“A man’s film is like a naked man . Nothing can be hidden . I must be truthful in my films .”
“ I am a born liar”
-Federico Fellini
A man in the search of ever-changing , contradictory reality , in search of unpredictable , unrealized thoughts hidden deep within! And for him the medium of expression was of images and lights.
Federico Fellini was born to make films.
Born in Rimini .Italy in 1920, Fellini at a very early age showed interest in sketching and staging puppet shows, call it a preamble to the life story of great filmmaker in the making. To please his parents he enrolled at the University of Rome to study law, though there is no record of him ever attending any classes. In 1939 Fellini's move to join the editorial team of ‘Marc Auretto’-a biweekly humorous magazine as a cartoonist and illustrator can be termed one of the most decisive moments in his life. His work at the magazine brought him in the circle of novelists, writers and scriptwriters. One such instance was interviewing Italy's most popular variety performer Aldo Fabrizi, Fellini who by now was an expert at writing humor was offered an opportunity to write a monologue for Aldo Fabrizi. He also worked as a gags writer for Radio and after meeting Roberto Rossellini, he started writing screenplays ,thus began the career of a film maker who ,without any formal education of film making reconstructed Italian cinema.
Whenever asked about ‘influences’ Fellini said that the experiences of life influenced him ,so did the art ,people and the world around. He names Chaplin, Buster Keaton , Laurel And Hardy , The Max Brothers and Pietro Germy as his ideals
He co-produced and co-directed ‘The Variety Lights’ along with Alberto Lattueda in 1950.And his first solo was made in 1952 ‘The white sheik’. .
Fellini’s early work shows the strong influence of Italian Neo-Realism. Italian neo realistic films were content with difficult economic and moral conditions of post world war 2 Italy ,reflecting the changes.
Later Fellini widened the scope of neo realism, for him it was a way of looking at reality without prejudices , a style which stressed on documentation and detached viewpoint.
Fellini was always fascinated by ‘motion’. Since life is always moving and nothing is stagnant,
a struggle is created , while coping up with constant moving. This leads to one’s insecurities and multiple truths and ‘realities’. Fellini blended this stressful reality with fantasy, A style now known as ‘Felliniesque’.
His films show the elements of reality and fantasy submerged and intermingled.
Later in his career ,Fellini was drawn more towards psychological neo realism. Hence we see more use of disturbing images , grotesque characterization and ambiguity.
In la strada ,the fool says to Gelsomina, “everything in this world is useful for something. Even this little stone has a purpose.” In the similar way In Fellini’s films , the properties, locations, objects , lights are used for a ‘purpose’ of emphasizing the image, to make it ‘complete’.
His film are about hollowness of life, about breakdown of human communication, about constant loss and the painstaking efforts made to withstand it, about fear of unknown.
Circus , clowns , dreams, Rimini-his hometown ,popular Italian culture , his memories and personal experiences are integral part of Fellini’s films. Hence his films are intense personal ones with autobiographical currents.
Circus is the canvas of his films on which he paints his clown like characters with the paint of imagination and reality.
For him the world is a circus full of clowns. Fellini’s clown stands for suppressed desires, for instincts.
Clown symbolizes the duality and complexity of human nature.
Fellini always found resemblance in the external appearance of dreams and cinema. He used the technique of dream sequences and flashbacks to the perfection in ‘Eight And Half’. Film making became a process of self realization for Fellini as he was influenced by Carl Jung’s theories of psychoanalysis.
From ‘The Variety Lights’ to ‘Amarcord’, Fellini gradually shifted from neo realism to surrealism .
La Strada, La Dolce Vita , Eight and A Half , Clowns ,Amarcord , Nights Of Cabiria, Satyricon are some of his films which are critically acclaimed world wide.
La strada , a film Fellini called as “the complete catalogue of my mythological world” established him as a director class apart and earned him international reputation and honors including Academy Award for best foreign film in 1954.Its about a journey taken in search of happiness and meanwhile reveals the different kinds of human beings with their own approaches towards life. The film advocates to value the importance of innocence.
Fellini depicted a picture of Italy’s fragmented and chaotic life, subtly gave the glimpses of the class conflict in The Nights Of Cabiria. The film is about Cabiria , a prostitute who has experienced all kinds of humiliations while looking for true love , is yet another masterpiece of Picaresque tradition
La Dolce Vita , a film which gave birth to the term ‘Paparazzi’ shows elements of neo realistic tradition as well as phantasmorgic fantasy. Its a distant view towards contemporary Italian society from a journalist’s perspective .
Eight And A half- , a self referential title referring to the no. of films Fellini directed till then, is one of the most influential film dominated by surrealism .Its a story of a film director who no longer knows
What film he wanted to make. A transitional film in his artistic career , also the final film in black and white ,Eight And half is marked with comic absurdity and hyperbolic imagery .
Amarcord is a semi auto biographical film that takes viewers to the tour of Fellini’s youth ,of historical facts and Fascist Italy ,It’s a treasure of different kinds of humor .It portraits characters who fail to outgrow their sexual fantasies.
Based on petronius’s satyricon ,Fellini wrote and directed Satyricon in 1970 which is considered to be most phatasmagorical of all his films. Fellini had described this venture as ‘ science fiction of the past’. The film is unusually sensuous one.
Fellini ‘s films always keep on asking questions, searching possibilities .His characters are always fighting with inner self and world surrounding them.
The way Fellini portrayed woman characters was a rather mysterious one .He was always curious to know the feeling of ‘being woman’. He once said ‘I think even cinema, the play of lights and shadow , is a woman’.
Fellini ‘s films has a language of their own, a language which is beyond words .He always preferred cinema as a medium of images and lights than of dialogues.
Fellini used every department required to enhance the impact of film , the music , the art, the costumes , make up , the sound ,with an aesthetic sense , like a poetic device to make the image come true n complete.
A maker of such masterpieces and winner of highest honors in film making like Oscar and Golden Glob said “I always direct the same film. I cant distinguish one from another”.
In Fellini On Fellini ,He wrote “one day I noticed that I was a director. It was the first day of shooting of ‘ The White Sheik’”
Fellini was born to make films.
