Fellini, Federico
FELLINI, Federico
Nationality: Italian. Born: Rimini, Italy, 20 January 1920. Education: Catholic schools in Rimini, until 1938. Family: Married Giulietta Masina in Rome, 30 October 1943, one son (died). Career: Worked on 420 and Avventuroso magazines in Florence, 1938; caricature artist and writer in Rome, from 1939; through friend Aldo Fabrizi, worked as screenwriter, from 1941; worked on Rossellini's Rome, Open City, 1944; screenwriter and assistant director, 1946–52; formed Capitolium production company with Alberto Lattuada for Variety Lights, 1950; formed Federiz production company with Angelo Rizzoli (subsequently taken over by Clemente Fracazzi), 1961. Awards: Grand Prize, Venice Festival, 1954, New York Film Critics Circle Award, 1956, Screen Directors Guild Award, 1956, and Oscar for Best Foreign Film, 1956, for La strada; Oscar for Best Foreign Film, for La notti di Cabiria, 1957; Oscar for Best Foreign Film, 1960, Palme d'or, Cannes Festival, 1960, and New York Critics Circle Award, 1961, for La dolce vita; Oscar for Best Foreign Film, for 8 1/2, 1963; Oscar for Best Foreign Film, and New York Film Critics Circle Award, for Amarcord, 1974; Special Prize, Cannes
Festival, 1987; Special Oscar, honoring the body of his work, 1993; Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, Columbia University, New York, 1970. Died: Italy, 31 October 1993.
Films as Director and Scriptwriter:
- 1950
Luci del varieta (co-d, + co-pr)
- 1951
Lo Sceicco Bianco
- 1953
I Vitelloni ; "Un'agenzia matrimoniale" in Amore in citta (Zavattini)
- 1954
La strada
- 1955
Il bidone
- 1956
La notti di Cabiria (Nights of Cabiria)
- 1960
La dolce vita
- 1962
"Le tentazioni del dottor Antonio" in Boccaccio '70 (Zavattini)
- 1963
Otto e mezzo (8 1/2)
- 1965
Giulietta degli spiriti (Juliet of the Spirits)
- 1968
"Toby Dammit" (Il ne faut jamais parier sa tête contre le diable) in Histoires extraordinaires/Tre passi nel delirio (anthology film)
- 1969
Block-notes di un regista (Fellini: A Director's Notebook) (for TV) (+ narration, role); Satyricon (Fellini Satyricon)
- 1970
I clowns (The Clowns)
- 1972
Roma (Fellini Roma) (+ role)
- 1974
Amarcord
- 1976
Casanova (Il Casanova di Federico Fellini)
- 1978
Prova d'orchestra (Orchestra Rehearsal) (for TV)
- 1980
La città delle donne (City of Women)
- 1983
E la nave va (And the Ship Sailed On)
- 1986
Ginger and Fred (+ co-sc)
- 1987
Intervista (The Interview) (+ role)
- 1990
La voce della luna (The Voice of the Moon)
Other Films:
- 1939
Lo vedi come . . . lo vedi come sei?! (Mattòli) (gagman)
- 1940
Non me lo dire! (Mattòli) (gagman); Il pirata sono io! (Mattòli) (gagman)
- 1941
Documento Z3 (Guarini) (sc/co-sc, uncredited)
- 1942
Avanti, c'e posto (Bonnard) (sc/co-sc, uncredited); Chi l'ha vistro? (Alessandrini) (sc/co-sc); Quarta pagina (Manzari and Gambino) (sc/co-sc)
- 1943
Apparizione (de Limur) (sc/co-sc, uncredited); Campo dei fiori (Bonnard) (sc/co-sc); Tutta la città canta (Freda) (sc/ co-sc); L'ultima carrozzella (Mattòli) (sc/co-sc)
- 1945
Roma, città aperta (Rossellini) (asst d, co-sc)
- 1946
Paisà (Rossellini) (asst d, co-sc)
- 1947
