Federico Fellini (Italian:[fedeˈriːkofelˈliːni]; 20 January 1920 – 31 October 1993) was an Italian film director and screenwriter. He is known for his distinctive style, which blendsfantasy andbaroque images with earthiness. He is recognized as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time.[by whom?] His films have ranked highly in critical polls such as that ofCahiers du Cinéma andSight & Sound, which lists his 1963 film8½ as the 10th-greatest film.
Fellini was born on 20 January 1920, tomiddle-class parents inRimini, then a small town on theAdriatic Sea. On 25 January, at the San Nicolò church he was baptized Federico Domenico Marcello Fellini.[1] His father, Urbano Fellini (1894–1956), born to a family ofRomagnolpeasants and smalllandholders fromGambettola, moved to Rome in 1915 as a bakerapprenticed to the Pantanella pasta factory. His mother, Ida Barbiani (1896–1984), came from abourgeoisCatholic family of Romanmerchants. Despite her family's vehement disapproval, she had eloped with Urbano in 1917 to live at his parents' home in Gambettola.[2] A civil marriage followed in 1918 with the religious ceremony held atSanta Maria Maggiore in Rome a year later.
In 1924, Fellini began primary school at an institute run by the nuns of San Vincenzo in Rimini, later attending the Carlo Tonini public school two years afterward. An attentive student, he spent his leisure time drawing, stagingpuppet shows and readingIl corriere dei piccoli, the popular children's magazine that reproduced traditional American cartoons byWinsor McCay,George McManus andFrederick Burr Opper. (Opper'sHappy Hooligan would provide the visual inspiration for Gelsomina in Fellini's 1954 filmLa Strada; McCay'sLittle Nemo would directly influence his 1980 filmCity of Women.)[3] In 1926, he discovered the world ofGrand Guignol, the circus withPierino the Clown and the movies.Guido Brignone'sMaciste all'inferno (1925,Maciste in Hell), the first film he saw, would mark him in ways linked toDante and the cinema throughout his entire career.[4]
Enrolled at the Ginnasio Giulio Cesare in 1929, he made friends with LuigiTitta Benzi, later a prominent Rimini lawyer (and the model for young Titta inAmarcord (1973)). InMussolini's Italy, Fellini and Riccardo became members of theAvanguardista, the compulsoryFascist youth group for males. He visited Rome with his parents for the first time in 1933, the year of the maiden voyage of the transatlantic ocean linerSS Rex (which is shown inAmarcord). The sea creature found on the beach at the end ofLa Dolce Vita (1960) has its basis in a giant fish marooned on a Rimini beach during a storm in 1934.
Although Fellini adapted key events from his childhood and adolescence in films such asI Vitelloni (1953),8+1⁄2 (1963), andAmarcord (1973), he insisted that such autobiographical memories were inventions:
It is not memory that dominates my films. To say that my films are autobiographical is an overly facile liquidation, a hasty classification. It seems to me that I have invented almost everything: childhood, character, nostalgias, dreams, memories, for the pleasure of being able to recount them.[5]
In 1937, Fellini opened Febo, a portrait shop in Rimini, with the painter Demos Bonini. His first humorous article appeared in the "Postcards to Our Readers" section of Milan'sDomenica del Corriere. Deciding on a career as a caricaturist and gag writer, Fellini travelled toFlorence in 1938, where he published his first cartoon in the weekly420. According to a biographer, Fellini found school "exasperating"[6] and, in one year, had 67 absences.[7] Failing his military culture exam, he graduated from high school in 1939.[8]
In September 1939, he enrolled inlaw school at theSapienza University of Rome to please his parents. BiographerHollis Alpert reports that "there is no record of his ever having attended a class".[9] Installed in a familypensione, he met another lifelong friend, the painterRinaldo Geleng. Desperately poor, they unsuccessfully joined forces to draw sketches of restaurant and café patrons. Fellini eventually found work as a cub reporter on the dailiesIl Piccolo andIl Popolo di Roma, but quit after a short stint, bored by the local court news assignments.
Four months after publishing his first article inMarc'Aurelio, the highly influential biweekly humour magazine, he joined the editorial board, achieving success with a regular column titledBut Are You Listening?.[10] Described as "the determining moment in Fellini's life",[11] the magazine gave him steady employment between 1939 and 1942, when he interacted with writers, gagmen, and scriptwriters. These encounters eventually led to opportunities in show business and cinema. Among his collaborators on the magazine's editorial board were the future directorEttore Scola,Marxist theorist and scriptwriterCesare Zavattini, andBernardino Zapponi, a future Fellini screenwriter. Conducting interviews forCineMagazzino also proved congenial: when asked to interviewAldo Fabrizi, Italy's most popular variety performer, he established such immediate personal rapport with the man that they collaborated professionally. Specializing in humorous monologues, Fabrizi commissioned material from his young protégé.[12]
Retained on business in Rimini, Urbano sent his wife and family to Rome in 1940 to share an apartment with his son. Fellini and Ruggero Maccari, also on the staff ofMarc'Aurelio, began writing radio sketches and gags for films.
