Il Maestro....
Rimini
I am in the Grand Hotel,Rimini . The foyer is bigger than my house and has a
polished marble floor. A classic Italian
marble-topped table supports an extravagant display of flowers; marble columns
with gilded capitals support a stuccoed ceiling from which hang dazzling
chandeliers. I wait a little, half
hoping that Gradisca, the beautiful courtesan from Amacord, will descend the stairs and join me for a Martini on
the terrace…. I wait, thinking perhaps
that Federico and Giulietta might invite me to
dinner….. I am in the Grand Hotel, Rimini .
I am in the garden of the Grand Hotel,Rimini . Carefully pruned palms and stately pines rise
from the neatly tidy lawns.
è la curiosità che mi fa svegliare alla mattina (it’s curiousity that gets me up in the morning)
Fellini also adds subtle references to his own influences, such as the elaborate scene when Guido’s mistress arrives at the Spa. An enormous train fills the screen with Guido anxiously waiting on the left of the picture. Various people descend from carriages, but not Carla (Sandra Milo), so Guido starts to turn away, in relief; then the engine reverses away, revealing Carla, who has got off on the wrong side.
Exactly as Buster Keaton does at River Junction when his father is waiting to meet him early in Steamboat Bill Jnr…….
And though Sergio Leone may have been referencing Keaton rather than (as well as?) Fellini in Once Upon a Time in the West (also with Claudia Cardinale) the station scene when Harmonica (Charles Bronson) arrives employs exactly the same trick…..
Fellini's imaginative invention is also discovered in the ending of 8½. As seen today the entire cast descend the stairway from the rocket launchpad, and then dance around the circus ring, with Guido directing them and then joining in. Many of the cast are dressed in white. Fellini shot an alternative ending, which was never used and which has been lost. In that ending the entire cast, all dressed in white, were in a railway carriage, which eventually entered a tunnel. Apparently this was discarded as it was too pessimistic, with the suggestion of Guido's suicide (though Fellini kept the scene with the pistol under the table.....) What makes the ending more intriguing, however, is that a version of the stairway and circus ring ending was shot earlier for the original cinema trailer, and in this version the cast were dressed in dark clothes. Somewhere in his imagination the suggestion of death, represented by the white clothed cast disappearing into the tunnel, has merged with the ongoing dance of life round the circus ring, as the white clothes are introduced. Guido's parents (representing Fellini's) appear in both versions.....
Although Fellini continued to dazzle, and in some respects grew more fantastic, few of his works in the last thirty years of his life come close to the brilliance of 8½. I Clowns (1970), Roma (1972) and Amarcord (1973) are all wonderful in many ways (the ecclesiastical fashion show in Roma, the family day out in Amarcord and the final scene of I Clowns are superb examples of not only Fellini’s imagination but also his cinematic range) but from Casanova (1976) on I think it fair to say that his star was waning.
When you shoot a film, you don't really know what it is about
And so ended a career of 25 films, four Oscars, and countless other awards.
It comes back to me in the Grand Hotel,Rimini , and on the sands of the empty
beach. It is sad that the photographic
kiosk that stands forlornly by the park in his name should be defaced, but
perhaps the mischievous scribbles were left by Titta, Patacca and Teo, skipping
school on their way to dance on the beach….
The Grand Hotel itself is a memorial to Fellini, with its film set qualities and its ability to stir the imagination, to have visions of what it might be like to be rich, or famous, or powerful….
And then I go down to the beach, to watch La Rumba….. Life is a party – let’s live it together!
Federico Fellini
I am in the Grand Hotel,
I am on the terrace of the Grand
Hotel, Rimini . The umbrellas are furled, the tables are
clear. I could sit anywhere.
I am in the garden of the Grand Hotel,
I am in the street outside the
Grand Hotel, Rimini . There is a huge camera. It has Fellinia stamped on it, and graffiti
on the lens. It was given to the Comune
di Rimini by Laura Renzi and Ario Rastelli in 2002. The giant camera was built
in 1948 by photographer Elio Guerra as a film processing boutique, and it
passed to i signori Renzi e Rastelli in the mid 70s. It now stands rather
forlornly at the edge of the parco federico fellini, where you
may not ride horses, hunt wildfowl, nor camp.
I am on the beach at Rimini . Images from I Vitelloni and Amarcord
fill my imagination, though the beach is quasi
vuota……
 |
Il Tempio Malatestiana, Rimini |
nulla si sa, tutto s'immagina (one knows nothing, one imagines everything)
Fellini was born in Rimini , on the Adriatic coast, in 1923, but moved south,
first to Florence and then to Rome , after his strictly regimented
schooling. As an artist, cartoonist, and
screenwriter, he entered the film world, and worked (as scriptwriter) with
Roberto Rossellini on Roma città aperta, in 1945.
Federico Fellini died in 1993,
aged 73, but his influence is still felt in Italian (and world) cinema. Recent films such as Paolo Sorrentino’s La
Grande Bellezza and Gianfranco Rosi’s Sacro GRA are bearers of
his imaginative DNA, even though technical aspects of the cinema have changed
greatly in the last fifty years.
Sono un
artigiano che non ha niente da dire, ma sa come dirlo…. (I
am an artisan with nothing to say, though I know how to say it…..)
Fellini’s directorial debut was Lo
Sceicco Bianco (The White Sheik)
in 1952. For the record Michaelangelo
Antonioni was the original screenwriter and Nino Rota (who became Fellini’s
lifelong collaborator) wrote the musical score.