Il delitto di Giovanni Episcopo (Lattuada) (co-sc); Il passatore (Coletti) (co-sc); La fumeria d'oppio (Ritorna Za-la-mort) (Matarazzo) (co-sc); L'ebreo errante (Alessandrini) (co-sc)
- 1948
"Il miracolo" episode of L'amore (Rossellini) (asst d, co-sc, role as stranger mistaken for St. Joseph); Il mulino del Po (Lattuada) (co-sc); In nome della legge (Germi) (co-sc); Senza pietà (Lattuada) (co-sc); La città dolente (Bonnard) (co-sc)
- 1949
Francesco, giullare di Dio (Rossellini) (co-sc, asst d)
- 1950
Il cammino della speranza (Germi) (co-sc); Persiane chiuse (Comencini) (co-sc)
- 1951
La città si difende (Germi) (co-sc); Cameriera bella presenza offresi (Pastina) (co-sc)
- 1952
Il brigante di Tacca del Lupo (Germi) (co-sc); Europa '51 (Rossellini) (co-sc, uncredited)
- 1958
Fortunella (De Filippo) (co-sc)
- 1970
Alex in Wonderland (Mazursky) (role as himself)
- 1974
C'eravamo tanto amati (Scola) (guest appearance)
Publications
By FELLINI: books—
Il Bidone, with Ennio Flaiano and Tullio Pinelli, Paris, 1956.
Le notti di Cabiria di Federico Fellini, edited by Lino del Fra, Rocca San Casiano, Italy, 1957.
La dolce vita di Federico Fellini, edited by Tullio Kezich, Bologna, 1960; New York, 1961.
8 1/2 di Federico Fellini, edited by Camilla Cederna, Rocca San Casciano, Italy, 1963.
Giulietta degli spiriti, edited by Tullio Kezich, Rocca San Casciano, Italy, 1965; as Juliet of the Spirits, New York, 1965.
La mia Rimini, Bologna, 1967.
Tre passi nel delirio, with Louis Malle and Roger Vadim, Bologna, 1968.
Fellini Satyricon di Federico Fellini, edited by Dario Zanelli, Bologna, 1969; as Fellini Satyricon, New York, 1970.
Il primo Fellini: Lo sceicco blanco, I vitelloni, La strada, Il bidone, edited by Renzo Renzi, Bologna, 1969.
Federico Fellini, Discussion No. 1, Beverly Hills, 1970.
I clowns, edited by Renzo Renzi, Bologna, 1970; 2nd edition, 1988.
Three Screenplays, New York, 1970.
Early Screenplays: Variety Lights, The White Sheik, New York, 1971.
Roma di Federico Fellini, Rocca San Casciano, Italy, 1972.
Amarcord, with Tonino Guerra, Milan, 1973; published as Amarcord:Portrait of a Town, London, 1974.
Federcord: disegni per Amarcord di Federico Fellini, edited by L. Betti and O. Del Buono, Milan, 1974.
Il Casanova di Fellini: sceneggiatura originale, with Bernardino Zapponi, Turin, 1974.
4 film: I vitelloni, La dolce vita, 8–1/2, Giulietta degli spiriti, Turin, 1974.
Fellini on Fellini, edited by Christian Strich, New York, 1976.
Fare un film, Turin, 1980.
Bottega Fellini. La città delle donne, with text by Raffaele Monti, Rome, 1981.
Federico Fellini: Intervista sul cinema, edited by Giovanni Grazzini, Rome, 1983; as Federico Fellini: Comments on Film, Fresno, California, 1988.
Ginger e Fred, with Tonino Guerra and Tullio Pinelli, Milan, 1986.
81/2 (Otto e mezzo), edited by Charles Affron, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1987.
La strada, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1987.
Fellini's Cinecitta, London, 1989.
By FELLINI: articles—
"Strada sabarrata: via libera ai vitelloni," in Cinema Nuovo (Turin), 1 January 1953.
"Ogni margine è bruciato," in Cinema (Rome), 10 August 1954.