Not yet twenty and with Fabrizi's help, Fellini obtained his first screen credit as a comedy writer onMario Mattoli'sIl pirata sono io (The Pirate's Dream). Progressing rapidly to numerous collaborations on films atCinecittà, his circle of professional acquaintances widened to include novelistVitaliano Brancati and scriptwriter Piero Tellini. In the wake of Mussolini's declaration of war against France and Britain on 10 June 1940, Fellini discoveredKafka'sThe Metamorphosis,Gogol,John Steinbeck andWilliam Faulkner along with French films byMarcel Carné,René Clair, andJulien Duvivier.[13] In 1941 he publishedIl mio amico Pasqualino, a 74-page booklet in ten chapters describing the absurd adventures of Pasqualino, an alter ego.[14]
Writing for radio while attempting to avoid the draft, Fellini met his future wifeGiulietta Masina in a studio office at the Italian public radio broadcasterEIAR in the autumn of 1942. Well-paid as the voice of Pallina in Fellini's radio serial,Cico and Pallina, Masina was also well known for her musical-comedy broadcasts which cheered an audience depressed by the war.
Giulietta is practical, and likes the fact that she earns a handsome fee for her radio work, whereas theater never pays well. And of course the fame counts for something too. Radio is a booming business and comedy reviews have a broad and devoted public.[15]
In November 1942, Fellini was sent toLibya, occupied by Fascist Italy, to work on the screenplay ofI cavalieri del deserto (Knights of the Desert, 1942), directed byOsvaldo Valenti and Gino Talamo. Fellini welcomed the assignment as it allowed him "to secure another extension on his draft order".[16] Responsible for emergency re-writing, he also directed the film's first scenes. WhenTripoli fell under siege by British forces, he and his colleagues made a narrow escape by boarding a German military plane flying toSicily. His African adventure, later published inMarc'Aurelio as "The First Flight", marked "the emergence of a new Fellini, no longer just a screenwriter, working and sketching at his desk, but a filmmaker out in the field".[17]
Theapolitical Fellini was finally freed of the draft when an Allied air raid overBologna destroyed his medical records. Fellini and Giulietta hid in her aunt's apartment until Mussolini's fall on 25 July 1943. After dating for nine months, the couple were married on 30 October 1943. Several months later, Masina fell down the stairs and suffered a miscarriage. She gave birth to a son, Pierfederico, on 22 March 1945, but the child died ofencephalitis 11 days later on 2 April 1945.[18] Masina and Fellini had no other children.[19] The tragedy had enduring emotional and artistic repercussions.[20]
After the Allied liberation of Rome on 4 June 1944, Fellini and Enrico De Seta opened the Funny Face Shop where they survived the postwar recession drawing caricatures of American soldiers. He became involved withItalian Neorealism whenRoberto Rossellini, at work onStories of Yesteryear (laterRome, Open City), met Fellini in his shop, and proposed he contribute gags and dialogue for the script. Aware of Fellini's reputation as Aldo Fabrizi's "creative muse",[21] Rossellini also requested that he try to convince the actor to play the role of FatherGiuseppe Morosini, the parish priest executed by theSS on 4 April 1944.
In 1947, Fellini andSergio Amidei received an Oscar nomination for the screenplay ofRome, Open City.
Working as both screenwriter and assistant director on Rossellini'sPaisà (Paisan) in 1946, Fellini was entrusted to film the Sicilian scenes inMaiori. In February 1948, he was introduced toMarcello Mastroianni, then a young theatre actor appearing in a play with Giulietta Masina.[22] Establishing a close working relationship withAlberto Lattuada, Fellini co-wrote the director'sSenza pietà (Without Pity) andIl mulino del Po (The Mill on the Po). Fellini also worked with Rossellini on theanthology filmL'Amore (1948), co-writing the screenplay and in one segment titled, "The Miracle", acting oppositeAnna Magnani. To play the role of a vagabond rogue mistaken by Magnani for a saint, Fellini had to bleach his black hair blond.
