Federico Fellini (1920 -1993)
Related: artfilm - director - highbrow culture - Italian cinema
Films: La Dolce Vita (1960) - Histoires extraordinaires (1968)
The White Sheik (1952) -Federico Fellini [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
8½ (1963)
Juliet of the Spirits (1965) - Federico Fellini
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Profile
Federico Fellini (January 20, 1920 – October 31, 1993) was one of the most influential and widely revered Italian film-makers of the 20th century and is considered to be one of the finest film directors of all time. A unique combination of memory, dreams, fantasy, and desire, Fellini's films are deeply personal visions of society, often portraying people at their most bizarre. The term "felliniesque" is used to describe any scene in which a hallucinatory image invades an otherwise ordinary situation. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federico_Fellini [Jan 2007]
Juliet of the Spirits (1965) - Federico Fellini
Giulietta degli Spiriti is a 1965 fantasy/drama film about a Italian housewife, directed by Federico Fellini.
Giulietta (played by Fellini's wife, Giulietta Masina ) explores both her subconscious and the odd lifestyle of her sexy neighbor, Suzy, to help her deal with her mundane life as well as her philandering husband (Mario Pisu). As she spends more time in touch with her desires, she slowly gains more independence. This is Fellini's first color film. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giulietta_degli_Spiriti [Aug 2005]
see also: 1965 - film - Federico Fellini
The White Sheik (1952) -Federico Fellini
Amazon.com
Federico Fellini's solo-directing debut seems like a pure excursion into the director's extravagant imagination, but its comedy, alternately ethereal and tumultuous, is grounded in reality. A honeymooning clerk (Leopoldo Trieste) and his big-eyed bride (Brunella Bovo) make a package-tour pilgrimage to Rome to have an audience with the Pope. There are bureaucratic delays, and the couple become separated. The still-virginal husband falls in with prostitutes (including Giulietta Masina's Cabiria, later canonized in Fellini's most enduring masterpiece). The bride finds herself in the world of her favorite fantasy-figure, "the White Sheik"--the hero of the photographic comic books, or fumetti, eagerly followed by the Italian populace. It was Michelangelo Antonioni who proposed the fumetti as a ripe film subject, and the film's central episode--dominated by Alberto Sordi's preposterous fantasy-figure and the Mack Sennett-like production methods of the fumetti company--is the first tour de force of Fellini's spectacular career. --Richard T. Jameson --This text refers to the VHS Tape edition.
Description
Ivan Cavalli (Leopoldo Trieste) brings his new wife Wanda (Brunella Bovo) to Rome on the least romantic honeymoon in history—a rigid schedule of family meetings and audiences with the Pope. But Wanda, dreaming of the dashing hero of a photo-strip cartoon, drifts off in search of the White Sheik, thus setting off a slapstick comedy worthy of Chaplin. The style and themes which made Federico Fellini world famous are already apparent in this charming comedy (his first solo directorial effort), featuring such long-time collaborators as his wife, actress Giulietta Masina, and composer Nino Rota. --via Amazon.com
Satyricon (1969) - Federico Fellini
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Satyricon (1969) - Federico Fellini [Amazon.com]
Trippy is as trippy does, even when you're talking about a movie set in ancient Rome. This 1969 Fellini opus was among the most visually arresting entries in a year when the psychedelic experience was trying to claw its way into every movie coming down the pike. But Fellini, in telling a negligible story about two young men tasting the various pleasures of Nero's hedonistic and priapic reign, aimed for images that jarred as well as seduced. He found humor in freakishness, contrasting beauty and ugliness while effortlessly passing judgment on the emptiness of a life devoted to sensation and personal freedom. More of a fever dream than a linear story, Fellini Satyricon crystallized the director's reputation as a visionary--but may have trapped him into spending the rest of his career (with the exception of Amarcord) trying to top himself in reaching new levels of outrageousness. --Marshall Fine, Amazon.com
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