"Enquête sur Hollywood," in Cahiers du Cinéma (Paris), Christmas 1955.
"A Personal Statement," in Film (London), January/February 1957.
"Les Femmes libres de Magliano," in Cahiers du Cinéma (Paris), February 1957.
Interview with George Bluestone, in Film Culture (New York), October 1957.
"Crisi e neorealismo," in Bianco e Nero (Rome), July 1958.
"Témoignage à André Bazin," in Cahiers du Cinéma (Paris), January 1959.
"My Sweet Life," in Films and Filming (London), April 1959.
"Su La dolce vita la parola a Fellini," in Bianco e Nero (Rome), January/February 1960.
"The Bitter Life—of Money," in Films and Filming (London), January 1961.
Interview with Enzo Peri, in Film Quarterly (Berkeley), Fall 1961.
"The Screen Answers Back," in Films and Filming (London), May 1962.
Interview with Gideon Bachmann, in Sight and Sound (London), Spring 1964.
"'I Was Born for the Cinema': A Conversation with Federico Fellini," with Irving Levine, in Film Comment (New York), Fall 1966.
Interview with Pierre Kast, in Interviews with Film Directors, edited by Andrew Sarris, Indianapolis, 1967.
Interview with Roger Borderie and others, in Cahiers du Cinéma (Paris), May/June 1971.
Interview, in Encountering Directors by Charles Samuels, New York, 1972.
"Huit Entretiens autour du Casanova de Fellini," with O. Volta, in Positif (Paris), March 1977.
"The Cinema Seen as a Woman," an interview with Gideon Bachmann, in Film Quarterly (Berkeley), Winter 1980/81.
Interview with Gideon Bachmann, in Film Comment (New York), May/June 1985.
Interview with J.-A. Gili, in Positif (Paris), February 1986.
Interview in Monthly Film Bulletin (London), November 1986.
Interview with Germaine Greer in Interview, December 1988.
Interview with A. Samueli in Cahiers du Cinéma (Paris), May 1990.
Interview with Gideon Bachmann in Film Quarterly, Spring 1994.
Interview with Liselotte Millauer in Interview, January 1994.
On FELLINI: books—
Bastide, François-Régis, Juliette Caputo, and Chris Marker, editors, La Strada, Paris, 1955.
Renzi, Renzo, Federico Fellini, Parma, 1956; Lyons, 1960.
Solmi, Angelo, Storia di Federico Fellini, Milan, 1962.
Rondi, Brunello, Il Cinema di Fellini, Rome, 1965.
Budgen, Suzanne, Fellini, London, 1966.
Solmi, Angelo, Fellini, New York, 1967.
Salachas, Gilbert, Federico Fellini: An Investigation into His Filmsand Philosophy, New York, 1969.
Novi, Mario, editor, Fellini TV: I clowns, Rome, 1970.
Hughes, Eileen, On the Set of Fellini Satyricon: A Behind-the-ScenesDiary, New York, 1971.
Pecori, Franco, Federico Fellini, Florence, 1974.
Ketcham, Charles, Federico Fellini: The Search for a New Mythology, New York, 1976.
Murray, Edward, Fellini the Artist, New York, 1976.
Rosenthal, Stuart, The Cinema of Federico Fellini, London, 1976.
Alpert, Hollis, Fellini: A Life, New York, 1981.
Fruttero, Carlo, and Franco Lucentini, Je te trouve un peu pale: Recitd'été avec trente fantasmes feminins de Federico Fellini, Paris, 1982.
Costello, Donald P., Fellini's Road, Notre Dame, Indiana, 1983.
Burke, Frank, Federico Fellini: Variety Lights to La Dolce Vita, Boston, 1984.
Fava, Claudio F., and Aldo Vigano, The Films of Federico Fellini, Secaucus, New Jersey, 1985.
Kezich, Tullio, Fellini, Milan, 1987.
Ciment, Michel, Federico Fellini, Paris, 1988.
Grazzini, Giovanni, editor, Federico Fellini: Comments on Film, Fresno, California, 1988.