Fellini, Masina, Carla del Poggio and Alberto Lattuada, 1952
Fellini's early works had a "forlorn atmosphere and touch of melancholy."[23]
In 1950 Fellini co-produced and co-directed with Alberto LattuadaVariety Lights (Luci del varietà), his first feature film. A backstage comedy set among the world of small-time travelling performers, it featured Giulietta Masina and Lattuada's wife,Carla Del Poggio. Its release to poor reviews and limited distribution proved disastrous for all concerned. The production company went bankrupt, leaving both Fellini and Lattuada with debts to pay for over a decade.[24] In February 1950,Paisà received an Oscar nomination for the screenplay by Rossellini,Sergio Amidei, and Fellini.
After travelling to Paris for a script conference with Rossellini onEuropa '51, Fellini began production onThe White Sheik in September 1951, his first solo-directed feature. StarringAlberto Sordi in the title role, the film is a revised version of a treatment first written byMichelangelo Antonioni in 1949 and based on thefotoromanzi, the photographed cartoon strip romances popular in Italy at the time. ProducerCarlo Ponti commissioned Fellini andTullio Pinelli to write the script but Antonioni rejected the story they developed. WithEnnio Flaiano, they re-worked the material into a light-hearted satire about newlywed couple Ivan and Wanda Cavalli (Leopoldo Trieste, Brunella Bovo) in Rome to visit the Pope. Ivan's prissy mask of respectability is soon demolished by his wife's obsession with the White Sheik. Highlighting the music ofNino Rota, the film was selected at Cannes (among the films in competition wasOrson Welles'sOthello) and then retracted. Screened at the13th Venice International Film Festival, it was razzed by critics in "the atmosphere of a soccer match".[25] One reviewer declared that Fellini had "not the slightest aptitude for cinema direction".
In 1953,I Vitelloni found favour with the critics and public. Winning the Silver Lion Award in Venice, it secured Fellini his first international distributor.
Fellini directedLa Strada based on a script completed in 1952 with Pinelli and Flaiano. It starred his wifeGiulietta Masina,Anthony Quinn, andRichard Basehart. During the last three weeks of shooting, Fellini experienced the first signs of severe clinical depression.[27] Aided by his wife, he undertook a brief period of therapy with Freudian psychoanalyst Emilio Servadio.[27]
Fellini cast American actorBroderick Crawford to interpret the role of an aging swindler inIl Bidone. Based partly on stories told to him by a petty thief during production ofLa Strada, Fellini developed the script into a con man's slow descent. To incarnate the role's "intense, tragic face", Fellini's first choice had beenHumphrey Bogart,[28] but after learning of the actor's lung cancer, chose Crawford after seeing his face on the theatrical poster ofAll the King's Men (1949).[29] The film shoot was wrought with difficulties stemming from Crawford's alcoholism.[30] Savaged by critics at the16th Venice International Film Festival, the film did miserably at the box office and did not receive international distribution until 1964.
During the autumn, Fellini researched and developed a treatment based on a film adaptation ofMario Tobino's novel,The Free Women of Magliano. Set in a mental institution for women, the project was abandoned when financial backers considered the subject had no potential.[31]
While preparingNights of Cabiria in spring 1956, Fellini learned of his father's death by cardiac arrest at the age of sixty-two. Produced byDino De Laurentiis and starring Giulietta Masina, the film took its inspiration from news reports of a woman's severed head retrieved in a lake and stories by Wanda, a shantytown prostitute Fellini met on the set ofIl Bidone.[32]Pier Paolo Pasolini was hired to translate Flaiano and Pinelli's dialogue into Roman dialect and to supervise researches in the vice-afflicted suburbs of Rome. The movie won theAcademy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the30th Academy Awards and brought Masina the Best Actress Award at Cannes for her performance.[33]
With Pinelli, he developedJourney with Anita forSophia Loren andGregory Peck. An "invention born out of intimate truth", the script was based on Fellini's return to Rimini with a mistress to attend his father's funeral.[34] Due to Loren's unavailability, the project was shelved and resurrected twenty-five years later asLovers and Liars (1981), a comedy directed byMario Monicelli withGoldie Hawn andGiancarlo Giannini. ForEduardo De Filippo, he co-wrote the script ofFortunella.[35]
TheHollywood on the Tiber phenomenon of 1958 in which American studios profited from the cheap studio labour available in Rome provided the backdrop for photojournalists to steal shots of celebrities on the via Veneto.[36] The scandal provoked by Turkish dancer Nana Kaish's improvised striptease at a nightclub captured Fellini's imagination: he decided to end his latest script-in-progress,Moraldo in the City, with an all-night "orgy" at a seaside villa.Pierluigi Praturlon's photos ofAnita Ekberg after an evening spent with the actress in a Rome night club provided further inspiration for Fellini and his screenwriters.[37]
Changing the title of the screenplay toLa Dolce Vita, Fellini soon clashed with his producer on casting: The director insisted on the relatively unknown Mastroianni while De Laurentiis wantedPaul Newman as a hedge on his investment. Reaching an impasse, De Laurentiis sold the rights to publishing mogulAngelo Rizzoli. Shooting began on 16 March 1959 with Anita Ekberg climbing the stairs to the cupola of Saint Peter's in a mammoth décor constructed atCinecittà. The statue of Christ flown by helicopter over Rome toSt. Peter's Square was inspired by an actual media event on 1 May 1956, which Fellini had witnessed.
