| Federico Fellini: I Vitelloni |
Having avoided conscription during the Second World War (apparently because his medical records were destroyed by Allied bombing), Fellini began a productive association with Rossellini, the founder of Italian neo-realism, who favoured location to studio and used non-professional actors.
Together they made such classics as Rome, Open City (1945), Paisa (1946) and Amore (1948), in which Fellini played a tramp hailed as a saint. He went on to work on Lights of Variety (1950), a gentle satire on the pretensions of a theatrical troupe, before making his debut as sole director with The White Sheik (1951), a charming romantic comedy about a woman trapped in a dull marriage who becomes infatuated by the hero of a photo-strip adventure.
Fellini's next work, I Vitelloni (1953), a study of five small-town layabouts with variously frustrated dreams of escape, achieved greater critical success. It signalled the beginning of his departure from neo-realism, and of a more overtly autobiographical tone.
The contract between a coarse sexuality and a cerebral innocence provided the central conflict of La Strada (1954), which some critics have called "the first road movie". Featuring Giulietta Masina as a brutalised waif rescued from a travelling circus by Anthony Quinn (who buys her for a plate of pasta), it brought Fellini his first Oscar.
Il Bidone (1955) and Notti di Cabiria (1957) also contrasted material corruption with innocence. In the latter Masina's superb performance as a "tart with a heart" made up for a certain waywardness of construction.
Fellini's international reputation was established with La Dolce Vita (1960). An extravagant and sprawling satire on the decadence of the international beau monde, it followed a womanising journalist (Mastroianni) around a Rome abandoned to orgies, the worship of film stars and the marketing of religion.
Scenes such as those featuring a statue of Christ flying above the city suspended from a helicopter, or Anita Ekberg dancing in the Trevi Fountain with a kitten on her head, have entered the mythology of the era.
His next film, 8 1/2 (1963), is widely reckoned his masterpiece. The conventional explanation of the cryptic title is that the director's seven completed films and assorted cinematic oddments added up to a little over eight films in all – but Fellini told one interviewer that the title referred to the age at which he lost his virginity.
The film concerned the efforts of a director lionised as a genius (Mastroianni as Fellini's alter ego) to complete his latest work. Its heavy use of symbolism and confusion of fantasy and reality became hallmarks of Fellini's later style.
He increasingly favoured material with possibilities for visual extravagance, as in Satyricon (1967) – a muddled portrayal of sexual decadence in ancient Rome, loosely based on the novel by Petronius.
Sometimes he completely abandoned the exterior world for one of his own imagining, as in Fellini's Roma (1972), a formless ramble around a surreal version of his adopted city.
– Federico Fellini, obituary, Daily Telegraph, 1 Nov. 1993.
The following interview with Bert Cardullo took place in Milan, Italy, during the summer of 1986, not long after the release of Ginger and Fred.
BERT CARDULLO: Signor Fellini, tell me a little about your background and your first film job.
FEDERICO FELLINI: I reached the cinema through screenplays, and these through my collaboration on humorous publications—Marc’ Aurelio especially—for which I wrote stories and columns in addition to drawing cartoons. If, one day in 1944, Roberto Rossellini hadn’t invited me to collaborate on the screenplay of Rome, Open City, I would never even have considered the cinema as a profession. Rossellini helped me go from a foggy, apathetic period in my life to the stage of cinema. It was an im- portant encounter but more in the sense of my future destiny than in the sense of influence. As far as I’m concerned, Rossellini’s was an Adamlike paternity; he is a kind of forefather from whom many of my generation descend. Let’s just say I was open to this particular endeavor, and he ap- peared at the right time to guide me into it. But I wasn’t thinking of becoming a director at this juncture. I felt I lacked the director’s propensity to be tyrannically overpowering, coherent and fussy, hardworking, and— most important—authoritative on every subject: all endowments missing from my temperament. The conviction that I could direct a film came later, when I was directly involved on one and could no longer pull out.
After having written a number of screenplays for Rossellini, Pietro Germi, and Alberto Lattuada, I wrote a story called Variety Lights. It contained my recollections of when I toured Italy with a variety troupe. Some of those memories were true, others invented. Two of us directed the film: Lattuada and myself. He said “camera,” “action,” “cut,” “everyone out,” “silence,” etc. And I stood by his side in a rather comfortable yet irresponsible position. The same year, 1950, I wrote a story called The White Sheik together with Tullio Pinelli. Michelangelo Antonioni was supposed to direct the film, but he didn’t like the screenplay, so Luigi Rovere—the producer—told me to film it. I can therefore unequivocally state that I never decided to be a director. Rovere’s rather reckless faith induced me to become one.
The vocation itself was altogether rather mysterious to me. As I said, my temperament led me elsewhere. Even today, when a film is finished, I find myself wondering how the devil I could have been so active, gotten so many people into motion, made a thousand decisions a day, said “yes” to this and “no” to that, and at the same time not have fallen madly in love with all those beautiful women that actresses are.
BC: Apart from women, how do you find inspiration in our mediocre times? Or perhaps you don’t find that we are constantly surrounded by mediocrity.
