"It was strangely fitting that the digitally remastered re-release of La Dolce Vita earlier this year was promoted, not by the usual critical garlands and reappraisals, but with a kiss and tell article in The Guardian by Germaine Greer in which she revealed hitherto untold liaison with the great maestro. Fellini always said that his films weren't autobiographical; it was simply that he had invented his own life purely for the screen. And if his preference for the soundstages of Cinecitta might sometimes make his films seem a little stagey, it is only because each of his films is set, ultimately, in the theatre of his imagination. And what a very peculiar place that turns out to be..."
I think "pervert" is a little too simplistic and obvious of a word to encompass Fellini's tastes and techniques, but the article is interesting nevertheless.
]]>Federico Fellini (1920-1993) began working as a screenwriter on such Italian neorealist landmark films as Rome, Open City and Paisà, but by the time he took the director's chair in 1950, he was starting to question the genre's principles and its focus on socioeconomics. In attempt to make a stylistic departure, Fellini communicates his characters' hopes, dreams, fears, passions, and inspirations. The series includes I vitelloni, La strada, and Nights of Cabiria, three of Fellini's earlier efforts, which demonstrate his interest in a character's emotions. With 8 ½, Fellini abandons any interest in reality, creating his own personal fantasy world.
Tickets and times are available on their website.
]]>"This is the podcast dedicated to The Criterion Collection. Rudie Obias, Ryan Gallagher & James McCormick discuss Criterion News & Rumors and Criterion New Releases, they also analyze, discuss & highlight CC #004, Federico Fellini's 1973 film, Amarcord, along with "Variations On a Theme"."
According to IMF, the original producers of the film assigned the rights in 1962 to Cinemat, S.A., which transferred rights in 1980 to Hor A.G., which transferred rights the following year to Oriental Films, which transferred rights in 1998 to Cinestampa, which then transferred rights in 2001 to IMF. A year later, IMF filed a registration with the US Copyright Office on a restoration copy of the Fellini film.
More here.
]]>Within hours I was writing to Fellini that he couldn't reduce the Marquise du Chatelet to a huge-breasted nurse for the senile Rousseau. His response was to come to see me in my tiny house in the Montanare di Cortona. A big blue Mercedes appeared at the top of my steep, rocky road. Fellini got out and calmly sent the driver away till next morning. We talked all afternoon about the concept of the film, to some purpose, I flatter myself, even though Federico continued to watch me as I spoke, even whistling between his teeth from time to time, as if he wasn't listening. I would have made supper, but Federico was even more fussy and valetudinarian than your average Italian man, and insisted on making himself risotto bianco with only a single leaf of basil to flavour it. He was already on beta-blockers and drank no wine at all. There was never any question of his sleeping anywhere but in the big bed with me, but he was horrified to find that I slept with all the windows open. He changed into the brown silk pyjamas with cream piping that he had brought in his little overnight bag, and hung his clothes up carefully for the next day. Every couple of hours he made a quick call to his wife Giulietta, back home in their apartment on the Via Margutta.
This is interesting stuff - hysterical that Fellini cooked for himself! There is more here from the Guardian.
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Orchestra Rehearsal (1978) is the last collaboration between Fellini and his long time composer colleague Nino Rota and it tells the tale of an Italian orchestra that goes on strike against their conductor. ]]>
Fellini's Casanova (1976) is Fellini's depiction of the life of Giacomo Casanova, the 18th century Venetian adventurer and world-famous lover. The respectable life he aspires to is constantly in contrast to the more basic urges and sexual situations in which he continues to find himself.]]>
Federico Fellini's classic depiction of decadent American starlets and photographers changed cinema forever. Now the journalist who chronicled 1950s life on Rome's glitzy Via Veneto and briefed Fellini for his film has decided to give his own definitive account of the era. As far as Ciuffa, now 77, is concerned, 50 years later he is setting the record straight, by writing La Dolce Vita, Minute by Minute. "The real Dolce Vita started in Rome years before the cafes opened on Via Veneto and had as much to do with mysterious deaths, drug abuse and debauched Roman aristocrats as with Hollywood," he said. While photographers such as Tazio Secchiaroli have long been seen as inspirations for Paparazzo, the character in La Dolce Vita who gave celebrity-chasing photographers their name, Ciuffa claims he provided source material for the cynical columnist-about-town, played to laconic perfection by Marcello Mastroianni.