La Dolce Vita broke all box office records. Despite scalpers selling tickets at 1000 lire,[38] crowds queued in line for hours to see an "immoral movie" before the censors banned it. At an exclusiveMilan screening on 5 February 1960, one outraged patron spat on Fellini while others hurled insults. Denounced in parliament by right-wing conservatives, undersecretary Domenico Magrì of the Christian Democrats demanded tolerance for the film's controversial themes.[39] TheVatican's official press organ,L'Osservatore Romano, lobbied for censorship while the Board of Roman Parish Priests and the Genealogical Board of Italian Nobility attacked the film. In one documented instance involving favourable reviews written by the Jesuits of San Fedele, defendingLa Dolce Vita had severe consequences.[40] In competition at Cannes alongside Antonioni'sL'Avventura, the film won thePalme d'Or awarded by presiding jurorGeorges Simenon. The Belgian writer was promptly "hissed at" by the disapproving festival crowd.[41]
A major discovery for Fellini after hisItalian neorealism period (1950–1959) was the work ofCarl Jung. After meeting Jungian psychoanalyst Dr. Ernst Bernhard in early 1960, he read Jung's autobiography,Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963) and experimented withLSD.[42] Bernhard also recommended that Fellini consult theI Ching and keep a record of his dreams. What Fellini formerly accepted as "his extrasensory perceptions"[43] were now interpreted as psychic manifestations of the unconscious. Bernhard's focus on Jungian depth psychology proved to be the single greatest influence on Fellini's mature style and marked the turning point in his work from neorealism to filmmaking that was "primarily oneiric".[44] As a consequence, Jung's seminal ideas on theanima and theanimus, the role of archetypes and the collective unconscious directly influenced such films as8+1⁄2 (1963),Juliet of the Spirits (1965),Fellini Satyricon (1969),Casanova (1976), andCity of Women (1980).[45] Other key influences on his work includeLuis Buñuel,[a]Charlie Chaplin,[b]Sergei Eisenstein,[c]Buster Keaton,[46]Laurel and Hardy,[46] theMarx Brothers,[46] andRoberto Rossellini.[d]
ExploitingLa Dolce Vita's success, financier Angelo Rizzoli set up Federiz in 1960, an independent film company, for Fellini and production manager Clemente Fracassi to discover and produce new talent. Despite the best intentions, their overcautious editorial and business skills forced the company to close down soon after cancelling Pasolini's project,Accattone (1961).[47]
Condemned as a "public sinner",[48] forLa Dolce Vita, Fellini responded withThe Temptations of Doctor Antonio, a segment in the omnibusBoccaccio '70. His second colour film, it was the sole project green-lighted at Federiz. Infused with thesurrealistic satire that characterized the young Fellini's work atMarc'Aurelio, the film ridiculed a crusader against vice, interpreted byPeppino De Filippo, who goes insane trying to censor a billboard ofAnita Ekberg espousing the virtues of milk.[49]
In an October 1960 letter to his colleague Brunello Rondi, Fellini first outlined his film ideas about a man suffering creative block: "Well then – a guy (a writer? any kind of professional man? a theatrical producer?) has to interrupt the usual rhythm of his life for two weeks because of a not-too-serious disease. It's a warning bell: something is blocking up his system."[50] Unclear about the script, its title, and his protagonist's profession, he scouted locations throughout Italy "looking for the film",[51] in the hope of resolving his confusion. Flaiano suggestedLa bella confusione (literallyThe Beautiful Confusion) as the movie's title. Under pressure from his producers, Fellini finally settled on8+1⁄2, aself-referential title referring principally (but not exclusively)[52] to the number of films he had directed up to that time.
