Federico Fellini – Italian Film Director [01]
Italian film director (Rimini 1920 – Rome 1993). One of the most significant film directors in the history of cinema, which he traversed with traits of unquestionable and exemplary lightness, a great orchestrator of images, visions and narrative rhythms.
He proved to be a master in giving substance to the passion of dreams that invades the cinema screen, where the boundaries of imagination coincide with those of reality without ever being conditioned by it. He was awarded five Oscars: in 1957 for „La strada“ (1954), in 1958 for „Le notti di Cabiria“ (1957), in 1964 for „8 ¹/²“ (1963), in 1976 for „Amarcord“ (1973) and in 1993 with a lifetime achievement Oscar.
Life and works
At first a journalist and humorous cartoonist, then a scriptwriter (with collaborations: „Roma città aperta“, 1945; „Paisà“, 1946; „Senza pietà“, 1947; „In nome della legge“, 1949; „Il mulino del Po“, 1949; „Francesco giullare di Dio“, 1950; „Il cammino della speranza“, 1950; „Il brigante di Tacca del Lupo“, 1952; Europa 51, 1952).
He made his directing debut in 1950 directing, in collaboration with A. Lattuada, „Luci del varietà“. With „Lo sceicco bianco“ (1952), „I vitelloni“ (1953) and above all „La strada“ (1954) and „Il bidone“ (1955), which brought him widespread international success.
Fellini made an original contribution to the development of neo-realism; the unprecedented expressive solutions, dreamlike suggestions and autobiographical obsessions, present in these films, are the first announcement of the formation of that imaginary universe, destined to become proverbial and unmistakable, of which „Le notti di Cabiria“ (1957) would be eloquent testimony, „La dolce vita“ (1959), an unsurpassed chronicle of Italy on the threshold of the 1960s, „8 e ½“ (1963), „Giulietta degli spiriti“ (1965), „Fellini Satyricon“ (1969), „I clowns“ (1970), „Roma“ (1972) and „Amarcord“ (1973), perhaps the apogee of Fellini's autobiographicalism, of his fabulous and revelatory memory: films in which the widespread and ambiguous eroticism and the taste for the marvellous, the persistence of an almost ancestral belonging to the provinces and the attention to changes in society, the inclination to satire and the constant reflection of cinema on itself constitute in equal measure the elements of one of the most coherent and original poetics of contemporary cinema.
With his later works (Federico Fellini's „Il Casanova“, 1976; „Prova d'orchestra“, 1979; „La città delle donne“, 1979; „E la nave va“, 1983; „Ginger and Fred“, 1986; „Intervista“, 1987; „La voce della luna“, 1990), the allegories of the present become more anguished, and the tendency of the narrative towards apologetics and of the style towards a certain mannerism is accentuated.
In 2019 – 2020, on the occasion of the centenary of his birth, the exhibition „Fellini 100. Immortal Genius“, held at Castel Sismondo in Rimini, was dedicated to the director. In 2021, the Fellini Museum was inaugurated in Rimini, divided into three sites, Castel Sismondo, Piazza Malatesta and Palazzo del Fulgor, dedicated to the director. Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1993.
(Source: Treccani, Online Encyclopaedia)