Bondanella, Peter, The Cinema of Federico Fellini, Princeton, New Jersey, 1992.
Bondanella, Peter, and Cristina Degli-Esposti, editors, Perspectiveson Federico Fellini, New York, 1993.
Baxter, John, Fellini: The Biography, New York, 1994.
Chandler, Charlotte, I, Fellini, New York, 1995.
Tornabuoni, Lietta, editor, Federico Fellini, New York, 1995.
Burke, Frank, Fellini's Films: From Postwar to Postmodern, New York, 1996.
Méjean, Jean-Max, Fellini, un rêve, une vie, Paris, 1997.
On FELLINI: articles—
Autera, Leonardo, editor, "Fellini e la critica," in Bianco e Nero (Rome), June 1957.
Taylor, John, "Federico Fellini," in Cinema Eye, Cinema Ear, New York, 1964.
Ross, Lillian, "Profiles: 101/2," in New Yorker, 30 October 1965.
Harcourt, Peter, "The Secret Life of Federico Fellini," in FilmQuarterly (Berkeley), Spring 1966.
Walter, Eugene, "The Wizardry of Fellini," in Films and Filming (London), June 1966.
Eason, Patrick, "Notes on Double Structure and the Films of Fellini," in Cinema (London), March 1969.
Cox, Harvey, Jr., "The Purpose of the Grotesque in Fellini's Films," in Celluloid and Symbols, edited by Cooper and Skrade, Philadelphia, 1970.
"Fellini Issue" of L'Arc (Aix-en-Provence, France), no. 45, 1971.
Julia, Jacques, "Psychanalyse de Fellini," in Cinéma (Paris), May 1971.
Chemasi, Antonio, "Fellini's Casanova: The Final Nights," in American Film (Washington, D.C.), September 1976.
Sarne, M., "Meeting Fellini," in Films and Filming (London), April 1978.
Comuzio, Ermanno, "Fellini/Rota: Un matrimonio concertato," in Bianco e Nero (Rome), July-August 1979.
Burke, F.M. "Reason and Unreason in Federico Fellini's I vitelloni," in Literature/Film Quarterly (Salisbury, Maryland), vol. 8, no. 2, 1980.
Fumento, R., "Maestro Fellini, studente Angelucci," in Literature/Film Quarterly (Salisbury, Maryland), October 1982.
Dossier on Fellini, in Cinématographe (Paris), January 1984.
Polan, Linda, "With Fellini," in Sight and Sound (London), Summer 1984.
Gilliatt, Penelope, "La dolce vita," in American Film (Washington, D.C.), November 1985.
"Fellini Section," of Literature/Film Quarterly (Salisbury, Maryland), vol. 15, no. 2, 1987.
Lavery, D., "'Major Man': Fellini as an Autobiographer," in PostScript (Jacksonville, Florida), Winter 1987.
"Fellini Section" of Positif (Paris), December 1987.
Pierson, Frank, "Fellini's Magical 8 1/2," in American Film (Los Angeles), June 1989.
Benigni, Roberto, article in Positif (Paris), May 1990.
Cavazzoni, E., article in Cahiers du Cinéma (Paris), May 1990.
Lavaudant, G., article in Cahiers du Cinéma (Paris), January 1991.
"New Gigs for Old Pros," in Variety (New York), 20 May 1991.
Young, D., "Helmer at Odds over Ads," in Variety (New York), 11 November 1991.
Kauffmann, Stanley, "Regarding Fellini," in New Republic (Washington, D.C.), 25 May 1992.
Schneider, K.S., article in People Weekly (New York), 18 January 1993.
Obituary in Times (London), 1 November 1993.
Obituary in New York Times, 1 November 1993.
Obituary in Los Angeles Times, 1 November 1993.
Obituary in Chicago Tribune, 7 November 1993.
Obituary in Newsweek (New York), 8 November 1993.
Obituary in Variety (New York), 15 November 1993.
Schneider, K.S., obituary in People Weekly (New York), 15 November 1993.