Giving the order to start production in spring 1962, Fellini signed deals with his producer Rizzoli, fixed dates, had sets constructed, cast Mastroianni,Anouk Aimée, andSandra Milo in lead roles, and did screen tests at the Scalera Studios in Rome. He hiredcinematographerGianni Di Venanzo, among key personnel. But apart from naming his hero Guido Anselmi, he still couldn't decide what his character did for a living.[53] The crisis came to a head in April when, sitting in his Cinecittà office, he began a letter to Rizzoli confessing he had "lost his film" and had to abandon the project. Interrupted by the chief machinist requesting he celebrate the launch of8+1⁄2, Fellini put aside the letter and went on the set. Raising a toast to the crew, he "felt overwhelmed by shame… I was in a no exit situation. I was a director who wanted to make a film he no longer remembers. And lo and behold, at that very moment everything fell into place. I got straight to the heart of the film. I would narrate everything that had been happening to me. I would make a film telling the story of a director who no longer knows what film he wanted to make".[54] The self-mirroring structure makes the entire film inseparable from its reflecting construction.
Shooting began on 9 May 1962. Perplexed by the seemingly chaotic, incessant improvisation on the set, Deena Boyer, the director's American press officer at the time, asked for a rationale. Fellini told her that he hoped to convey the three levels "on which our minds live: the past, the present, and the conditional — the realm of fantasy".[55] After shooting wrapped on 14 October,Nino Rota composed various circus marches and fanfares that would later become signature tunes of the maestro's cinema.[56] Nominated for four Oscars,8+1⁄2 won awards for best foreign language film and best costume design in black-and-white. In California for the ceremony, Fellini touredDisneyland withWalt Disney the day after.
Increasingly attracted toparapsychology, Fellini met theTurin antiquarianGustavo Rol in 1963.[57] Rol, a former banker, introduced him to the world ofSpiritism andséances. In 1964, Fellini tookLSD[58] under the supervision of Emilio Servadio, his psychoanalyst during the 1954 production ofLa Strada.[59] For years reserved about what actually occurred that Sunday afternoon, he admitted in 1992 that
... objects and their functions no longer had any significance. All I perceived was perception itself, the hell of forms and figures devoid of human emotion and detached from the reality of my unreal environment. I was an instrument in a virtual world that constantly renewed its own meaningless image in a living world that was itself perceived outside of nature. And since the appearance of things was no longer definitive but limitless, this paradisiacal awareness freed me from the reality external to my self. The fire and the rose, as it were, became one.[60]
Fellini's hallucinatory insights were given full flower in his first colour featureJuliet of the Spirits (1965), depictingGiulietta Masina as Juliet, a housewife who rightly suspects her husband's infidelity and succumbs to the voices of spirits summoned during a séance at her home. Her sexually voracious next door neighbor Suzy (Sandra Milo) introduces Juliet to a world of uninhibited sensuality, but Juliet is haunted by childhood memories of herCatholic guilt and a teenaged friend who committed suicide. Complex and filled with psychological symbolism, the film is set to a jaunty score byNino Rota.
To help promoteSatyricon in the United States, Fellini flew to Los Angeles in January 1970 for interviews withDick Cavett andDavid Frost. He also met with film directorPaul Mazursky who wanted to cast him in a starring role alongsideDonald Sutherland in his new film,Alex in Wonderland.[61] In February, Fellini scouted locations in Paris forThe Clowns, adocufiction both for cinema and television, based on his childhood memories of the circus and a "coherent theory of clowning."[62] As he saw it, the clown "was always the caricature of a well-established, ordered, peaceful society. But today all is temporary, disordered, grotesque. Who can still laugh at clowns?... All the world plays a clown now."[63]
In March 1971, Fellini began production onRoma, a seemingly random collection of episodes informed by the director's memories and impressions of Rome. The "diverse sequences," writes Fellini scholarPeter Bondanella, "are held together only by the fact that they all ultimately originate from the director's fertile imagination."[64] The film's opening scene anticipatesAmarcord while its most surreal sequence involves an ecclesiastical fashion show in which nuns and priests roller skate past shipwrecks of cobwebbed skeletons.