FF: No, it’s a barbaric era all right. People say this is an era of transition, but that’s true of every period. Certainly we have no more myths left. The Christian myth doesn’t seem to be able to help humanity anymore. So, we’re waiting for a new myth to comfort us. But which one? Nonetheless, it’s very interesting to live at a time like this. We must accept the time in which we live. We have no choice. Having said that, I feel that my mission in life, my vocation if you will, is to be a witness; and if your life consists of such testimony, you have to accept what you witness. Sure, you can be nostalgic about the past and how great it was, and you can lament the erosion of values, but there’s no point in doing that. From a generational point of view, I’m aware that there’s a certain regret about things past, but I personally try to live with the confidence that the future will assimilate the past. The past will transform itself into the future, so in a sense it will be relived—not in regret, but as part and parcel of the world to come.
BC: Does this vision of yours have to do with your looking into an interior reality rather than an exterior one? Are the dreams and fantasies of which an interior reality consists the basis of your inspiration?
FF: I don’t dwell too much on what it is that inspires me. Instead I have to be in touch with my delusions, my discomforts, and my fears; they provide me the material with which I work. I make a bundle of all these, along with my disasters, my voids, and my chasms, and I try to observe them with sanity, in a conciliatory manner.
BC: What are you afraid of, if I may ask?
FF: I’m afraid of solitude, of the gap between action and observation in which solitude dwells. That’s a reflection on my existence, in which I attempt to act without being swept away by the action, so as to be able to bear witness at the same time. I fear losing my spontaneity precisely because of such testimony or witnessing, because of my habit of con- stantly analyzing and commenting. I also fear old age, madness, decline. I fear not being able to make love ten times a day...
BC: Do you make films because solitude ranks high among your fears?
FF: Making films for me is not just a creative outlet but an existential expression. I also write and paint in isolation, in an ascetic manner. Perhaps my character is too hard, too severe. The cinema itself is a miracle, though, because you can live life just as you tell it. It’s very stimulating. For my temperament and sensibility, this correlation between daily life and the life I create on screen is fantastic. Creative people live in a very vague territory, where what we call “reality” and “fantasy” are disjointed— where one interferes with the other. They both become one and the same thing. In sum, I enjoy telling stories with an inextricable mixture of sincerity and invention, as well as a desire to astound, to shamelessly confess and absolve myself, to be liked, to interest, to moralize, to be a prophet, witness, clown . . . to make people laugh and to move them. Are any other motives necessary?
BC: Not really! Let’s talk now about the description of your early films as socially realistic, while your later ones are described as more hallucinatory.
FF: You could call hallucination a “deeper reality.” Critics have a need to categorize and classify. I don’t see it that way. I detest the world of labels, the world that confuses the label with the thing labeled. I just do what I have to do. Realism is a bad word, in any event. In a sense, everything is realistic. I see no line between the imaginary and the real; I see much reality in the imaginary.
Fellini's next work, I Vitelloni (1953), a study of five small-town layabouts with variously frustrated dreams of escape, achieved greater critical success. It signalled the beginning of his departure from neo-realism, and of a more overtly autobiographical tone.
The contract between a coarse sexuality and a cerebral innocence provided the central conflict of La Strada (1954), which some critics have called "the first road movie". Featuring Giulietta Masina as a brutalised waif rescued from a travelling circus by Anthony Quinn (who buys her for a plate of pasta), it brought Fellini his first Oscar.
Il Bidone (1955) and Notti di Cabiria (1957) also contrasted material corruption with innocence. In the latter Masina's superb performance as a "tart with a heart" made up for a certain waywardness of construction.
Fellini's international reputation was established with La Dolce Vita (1960). An extravagant and sprawling satire on the decadence of the international beau monde, it followed a womanising journalist (Mastroianni) around a Rome abandoned to orgies, the worship of film stars and the marketing of religion.
Scenes such as those featuring a statue of Christ flying above the city suspended from a helicopter, or Anita Ekberg dancing in the Trevi Fountain with a kitten on her head, have entered the mythology of the era.
His next film, 8 1/2 (1963), is widely reckoned his masterpiece. The conventional explanation of the cryptic title is that the director's seven completed films and assorted cinematic oddments added up to a little over eight films in all – but Fellini told one interviewer that the title referred to the age at which he lost his virginity.
The film concerned the efforts of a director lionised as a genius (Mastroianni as Fellini's alter ego) to complete his latest work. Its heavy use of symbolism and confusion of fantasy and reality became hallmarks of Fellini's later style.
He increasingly favoured material with possibilities for visual extravagance, as in Satyricon (1967) – a muddled portrayal of sexual decadence in ancient Rome, loosely based on the novel by Petronius.
Sometimes he completely abandoned the exterior world for one of his own imagining, as in Fellini's Roma (1972), a formless ramble around a surreal version of his adopted city.
– Federico Fellini, obituary, Daily Telegraph, 1 Nov. 1993.
The following interview with Bert Cardullo took place in Milan, Italy, during the summer of 1986, not long after the release of Ginger and Fred.
BERT CARDULLO: Signor Fellini, tell me a little about your background and your first film job.