Kauffmann, Stanley, obituary in New Republic (Washington, D.C.), 31 January 1994.
Schickel, Richard, "Send in the Clowns: An Aspect of Fellini," in Film Comment (New York), September/October 1994.
On FELLINI: films—
Goldbarb, Peter, Fellini, for TV, Canada, 1968.
Bachmann, Gideon, Ciao, Federico!, U.S., 1970.
Fellini's Cinema: Notes of a Director, Italy, 1992.
* * *
Federico Fellini is one of the most controversial figures in the recent history of Italian cinema. Though his successes have been spectacular, as in the cases of La strada, La dolce vita, and Otto e mezzo, his failures have been equally flamboyant. This has caused considerable doubt in some quarters as to the validity of his ranking as a major force in contemporary cinema, and made it somewhat difficult for him to achieve sufficient financial backing to support his highly personalized film efforts in his last years. Certainly, few directors in any country could equal Fellini's interest in the history of the cinema or share his certainty regarding the appropriate place for the body of his work within the larger film canon. Consequently, he has molded each of his film projects in such a way that any discussion of their individual merits is inseparable from the autobiographical details of his personal legend.
Fellini's early film La sceicco bianco gave a clear indication of the autobiographical nature of the works to follow, for it drew upon his experience as a journalist and merged it with many of the conceits he had developed in his early motion picture career as a gag writer and script writer. However, he was also an instrumental part of the development of the neorealistic film in the 1940s, writing parts of the screenplays of Roberto Rossellini's Roma città aperta and Paisà, and his reshaping of that tradition toward an autobiographical mode of expression in La sceicco bianco troubled a number of his former collaborators. But on his part, Fellini was seemingly just as critical of the brand of neorealism practiced by Rossellini, with its penchant for overt melodrama.
In a succeeding film, La strada, Fellini took his autobiographical parallels a step farther, casting his wife, Giulietta Masina, in the major female role. This highly symbolic work was variously interpreted as a manifesto on human rights, or at least a treatise on women's liberation. In these contexts, however, it roused the ire of strict neorealists who regarded it as containing too much justification for political oppression. Yet as a highly metaphorical personal parable about the relationship between a man and a woman it was a critical success and a confirmation of the validity of Fellini's autobiographical instincts. This gave him the confidence to indulge in a subtle criticism of the neorealistic style in his next film, Il bidone. The film served, in effect, a tongue-in-cheek criticism of the form's sentimental aspects.
In the films of Fellini's middle period, beginning in 1959 with La dolce vita, Fellini became increasingly preoccupied with his role as an international "auteur." As a result, the autobiographical manifestations in his films became more introspective and extended to less tangible areas of his psyche than anything that he had previously brought to the screen. La dolce vita is a relatively straightforward psychological extension of what might have become of Moraldo, the director's earlier biographical persona (I vitelloni), after forsaking his village for the decadence of Rome. But its successors increasingly explored the areas of its creator's fears, nightmares, and fantasies. After establishing actor Marcello Mastroianni as his alter ego in La dolce vita, Fellini again employed him in his masterpiece, Otto e mezzo (8 1/2), as a vehicle for his analysis of the complex nature of artistic inspiration. Then, in a sequel of sorts, he examined the other side of the coin. In Giulietta degli spiriti (Juliet of the Spirits), he casts his wife as the intaglio of the Guido figure in 8 1/2. Both films, therefore, explored the same problems from different sexual perspectives while, on the deeper, ever-present autobiographical plane, the two characters became corresponding sides of Fellini's mythic ego.
Subsequent films continued the rich, flamboyant imagery that became a Fellini trademark, but with the exception of the imaginative fantasy Fellini Satyricon, they have, for the most part, returned to the vantage point of direct experience that characterized his earlier works. Finally, in 1980's La città delle donne, which again featured Mastroianni, he returned to the larger–than–life examination of his psyche. In fact, a number of critics regarded the film as the ultimate statement in an ideological trilogy (begun with 8 1/2 and continued in Juliet of the Spirits) in which he finally attempts a rapprochement with his inner sexual and creative conflicts. Unfortunately, City of Women is too highly derivative of the earlier work. Consequently, it does not resolve the issues raised in the earlier two films.