Over a period of six months between January and June 1973, Fellini shot theOscar-winningAmarcord. Loosely based on the director's 1968 autobiographical essayMy Rimini,[65] the film depicts the adolescent Titta and his friends working out their sexual frustrations against the religious and Fascist backdrop of a provincial town in Italy during the 1930s. Produced byFranco Cristaldi, theseriocomic movie became Fellini's second biggest commercial success afterLa Dolce Vita.[66] Circular in form,Amarcord avoids plot and linear narrative in a way similar toThe Clowns andRoma.[67] The director's overriding concern with developing a poetic form of cinema was first outlined in a 1965 interview he gave toThe New Yorker journalistLillian Ross: "I am trying to free my work from certain constrictions – a story with a beginning, a development, an ending. It should be more like a poem with metre and cadence."[68]
Organized by his publisherDiogenes Verlag in 1982, the first major exhibition of 63 drawings by Fellini was held in Paris,Brussels, and thePierre Matisse Gallery inNew York.[69] A gifted caricaturist, he found much of the inspiration for his sketches from his own dreams while the films-in-progress both originated from and stimulated drawings for characters, decor, costumes and set designs. Under the title,I disegni di Fellini (Fellini's Designs), he published 350 drawings executed in pencil, watercolours, and felt pens.[70]
On 6 September 1985 Fellini was awarded the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the 42nd Venice Film Festival. That same year, he became the first non-American to receive theFilm Society of Lincoln Center's annual award for cinematic achievement.[3]
Long fascinated byCarlos Castaneda'sThe Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, Fellini accompanied the Peruvian author on a journey to theYucatán to assess the feasibility of a film. After first meeting Castaneda in Rome in October 1984, Fellini drafted a treatment with Pinelli titledViaggio a Tulun. ProducerAlberto Grimaldi, prepared to buy film rights to all of Castaneda's work, then paid for pre-production research taking Fellini and his entourage from Rome toLos Angeles and the jungles ofMexico in October 1985.[71] When Castaneda inexplicably disappeared and the project fell through, Fellini's mystico-shamanic adventures were scripted with Pinelli and serialized inCorriere della Sera in May 1986. A barely veiled satirical interpretation of Castaneda's work,[72]Viaggio a Tulun was published in 1989 as agraphic novel with artwork byMilo Manara and asTrip to Tulum in America in 1990.
ForIntervista, produced by Ibrahim Moussa and RAI Television, Fellini intercut memories of the first time he visitedCinecittà in 1939 with present-day footage of himself at work on a screen adaptation ofFranz Kafka'sAmerika. A meditation on the nature of memory and film production, it won the special 40th Anniversary Prize at Cannes and the15th Moscow International Film Festival Golden Prize. In Brussels later that year, a panel of thirty professionals from eighteen European countries named Fellini the world's best director and8+1⁄2 the best European film of all time.[73]
In early 1989 Fellini began production onThe Voice of the Moon, based on Ermanno Cavazzoni's novel,Il poema dei lunatici (The Lunatics' Poem). A small town was built at Empire Studios on the via Pontina outside Rome. StarringRoberto Benigni as Ivo Salvini, a madcap poetic figure newly released from a mental institution, the character is a combination ofLa Strada's Gelsomina,Pinocchio, and Italian poetGiacomo Leopardi.[74] Fellini improvised as he filmed, using as a guide a rough treatment written with Pinelli.[75] Despite its modest critical and commercial success in Italy, and its warm reception by French critics, it failed to interest North American distributors.[76]
Fellini won thePraemium Imperiale, an international prize in the visual arts given by the Japan Art Association in 1990.[77]
In July 1991 and April 1992, Fellini worked in close collaboration with Canadian filmmakerDamian Pettigrew to establish "the longest and most detailed conversations ever recorded on film".[78] Described as the "Maestro's spiritual testament" by his biographerTullio Kezich,[79] excerpts culled from the conversations later served as the basis of their feature documentary,Fellini: I'm a Born Liar (2002) and the book,I'm a Born Liar: A Fellini Lexicon.
