Fellini, Federico

(1920–1993)

   Born in the provincial seaside town of Rimini, Federico Fellini began his career in the cinema as a writer for popular comedians in the 1940s. His first solo film was Lo sceicco bianco (The White Sheik, 1953), which was followed by I vitelloni (The Spivs, 1953). This latter film won the Silver Lion at Venice and affirmed Fellini’s critical reputation. His next film, however, established Fellini as one of the best directors in the world. La Strada (The Road, 1954), which starred Fellini’s wife, Giulietta Masina, is a film of almost unbearable pathos. It is the story of a simple peasant girl called Gelsomina (Masina) who is sold to a circus strongman called Zampano (Anthony Quinn). Zampano’s brutish behavior drives Gelsomina to her death, at which point Zampano realizes the extent of his attachment for her. He realizes, in short, what it is to be fully human. Too poetic for Italy’s neorealist critics, the film won more than 50 awards, including the Silver Lion and the Oscar for best foreign picture.

   La Strada was the beginning of Fellini’s creative peak. Over the next eight years he enjoyed an astonishing burst of sustained creativity. La notti di Cabiria (The Nights of Cabiria, 1956), a touching film about a prostitute, was followed by La dolce vita (The High Life, 1959), which was both an ironic comment on high life during the Italian economic miracleand, more deeply, a meditation on how human beings should live. Otto e mezzo (Eight and a Half, 1962) is an equally complex film about a film director wrestling with his conscience. The latter two films provided Marcello Mastroianniwith two of his greatest roles.

   It is widely agreed that Fellini’s work fell off after the early 1960s. His films became uneven, repetitive, and overly grotesque, although this does not mean that they are unrelieved failures. The surreal brilliance of the ecclesiastical fashion show, complete with roller-skating priests, saves the otherwise somewhat episodic Fellini’s Roma (1972). The autobiographical and profoundly touching Amarcord (1973) won the Oscar for best foreign picture. Fellini’s death in November 1993 was marked by national mourning: Hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets of Rome to pay their last respects to the most poetic Italian artist of any genre in the postwar years.

   See also Cinema.