Several of Fellini's films are masterpieces by anyone's standards. Yet in no other director's body of films does each work identifiably relate a specific image of the creator that he wishes to present to the world and to posterity. Whether any of the films are truly autobiographical in any traditional sense is open to debate. They definitely do not interlock to provide a history of a man, and yet each is a deliberately crafted building block in the construction of a larger–than–life Fellini legend which may eventually come to be regarded as the "journey of a psyche." While the final credits on Fellini's filmography are far from his best works, they nonetheless are fitting conclusions to what is one of the legendary careers in the history of world cinema.
And the Ship Sails On is the wildly preposterous but uniquely Felliniesque tale of the miscellaneous luminaries who come together for an ocean cruise in which they will bid farewell to a just-deceased opera performer. Ginger and Fred is a sweetly nostalgic film because of its union of two of Fellini's then-aging but still vibrant stars of the past, Giulietta Masina and Marcello Mastroianni. The Voice of the Moon, Fellini's last feature—which did not earn a U.S. distributor—works as a summation of the cinematic subjects which had concerned the film maker for the previous quarter century. The most outstanding and revealing late-career Fellini is Intervista, an illuminating film (and characteristic Fellini union of reality and fantasy) about the production by a Japanese television crew of a documentary about the director. Fellini himself appears on screen, where he is shown to be shooting an adaptation of Kafka's Amerika, a film that appears to be a typically Felliniesque extravaganza-in-the-making, complete with eccentric extras, surreal images, and autobiographical touches. We watch the filmmaker as he casts Amerika. We meet his various associates and underlings, from producers to actors, from casting director to assistant director. We see how Fellini directs his performers and the steps he takes to inspire feelings and attitudes within them. And we are privy to the various crises, big and small, which are standard fare during the filmmaking process. Finally, Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg, who over thirty years before had co-starred in La dolce vita, appear as themselves. Mastroianni's entrance is especially magical; the sequence in which he and Ekberg (whom, he remarks, he has not seen since making La dolce vita) observe their younger selves in some famous clips from the film is wonderful nostalgia.
However, Intervista is primarily an homage to Cinecitta, the studio where Fellini shot his films. Revealingly, the filmmaker describes the studio as "a fortress, or perhaps an alibi." Fellini first came to Cinecitta in 1940, when he was a young journalist. His assignment was to interview an actress for a magazine profile. This event is dramatized in Intervista; at various points in the film, the narrative drifts from images of the real Fellini, an artist in the twilight of a much-honored career, to a recreation of young Federico (played by Sergio Rubini) and his initiation into the world of Cinecitta.To fully appreciate this very personal movie about the movie-making process, you must be familiar with—and an admirer of—Fellini and his work.
—Stephen L. Hanson, updated by Rob Edelman
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
The Italian film director Federico Fellini (1920-1993) began as an exponent of poetic neorealism and later became the cinema's undisputed master of psychological expressionism and surrealist fantasy.
Federico Fellini was born of middle-class family on the rocky Adriatic coast of Rimini. At the age of 12 he ran away from home to join a traveling circus and in following years supported himself as a minor stage actor, newspaper cartoonist, and radio scriptwriter. Shortly after his marriage to actress Giulietta Masina, who would later play important roles in several of his major films, Fellini was asked by the noted actor and director Aldo Fabrizi to collaborate with him on several motion picture scenarios.