In April 1993 Fellini received his fifthOscar, for lifetime achievement, "in recognition of his cinematic accomplishments that have thrilled and entertained audiences worldwide". On 16 June, he entered the Cantonal Hospital inZürich for anangioplasty on hisfemoral artery[80] but suffered astroke at Rimini'sGrand Hotel two months later. Partially paralyzed, he was first transferred toFerrara for rehabilitation and then to thePoliclinico Umberto I in Rome to be near his wife, also hospitalized. He suffered a second stroke and fell into an irreversiblecoma.[81]
Film critic forThe New Yorker, Pauline Kael was critical of Fellini saying that she believed part of what contributed to his reputation was "his narcissistic conception of his role [and what] celebrity worshipers have always thought a movie director to be. She called it a movie director's "megalomania."[23]
Fellini died in Rome on 31 October 1993 at the age of 73 after a heart attack he suffered a few weeks earlier,[82] a day after his 50th wedding anniversary. The memorial service, in Studio 5 at Cinecittà, was attended by an estimated 70,000 people.[83] AtGiulietta Masina's request, trumpeterMauro Maur playedNino Rota's "Improvviso dell'Angelo" during the ceremony.[84]
Fellini was raised in a Roman Catholic family and considered himself a Catholic but avoided formal activity in the Catholic Church. Fellini's films include Catholic themes; some celebrate Catholic teachings, while others criticize or ridicule church dogma.[87]
Despite his criticisms of the Church though, Fellini did go out of his way on several occasions to identify himself as a Christian. He once remarked:
The Church never gave me joy. ... (but) I am a Christian. I believe in the necessity of God. Because I believe in man. And God is the love of man.[88]
According to reports, when Fellini died in 1993, he was in communion with the Catholic Church. He received the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick and was given a Catholic funeral Mass.[89] His funeral procession took place in a traditional Roman Catholic church.[90]
While Fellini was for the most part indifferent to politics,[91] he had a general dislike ofauthoritarian institutions, and is interpreted by Bondanella as believing in "the dignity and even thenobility of the individual human being".[92] In a 1966 interview, he said, "I make it a point to see if certain ideologies or political attitudes threaten the private freedom of the individual. But for the rest, I am not prepared nor do I plan to become interested in politics."[93]
Despite various famous Italian actors favouring theCommunists, Fellini was opposed to communism. He preferred to move within the world of the moderateleft, and voted for theItalian Republican Party of his friendUgo La Malfa as well as the reformist socialists ofPietro Nenni, another friend of his, and voted only once for theChristian Democracy party (Democrazia Cristiana, DC) in 1976 to keep the Communists out of power.[94] Bondanella writes that DC "was far too aligned with an extremely conservative and even reactionary pre-Vatican II church to suit Fellini's tastes."[92]
Apart from satirizingSilvio Berlusconi and mainstream television inGinger and Fred,[95] Fellini rarely expressed political views in public and never directed an overtly political film. He directed two electoral television spots during the 1990s: one for DC and another for theItalian Republican Party (PRI).[96] His slogan "Non si interrompe un'emozione" (Don't interrupt an emotion) was directed against the excessive use of TV advertisements. TheDemocratic Party of the Left also used the slogan in thereferendums of 1995.[97]
Personal and highlyidiosyncratic visions of society, Fellini's films are a unique combination of memory, dreams, fantasy and desire. The adjectives "Fellinian" and "Felliniesque" are "synonymous with any kind of extravagant, fanciful, even baroque image in the cinema and in art in general".[11]La Dolce Vita contributed the termpaparazzi to the English language, derived from Paparazzo, the photographer friend of journalist Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni).[98]
Various film-related material and personal papers of Fellini are in theWesleyan University Cinema Archives, to which scholars and media experts have full access.[123] In October 2009, theJeu de Paume in Paris opened an exhibit devoted to Fellini that included ephemera, television interviews, behind-the-scenes photographs,The Book of Dreams (based on 30 years of the director's illustrated dreams and notes), along with excerpts fromLa dolce vita and8+1⁄2.[124]
In 2014 the weekly entertainment-trade magazineVariety announced that French directorSylvain Chomet was moving forward withThe Thousand Miles, a project based on various Fellini works, including his unpublished drawings and writings.[125]
Also in 2014, theBlue Devils Drum and Bugle Corps performed their programFelliniesque, a show inspired by the works and life of Fellini. This show would go on to earn the gold medal at theDrum Corps International 2014 world championships, and as of 2024 is the highest scoring show inDrum corps history with a score of 99.650.
TheFellini Museum, which showcases his films and collection, was inaugurated in Rimini in August 2021.[126]
In 2025, the first AI-directed movie was said to be inspired by Fellini.[127]
^Fellini & Pettigrew 2003, p. 87. Buñuel is the auteur I feel closest to in terms of an idea of cinema or the tendency to make particular kinds of films.
^Stubbs 2006, pp. 152–153. One of Cabiria's finest moments comes in the movie's nightclub scene. It begins when the actor's girlfriend deserts him, and the star picks up Cabiria on the street as a replacement. He whisks her away to the nightclub. Fellini has admitted that this scene owes a debt to Chaplin's City Lights (1931). Peter Bondanella points out that Gelsomina's costume, makeup, and antics as a clown figure had "clear links to Fellini's past as a cartoonist-imitator of Happy Hooligan and Charlie Chaplin.
^Bondanella 1978, p. 167. In his study ofFellini Satyricon, Italian novelistAlberto Moravia observes that with "the oars of his galleys suspended in the air, Fellini revives for us the lances of the battle in Eisenstein'sAlexander Nevsky (film).
^Fellini & Pettigrew 2003, pp. 17–18. Roberto Rossellini walked into my life at a moment when I needed to make a choice, when I needed someone to show me the path to follow. He was the stationmaster, the green light of providence... He taught me how to thrive on chaos by ignoring it and focusing on what was essential: constructing your film day by day. InFellini on Fellini, the director explains that his "meeting with Rossellini was a determining factor... he taught me to make a film as if I were going for a picnic with friends".