FEDERICO FELLINI: I reached the cinema through screenplays, and these through my collaboration on humorous publications—Marc’ Aurelio especially—for which I wrote stories and columns in addition to drawing cartoons. If, one day in 1944, Roberto Rossellini hadn’t invited me to collaborate on the screenplay of Rome, Open City, I would never even have considered the cinema as a profession. Rossellini helped me go from a foggy, apathetic period in my life to the stage of cinema. It was an im- portant encounter but more in the sense of my future destiny than in the sense of influence. As far as I’m concerned, Rossellini’s was an Adamlike paternity; he is a kind of forefather from whom many of my generation descend. Let’s just say I was open to this particular endeavor, and he ap- peared at the right time to guide me into it. But I wasn’t thinking of becoming a director at this juncture. I felt I lacked the director’s propensity to be tyrannically overpowering, coherent and fussy, hardworking, and— most important—authoritative on every subject: all endowments missing from my temperament. The conviction that I could direct a film came later, when I was directly involved on one and could no longer pull out.
After having written a number of screenplays for Rossellini, Pietro Germi, and Alberto Lattuada, I wrote a story called Variety Lights. It contained my recollections of when I toured Italy with a variety troupe. Some of those memories were true, others invented. Two of us directed the film: Lattuada and myself. He said “camera,” “action,” “cut,” “everyone out,” “silence,” etc. And I stood by his side in a rather comfortable yet irresponsible position. The same year, 1950, I wrote a story called The White Sheik together with Tullio Pinelli. Michelangelo Antonioni was supposed to direct the film, but he didn’t like the screenplay, so Luigi Rovere—the producer—told me to film it. I can therefore unequivocally state that I never decided to be a director. Rovere’s rather reckless faith induced me to become one.
The vocation itself was altogether rather mysterious to me. As I said, my temperament led me elsewhere. Even today, when a film is finished, I find myself wondering how the devil I could have been so active, gotten so many people into motion, made a thousand decisions a day, said “yes” to this and “no” to that, and at the same time not have fallen madly in love with all those beautiful women that actresses are.
BC: Apart from women, how do you find inspiration in our mediocre times? Or perhaps you don’t find that we are constantly surrounded by mediocrity.
FF: No, it’s a barbaric era all right. People say this is an era of transition, but that’s true of every period. Certainly we have no more myths left. The Christian myth doesn’t seem to be able to help humanity anymore. So, we’re waiting for a new myth to comfort us. But which one? Nonetheless, it’s very interesting to live at a time like this. We must accept the time in which we live. We have no choice. Having said that, I feel that my mission in life, my vocation if you will, is to be a witness; and if your life consists of such testimony, you have to accept what you witness. Sure, you can be nostalgic about the past and how great it was, and you can lament the erosion of values, but there’s no point in doing that. From a generational point of view, I’m aware that there’s a certain regret about things past, but I personally try to live with the confidence that the future will assimilate the past. The past will transform itself into the future, so in a sense it will be relived—not in regret, but as part and parcel of the world to come.
BC: Does this vision of yours have to do with your looking into an interior reality rather than an exterior one? Are the dreams and fantasies of which an interior reality consists the basis of your inspiration?
FF: I don’t dwell too much on what it is that inspires me. Instead I have to be in touch with my delusions, my discomforts, and my fears; they provide me the material with which I work. I make a bundle of all these, along with my disasters, my voids, and my chasms, and I try to observe them with sanity, in a conciliatory manner.
BC: What are you afraid of, if I may ask?
FF: I’m afraid of solitude, of the gap between action and observation in which solitude dwells. That’s a reflection on my existence, in which I attempt to act without being swept away by the action, so as to be able to bear witness at the same time. I fear losing my spontaneity precisely because of such testimony or witnessing, because of my habit of con- stantly analyzing and commenting. I also fear old age, madness, decline. I fear not being able to make love ten times a day...
BC: Do you make films because solitude ranks high among your fears?
FF: Making films for me is not just a creative outlet but an existential expression. I also write and paint in isolation, in an ascetic manner. Perhaps my character is too hard, too severe. The cinema itself is a miracle, though, because you can live life just as you tell it. It’s very stimulating. For my temperament and sensibility, this correlation between daily life and the life I create on screen is fantastic. Creative people live in a very vague territory, where what we call “reality” and “fantasy” are disjointed— where one interferes with the other. They both become one and the same thing. In sum, I enjoy telling stories with an inextricable mixture of sincerity and invention, as well as a desire to astound, to shamelessly confess and absolve myself, to be liked, to interest, to moralize, to be a prophet, witness, clown . . . to make people laugh and to move them. Are any other motives necessary?
BC: Not really! Let’s talk now about the description of your early films as socially realistic, while your later ones are described as more hallucinatory.
FF: You could call hallucination a “deeper reality.” Critics have a need to categorize and classify. I don’t see it that way. I detest the world of labels, the world that confuses the label with the thing labeled. I just do what I have to do. Realism is a bad word, in any event. In a sense, everything is realistic. I see no line between the imaginary and the real; I see much reality in the imaginary.
