Federico Fellini (1920-1993)

‘I am cinema.’

Italian Cinema

• Italy as one of the greatest cinematic nations• In history, production started in 1903• In the number of the films made: 6th in the

world (1 India, 2 USA, 3 Japan, 4 China, 5 France, 6 Italy, 7 Spain, 8 UK, 9 Germany)

• In the variety of auteurs • In the number of stars• In national esteem

History • Quo Vadis (1912) – the first blockbuster film in history of cinema with 5,000 extras, lavish 3 dimensional sets, 2 years production time, running time 2 hours.

• Epic about the time of the emperor Nero and the prosecution of Christians.

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History • Cabiria (1914) – epic and blockbuster film set at the time of the 2nd Punic War, including scenes such as the eruption of Mt. Etna, the Alpine crossing of Hannibal, the sea battles at Syracuse, Scipio’s advance in N. Africa

Federico Fellini Michelangelo Antonioni

Roerto Rossellini Vittorio De Sica

Ettore Scola Sergio Leone

Dario Argento Pier Paolo Pasollini

Bernardo Bertolucci Franco Zeffirelli

Mario Bava Mario Monicelli

Ermanno Olmi Lina Wertmuller

Francesco Rosi Luchino Visconti

Paolo and Vittorio Taviani

Nanni Moretti

Roma Citta Aperta (1945) by Roberto Rossellini Lives of Romans fighting against the Nazi occupation Pina shot by an invisible bullet

Bicycle Thieves (1948) by Vittorio De Sica – about a poor father searching for his stolen bike without which he would lose his job. Thief

Salvatore Giuliano (1962) by Francesco Rosi – a biographical film about a enigmatic Sicilian bandit, Salvatore Giuliano

Il Gattopardo (1963) by Luchino Visconti – about a Sicilian aristocrat, whose fortune is about to decline with the arrival of modernity. Italian Trailer

Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (Gospel According to St. Matthew: 1964) – retels the story of Jesus Christ from Nativity to Resurrection Baptism

The Battles of Algiers (1966) by Gillo Pontecorvo – about fighting for independence in AlgieriaFemale bomber

Il Conformista (The Conformist: 1970) by Bernardo Bertolucci – about a man helping fascists to assassinate his former professor.Dance scene

Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978) by Ermano Olmi about Lombard peasant families in cascina (farmhouse) in the 19th centuryeviction

Kaos (1984) by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani – a omnibus film of four episodes and an epilogue based on Pirandello’s storiesexile

Federico Fellini

• One of the most celebrated and distinctive filmmakers not only in Italy but in the world.

• Without much formal training in filmmaking, he started making films with distinctive visual styles

• Dreamlike or hullucinatory imagery imposed on ordinary everyday situation

• Personal expression

• People at their most bizarre

• Artistic fantasy

Life

• Born in the seaside town of Rimini, moved to Rome at 19. Enrolled in a law school but quickly abandoned it. Neither attended a film school nor frequented cinema and cine club. Supported himself by contributing cartoons and gags to Marc’ Aurelio

• Fellini worked as a scriptwriter for a radio programme starring Giulietta Masina, who became his wife in 1943 and starred in his post-war films. They were married for 50 years.

• Rossellini engaged Fellini as one of a team of writers for Roma, Citta Apertá (1945): the seminal film of Neorealismo. First Oscar nomination

• One of the most successful scriptwriter during the neorealist period

• Rosselini’s Paisá, Germi’s Il Camino della speranza, Lattuada’s Senza pieta, Comentini’s Persiane Chiuse

His Work

• Fellini’s directorial debut was Luce dei varieta (Variety Lights: 1951) , a collaboration with Lattuada

• Lo Scheicco bianco (White Sheik: 1951) and I Vitelloni (1953) first masterpiece and commercially successful

• Semi-autobiographical and sarcastic observation of four ‘mama’s boys’ living in a provincial town.

• All four want to quit the seaside town where they were born and living and their lives there. Only Morald managed to leave it for Rome.

Fellini’s Major Works• A trilogy dealing with the

fate of the innocent in a cruel world without salvation.

• La Strada (1954) – Anthony Quinn as a cruel circus strongman and Masina as a pathetic waif who loves him. The film was shot on location and the desolate landscape symbolizes the inhumanity in the relationship.

“forcing of the photographic image in a direction that carries it from an image of caricature toward that of the visionary.”

Italo Calvino•Fellini’s indebtedness to the Italian mass culture in creating cinematic images.•Caricature and circus

• Stars Masina as a simple and optimistic Roman prostitute, who because of her blind trust in everybody and gullibility is deceived by many men and customers

• Holy innocent in a cruel and merciless world

• La Dolce Vita (1960)• The 60s sexual liberation

started with the release of Dolce Vita (sweet life)

• The first collaboration with Marcello Mastro-ianni (Fellini’s alter ego)

• Handsome, promiscuous, carefree journalist enjoys a decadent life in Rome.

• La Dolce Vita as an icon of the 1960s• Erotic images and sexual suggestiveness which

had not existed in cinema anywhere• Stand for the 1960s permissiveness and sexual

liberation

• Nadia stripping herself to celebrate her divorce

• Cause célèbré • Scandalized the

conservative and the old and upset the church

• The film was criticized by the Vatican news-paper and banned in Spain

• Imitated, influenced and parodied a number of times

• La Dolce Vita as a social phenomenon• A indictment of the popular media (the word

paparazzi was made into the English vocaburary)• Decadent intellectuals and aristocrats which hang

around Via Veneto

• Surreal, dreamlike and hallucinatory images• Fellinesque• Total lack of conventional narratives and plots• Episodic storytelling: avant-garde art cinema

• 8 ½ (Eight and a half: 1963) – arguably the greatest film that Fellini created

• The best European film ever made (1987 panel of scholars

• The fourth greatest film (Sight and Sound 2012)

• About a plight of a famous film director (based on Fellini and played by Mastroianni) in his creative crisis

• High modernist aesthetics, perfect combination of realism and symbolism

Fellini as a Byname for European Art Film

• After the phenomenal successes of La Dolce Vita and 8 ½, it became an event that Fellini made a new film.

• Break with conventional filmmaking techniques, his films were made of freely structured tales in which reality and dream mingle.

• Amarcordo (1973) – nostalgic reminiscences of Fellini’s adolescence in Rimini during the fascist period.

• Satire on Italy’s lapse of conscience: fascism and the Catholic Church ‘imprisoned Italians in a perpetual adolescence.’ (Fellini)