini's Casanova (1976), and Orchestra Rehearsal (1979) were released to diminished critical enthusiasm and declining audiences. And the Ship Sails On (1984) didn't enjoy any more success than the director's 1970s films, but did at least feature some striking images and a riveting opening sequence. By the time of Ginger and Fred (1986), most of the talk was about Ginger Rogers' threatened lawsuit against Fellini for unauthorized use of first names (nothing ever came of it), and Woody Allen's reported intervention on Fellini's behalf to try and convince Irving Berlin to allow some of his songs to be used in the picture, a rather limp satire of television. Fellini's star in the U.S. dimmed to the extent that his last picture, 1990's cute but decidedly minor La Voce de La Luna failed to secure U.S. distribution. His 1987 mock-documentary, Intervista which includes recreations of earlier Fellini films, finally saw American release in 1992. He wrote an autobiography, Fellini on Fellini, in 1976. The legendary director received a special Academy Award honoring the body of his work in 1993. (Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia. Copyright © 1994 Leonard Maltin)
A good introduction to Fellini, in the context of Italian cinema, can be found in Peter Bondanella's book, Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to the Present. New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 1998. Also check the resources listed in the UC Berkeley bibiliography. The following two articles are useful for the study of 8 1/2 . Pierson, Frank. "Fellini's Magical 8 1/2." American Film 14.8 (Jun 1989): 16-18.
Brief but insightful article about the ending of the film, with complete transcript of the dialog.
Stubbs, John C."Fellini's portrait of the artist as creative problem solver" Cinema Journal 41.4 (Summer 2002): 116-132.
Excellent article that examines the creative process as depicted in the film 8 1/2 .
Burke, Frank and Marguerite Waller, ed. Federico Fellini: Contemporary Perspectives. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002. Federico Fellini: A Bibliography of Materials. Compiled by UC Berkeley. PN1998.3.F45 F45413 1995 C.1 1995
PN1998.3.F45 A5 1995 C.1 1995
PN1998.3.F45 B38 1994 C.1 1994
PN1998.3.F45 A3 1988 1988
PN1998.A3 F32413 1979
PN1998.A3 F336 1978
PN1998.A3 F339 1976
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