^Fellini interview inPanorama 18 (14 January 1980). ScreenwritersTullio Pinelli andBernardino Zapponi, cinematographerGiuseppe Rotunno and set designerDante Ferretti also reported that Fellini imagined many of his "memories". Cf. Bernardino Zapponi's memoir,Il mio Fellini and Fellini's own insistence on having created his cinematic autobiography inI'm a Born Liar: A Fellini Lexicon, 32
^Fellini,I disegni di Fellini (Roma: Editori Laterza), 1993. The drawings are edited and analysed by Pier Marco De Santi. For comparing Fellini's graphic work with those ofSergei Eisenstein, consult S.M. Eisenstein,Dessins secrets (Paris: Seuil), 1999.
^Ennio Flaiano, the film's co-screenwriter and creator of Paparazzo, explained that he took the name from Signor Paparazzo, a character inGeorge Gissing's novelBy the Ionian Sea (1901). Bondanella,The Cinema of Federico Fellini, p. 136
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Fellini, Federico (1988).Comments on Film. Fresno, Calif.: Press at California State University, Fresno.ISBN978-0-912201-15-3.
Fellini, Federico; Pettigrew, Damian (1 December 2003).I'm a born liar: a Fellini lexicon. New York, NY: Harry N. Abrams.ISBN978-0-8109-4617-0.
Miller, D. A. (2008).8 1/2 = Otto e mezzo. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.ISBN978-1-84457-231-1.
Liehm, Mira (1984).Passion and Defiance: Italian Film from 1942 to the Present. Berkeley (Calif.): University of California Press.ISBN978-0-520-05744-9.
Morrison, James (2007).Roman Polanski (Contemporary Film Directors). University of Illinois Press.ISBN978-0-252-07446-2.
Stubbs, John Caldwell (2006).Federico Fellini as auteur: seven aspects of his films. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.ISBN0-8093-2689-2.
Segrave, Kerry (2004).Foreign Films in America: A History. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co.ISBN0-7864-1764-1.
Angelucci, Gianfranco (2014).Giulietta Masina: attrice e sposa di Federico Fellini. Rom, Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia: Edizioni Sabinae.ISBN978-88-98623-11-2.
Arpa, Angelo (2010).Federico Fellini: La dolce vita: cronaca di una passione (1. ed.). Rome: Sabinae.ISBN978-88-96105-56-6.
Ashough, Jamshid (2016).L'enigma di un genio: Capire il linguaggio di Federico Fellini. Pescara: Zona Franca EDizioni.ISBN978-88-905139-4-7.
Bertozzi, Marco; Ricci, Giuseppe; Casavecchia, Simone (2002).BiblioFellini: monografie, soggetti e sceneggiature, saggi in volume (in Italian). Rome: Scuola nazionale di cinema.
Betti, Liliana (1979).Fellini: An Intimate Portrait (1st Eng. language ed.). Boston: Little, Brown.ISBN978-0-316-09230-2.
Cinfarani, Carmine.Federico Fellini: Leone d'Oro, Venezia 1985. Rome: Anica.
Fellini, Federico. (2008).The Book of Dreams. New York: Rizzoli International.ISBN978-0-8478-3135-7.
Fellini, Federico (2015).Making a Film. Translated by Calvino, Italo; White, Christopher Burton; Betti, Liliana. New York, NY: Contra Mundum Press.ISBN978-1-940625-09-6.
Fellini, Federico; Santi, Pier Marco De (1982).I disegni di Fellini (in Italian). Laterza.
Kezich, Tullio (2010). Boarini, Vittorio (ed.).Federico Fellini: The Films. New York: Rizzoli.ISBN978-0847832699.
Manara, Milo; Fellini, Federico (1990).Trip to Tulum: from a script for a film idea. Translated by Gaudiano, Stefano; Bell, Elizabeth. Catalán Communications.ISBN978-0-87416-123-6.
Minuz, Andrea (2015).Political Fellini: Journey to the End of Italy. Translated by Perryman, Marcus (English-language ed.). New York: Berghahn Books.ISBN978-1-78238-819-7.
Panicelli, Ida; Mafai, Giulia; Delli Colli, Laura; Mazza, Samuele (1996).Fellini: Costumes and Fashion (1st English ed.). Milan: Charta.ISBN978-88-86158-82-4.
Pettigrew, Damian (2003).I'm a born liar: a fellini lexicon. New York: Harry N. Abrams.ISBN0-8109-4617-3.
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