In 1945 Fabrizi introduced Fellini to the celebrated cinema director Roberto Rosselini, who offered him the opportunity to work on the script and serve as assistant director of Open City, a powerfully realistic work which depicted the Italian underground resistance to Nazi occupation. The pair continued their collaboration on the successful wartime drama Paisan (1946), and the controversial religious parable The Miracle (1948), the story of an innocent peasant woman who mistakes a crude tramp for St. Joseph. Although The Miracle was in style and execution essentially a Rosselini production, its thematic ambiguity and elusive poetry distinguished it from the director's more literal neorealist efforts. Two years later, under the technical supervision of Alberto Lattuada, Fellini made his directorial debut with Variety Lights, an intensely personal study of theatrical life, strikingly anticipatory in its images of the desolation and ennui of the bleak emotional landscapes of his later masterpieces. He then examined the tawdry, shallow world of movie stardom in a pathetic comedy, The White Sheik.
With I Vitelloni (1953) Fellini's social microcosm expanded to include the frustrated, maladjusted lives of the provincial middle class, in a penetrating analysis of youthful malaise. But more than any of his previous work, La Strada (1954) established Fellini as one of the great cinematic minds of the postwar years. Painfully touching and allegorically suggestive, it told of a bizarre and tortured relationship involving a kindhearted but simpleminded girl, a brutal itinerant strongman, and a poetic, self-sacrificing clown. Less ambitious philosophically though equally brilliant in execution, Il bidone (1955) presented with sympathy and wit the lives of a group of small-time swindlers. Finally, with Nights of Cabiria (1957), the moving tale of a prostitute, Fellini reached the artistic culmination of his career as a romantic realist.
The director's fondness for jesuitical symbolism, sexual degradation, grotesquerie, and psychological Grand Guignol, visible in even his more naturalistic works, achieved overt expression in La Dolce Vita (1960), a monumental morality-play fresco. Although extravagantly praised at the time (it received the Academy Award for best foreign film of 1963, as had La Strada in 1955) and still his most popular production, the film, despite several memorable sequences, seems in retrospect curiously contrived and unconvincing.
Fellini's brief segment in Boccaccio 70 (1962), depicting the prurient fantasies of a middle-aged bachelor, is of little interest except as an indicator of the director's future work as evidenced in 8 1/2 (1963, Fellini's 3rd Oscar winner), an expressionistic, stream-of-consciousness, autobiographical disclosure. Fellini's attempt to probe the psyche of his wife in Juliet of the Spirits (1964), while evocative, was far less successful, and his version of The Satyricon (1969) carried his expressionistic phase into a formless, psychedelic fantasy that lacked his usual humanity and visual grace.
An autobiographical film, Amarcord, came out in 1970, and again critics universally praised Fellini's talents, and the film earned Fellini another Oscar. Amarcord was the last film to gain great praise; in fact, most of Fellini's later work earned poor reviews. The lack of critical acclaim didn't diminish Fellini in the eyes of his fans, and he is generally regarded as the greatest Italian filmmaker. In 1993 Fellini earned his fifth and final Oscar, a lifetime achievement award. Later that year he suffered either a massive heart attack or a stroke, which left him unconscious and soon after, on October 31, he died of heart and lung failure.
Although widely praised for their visual boldness and exuberant spontaneity, Fellini's works, at their best, possess an emotional authenticity and intuitive intelligence commensurate with the dazzling brilliance of their surfaces. Fellini's greatest work was appreciated most during the 1950s through early 1970s, and he was considered a major innovator in cinematic production. Since then, his work has been dismissed as both self-indulgent and sexist.
Further Reading
Constanzo Constantini, Conversations with Fellini, translated by Sohrab Sorooshian, Harcourt Brace & Co., 1997; and Peter E. Bondanell, editor, Critical Essays on Federico Fellini, G.K. Hall & Co., 1993, are useful studies of Fellini's life and work, as is Peter Bondanella, The Cinema of Federico Fellini, Princeton University Press, 1992. Deena Boyer, The Two Hundred Days of 8 1/2 (1964), is a fascinating diary about the creation of the movie. Perceptive analyses of Fellini's art are in the relevant sections of John Simon, Acid Test (1963); Stanley Kauffmann, A World on Film (1966); Pauline Kael, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (1968); Dwight Macdonald, Dwight Macdonald on Movies (1969); and Robert Richardson, Literature and Film (1969). □