100 Years of the Maestro Federico Fellini

This month the great Italian master Federico Fellini would have been 100 years old. It is interesting to think about what he would have made of the current landscape of cinema. Coming from the golden age of International Art Cinema that was not only revolutionary but also bankable, would there be room for the creative genius of Fellini in our modern Hollywood blockbuster world? Fellini and his contemporaries brought a richness to cinema that was arguably never seen before, and likely will never be seen again.

The international cinema beginning with Neorealism of post World War II Italy, and ending with the release of the first American blockbusters Jaws and Star Wars, was a period of unequalled artistic creativity and originality. The respective films were beautiful, political, realist, magical, honest, incomprehensible, indefinable, inexplicable, breathtaking, gut punching, heart wrenching, and mind numbing sometimes all at the same time. How can any other period compare with the realism of Rosselini, the politics of Godard, the heart of Truffaut, the spectacle of Kurosawa, the surrealism of Buñuel, the humanity of Ozu, or the magic of Fellini?

Because magic is the only word fit to describe discovering Fellini for the first time. The music of Nino Rota, the sound of the wind, Fellini’s ghost like camera hovering through surreal landscapes, the closeups of the strange otherness of human faces, and the obsession with the mysterious, the spiritual, and the sexual all converge to parade the unique carnival of life as seen through Fellini’s camera.

Though Fellini would develop his own unique style among his contemporaries, he started out working as a screenwriter with Rosselini in Neorealist films like Rome, Open City. Though the realist style of shooting on location with long shots and deep focus to give a more real or documentary style feeling is present in Fellini’s films, he mixed it with his own surreal and dreamlike vision to create a style that was unmistakably his own.

In one of his final films, And the Ship Goes on, he would all out abandon the neorealist movement. The film was completely artificial, and Fellini brilliantly brought its artificiality to the forefront, constantly reminding the viewer that everything they are seeing is an illusion. In one of the final shots he cuts to a long shot showing the ship in its entirety in the studio and members of the crew working below it in a fantastic moment of self awareness. He never wanted the viewer to get lost in the artificiality of the story as one does in a Hollywood film. Instead he made it clear throughout that the entire set is an artistic construction meant to be appreciated for what it was. Clearly, even in a film as unrealist as possible, the neorealist ideal of capturing some sense of truth pervaded in some way or another through everything he did.

But back to Fellini’s more identifiable work. His two most famous films, La Dolce Vita, and 8 ½ are more daring in scope and are more personal, autobiographical extensions about the auteur’s life and worldview than the Neorealist films were. Both star Fellini’s stand in and muse, the beautiful, Marcello Mastroianni, and are as iconic as anything that was ever projected in the cinema. La Dolce Vita captures a lost beourgoise paparazzi journalist who through booze and sex and a general lack of direction exposes us to a stylish modern Italy that is irresistably cool but essentially empty.

The most famous scene of course is when he follows the beautiful Swedish actress Anita Ekberg into the Trevi Fountain. He is mystified by her beauty, by her image, but incapable of making real physical human contact with her. There is another brilliant scene that criticizes the ridiculousness of believers in Italy by showing the circus of publicity and blind belief in two children who claim to have seen the Virgin Mary.

Marcellos’s odyssey through Rome is a critique without being harsh or overbearing. It is shot in such a breezy, cool way that exemplifies the shallowness and superficiality of the protagonist’s Italy while also showing why he is irresistibly drawn to this lifestyle. In the end his innocence is gone, and even as it shouts out to him from the distance, he is too far away to hear it.

8 ½ is perhaps Fellini’s masterpiece. It is a film that perfectly blends fantasy and reality, the mundane and the fantastic in an autobiographical film that is really about the making of itself. A successful director is in the process of making a film but has no idea where it is going. He is bombarded by questions from producers, actors, and journalists, not to mention the dreams and visions that constantly distract him. It is a stunning balancing act where fact and fiction are so seamlessly combined that the film seems to exist in another reality entirely where anything goes. It is essentially about a director and the people in his life, predominantly female: his wife, lover, mother, and a prostitute from his childhood.

The final scene is a dance directed by the director and led by the director as a boy. Following him are all the important people in his life, dead, alive, current, and past. The dance is a celebration of the people who impacted and influenced Fellini, the people who made him who he is, the people he has loved and who loved him, those he has hurt, used, and disappointed. They are the people about whom he makes movies. A man is the sum of the people he has met and the effect they have had upon him.

Equally as important as Mastroianni in Fellini’s filmography is his wife and leading lady Giulietta Masina who starred in other major works like Nights of Cabiria, La Strada, and Juliet of the Spirits. Masina’s common yet expressive face lead to some of the greatest performances in Italian cinema. She is a prostitute in an episodic film of misadventures who never loses her way, a mute clown in an abusive relationship, and a common housewife to a cheating husband whose company become flamboyant spirits. If Mastroianni exudes sexiness and coolness, Masina is the humanity, optimism, and life of Fellini’s repertory.

The end of Nights of Cabiria is so mundanely simple until it isn't. A small change in the face of Masina, a small smile, her eyes directed at the audience, accompanied by Nino Rota’s beautiful score turn what could have been yet another tragic ending into something profoundly different. Its subtlety and simplicity suddenly rendered powerfully moving make it one of the greatest last shots of all time.

Fellini’s masterpieces came one after the other, and each of his films, no matter how minor, is like a treasure to be discovered. Juliet of the Spirits as Fellini’s first film not shot in black and white is a fascinating experiment in color. Amarcord is a bitter sweet coming of age comedy about one year in a small Italian village. I Vitelloni is an extraordinary film about about life in a small town represented both romantically and an inescapable trap. Il Bidone is a crime film and a great opportunity to see Fillini working in genre.

Rewatching a Fellini film is always a joy, and it is incredible to think of a time when he and his contemporaries were successful not only in their respective countries but all over the globe. The past two years have seen two foreign language films, Roma and Parasite, break into the pop culture dominated by superheroes, princesses, and Jedi, but how amazing it is to think that that used to be the norm. There is so much more out there to see than the limited selection offered by Hollywood. There are so many voices to be heard from the rest of the world, and it seems like a fantasy of a bygone era to think more than one foreign film can break through the CGI spectacle per year. The centenary of Fellini gives us a chance to look back, and hope that the modern cinema landscape has not prohibited someone of his talent from working, and that we will see a more diverse selection in cinemas in the decade to come.