Read it all.
]]>ROCKVILLE, Md. -- Felice Quinto, a renowned celebrity photographer and the likely model for the character Paparazzo in Federico Fellini's 1960 film "La Dolce Vita," has died. He was 80.]]>Quinto died of pneumonia on Jan. 16 in Rockville, his wife, Geraldine Quinto, said Monday.
Quinto often was referred to as the "king of the paparazzi" -- a term derived from the character in "La Dolce Vita" -- and he pioneered some of the aggressive tactics that celebrity photographers use to this day.
He would hide in bushes, wear disguises and zip around Rome on a motorcycle, taking photos that appeared in gossip publications around the world.
Quinto was born in Milan in 1929 and befriended Fellini while living in Rome in the 1950s. According to his wife, Fellini asked Quinto to play a photographer in "La Dolce Vita," but he declined because he was making more money taking pictures. He briefly appeared in the film as a bystander.
"By the time Fellini came out with his movie, it was already about four years that I had been doing photography," Quinto told the Dallas Morning News in 1985.
In 1960, Quinto snapped a picture of actress Anita Ekberg -- who appeared in "La Dolce Vita" as a starlet hounded by Paparazzo -- kissing a married movie producer at a cafe in Rome.
Quinto told ABC News in 1997 that Ekberg shot arrows at him as he stood outside her house at 5 a.m. One nicked Quinto's hand, and another struck a photographer's car.
Amarcord (1973) loosely translated means "I remember" and is a coming of age comedy about life in a small seaside town during the Fascist period of the 1930s similar to the one where Fellini was born and raised.]]>
Cast| Titta's mother | Pupella Maggio |
| Titta's father | Armando Brancia |
| Gradisca | Magali Noël |
| Uncle Teo/td> | Ciccio Ingrassia |
| Uncle Lallo | Nando Orfei |
| The lawyer | Luigi Rossi |
| Titta | Bruno Zanin |
| Don Baravelli | Gianfilippo Carcano |
| Volpina | Josiane Tanzilli |
| The tobacconist | Maria Antonietta Beluzzi |
| Titta's grandfather | Giuseppe Ianigro |
Credits
| Director | Federico Fellini |
| Screenplay | Federico Fellini and Tonino Guerra |
| Cinematography | Giuseppe Rotunno |
| Producer | Franco Cristaldi |
| Editing | Ruggero Mastroianni |
| Music | Nino Rota |
Fellini's Roma
(1972 ) is an episodic collection of Fellini's views and opinions of Rome. It blends visions that are somewhat autobiographical including scenes of Fellini's experience as a newcomer to the city with the present day city.]]>
Fellini-Satyricon (1969) is loosely taken from a book written by Gaius Petronius from first century Rome about two student friends who argue over another boy. Only portions of the book have survived and the movie reflects this fragmented state.Federico Fellini, revered in Italy as a cine matic great and cited abroad as a key influence on Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen, is at the centre of a row in his home town of Rimini.]]>Celebrations of the 90th anniversary of the director's birth have been marred by a battle over his legacy between his niece and the foundation set up in his name to promote such classics as La Dolce Vita.
Francesca Fabbri Fellini, the daughter of Fellini's sister, has stormed off the board of the foundation, claiming that she was frozen out and has taken with her Fellini's personal library and his collection of Oscars.
A tale of money, blood ties and show business, the battle of Rimini has upstaged the opening in Italy of Nine, the musical film starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Nicole Kidman inspired by Fellini's 1963 masterpiece 8½.
Despite rumours in Rimini that she craved the limelight at the foundation, Fabbri Fellini said the truth was she has been snubbed. "When the Fellini Prize was awarded to Sidney Lumet in November, no one bothered to introduce me to the American director," she told the Italian newspaper Il Resto Del Carlino. "I had to chase him down the corridor of the Grand Hotel in Rimini at the end of the evening to meet him."
It is great to see people both viewing and thinking about and discussing these films in 2010.
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