In this film, the part of Cabiria, a prostitute, is played by Giulietta Masina,
who he had married in 1943. They had met
when she was chosen to play a character in a radio comedy scripted by
Fellini. Federico died on the day after
their fiftieth wedding anniversary; Giulietta joined him less than five months later.
è la curiosità che mi fa svegliare alla mattina (it’s curiousity that gets me up in the morning)
Fellini followed Lo
Sceicco Bianco with I Vitelloni which explores the lives
of a group of young men (vitelloni are immature bulls) in Rimini, Fellini’s
home town. This was followed by La
Strada in which Giulietta plays Gelsomina, sold by her mother to
travelling strong man Zampanò (played by Anthony Quinn).
This film was the first to win an Oscar for the Best Foreign Language Film. A year later, also with Giulietta, he directed Il Bidone, and then, in 1957, Le Notti di Cabiria, (script Romanised by Pier Paolo Pasolini) for which Fellini also won an Oscar (and Giulietta won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival).
This film was the first to win an Oscar for the Best Foreign Language Film. A year later, also with Giulietta, he directed Il Bidone, and then, in 1957, Le Notti di Cabiria, (script Romanised by Pier Paolo Pasolini) for which Fellini also won an Oscar (and Giulietta won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival).
In ten years Fellini had
progressed from script writer to Academy Award winning director, and had
produced films that are still fêted as amongst the best ever. What was to come,
however, was to surprise the world, breaking away from the neorealist world
that had itself been an earthquake in cinema history.
 |
I Clowns |
The visionary is the only true realist.
In 1960 La Dolce Vita broke box
office records, and led to Fellini being spat on in public and denounced by the
Vatican . More famous now for having given us the term paparazzi (journalist Marcello
Mastroianni’s photographer friend is named Paparazzo in the film) and for
Anita Ekberg’s shower in the Trevi Fountain, the film does not shock as much
today as it would have fifty-five years ago, but it is still a brilliant piece
of imagination, and certain themes, such as the languid amorality of the
super-rich, the susceptibility of some to religious excitement, and the
intrusive hunger of the press are not unknown to the contemporary world….. It is still shocking, too, as when Steiner
(Alain Cuny), the intellectual that Rubini (Mastroianni) holds in awe, says, Don't
be like me. Salvation doesn't lie within four walls. I'm too serious to be a
dilettante and too much a dabbler to be a professional. Even the most miserable
life is better than a sheltered existence in an organized society where
everything is calculated and perfected…. Not long after this Steiner shoots his two
sleeping children and then himself while his wife is out.
Mastroianni took the lead again,
this time as a film director at a creative impasse, in Fellini’s greatest work,
Otto
e mezzo (8½). Endlessly
inventive, beautifully shot in crisp black and white, and still captivating,
this film was rated tenth in the 2012 Sight and Sound list of the greatest
films of all time (and only 2001, A
Space Odyssey, of the top ten, was made more recently than 8½). There’s a self-knowing impishness about this
picture, with Guido Anselmi (aka Snaporaz - Marcello Mastroannni) being told, Your
sweet naivety is a serious failing.
And towards the end Claudia Cardinale says, You’re such a cheat…. To
which he replies, And there’s no film either.
There’s nothing at all anywhere.
The film is not there to be
interpreted. Fellini was exasperated by
attempts to decipher meaning. It
isn’t a film to be understood, he once said, it’s to be felt…. Cinema is an art form that doesn’t have space
for meditation. The picture is
full of fascinating details, blending seeming reality with dreams and memories,
with superimpositions such as the second dream of bath time in his childhood
home when Guido imagines himself being bathed by all the women he has
known.
Perhaps this fantasy scene shows
us Fellini’s greatest weakness. In 8½
his ideal woman is represented by Claudia Cardinale; in La Dolce Vita she is the
sweet girl from the seaside restaurant who believes that Marcello is
going to teach her to type, and who waves to him across the water at the
end….. Is his attitude to women cynical,
satirical or chauvinist? In life
Giulietta Masina was his muse, based partly on the fact that she made him
laugh (and on her legendary spaghetti al pomodoro)…. I suspect that the scene in Roma
in which he attempts to persuade Anna Magnani to be interviewed late at night
reveals much about his emotional imagination.
Fellini had worked with Anna Magnani in Roma città aperta and he
says that she could be seen as a symbolic
representation of Rome Rome
Fellini also adds subtle references to his own influences, such as the elaborate scene when Guido’s mistress arrives at the Spa. An enormous train fills the screen with Guido anxiously waiting on the left of the picture. Various people descend from carriages, but not Carla (Sandra Milo), so Guido starts to turn away, in relief; then the engine reverses away, revealing Carla, who has got off on the wrong side.
Exactly as Buster Keaton does at River Junction when his father is waiting to meet him early in Steamboat Bill Jnr…….
And though Sergio Leone may have been referencing Keaton rather than (as well as?) Fellini in Once Upon a Time in the West (also with Claudia Cardinale) the station scene when Harmonica (Charles Bronson) arrives employs exactly the same trick…..
 |
Guido's parents being directed in the original trailer |
Fellini's imaginative invention is also discovered in the ending of 8½. As seen today the entire cast descend the stairway from the rocket launchpad, and then dance around the circus ring, with Guido directing them and then joining in. Many of the cast are dressed in white. Fellini shot an alternative ending, which was never used and which has been lost. In that ending the entire cast, all dressed in white, were in a railway carriage, which eventually entered a tunnel. Apparently this was discarded as it was too pessimistic, with the suggestion of Guido's suicide (though Fellini kept the scene with the pistol under the table.....) What makes the ending more intriguing, however, is that a version of the stairway and circus ring ending was shot earlier for the original cinema trailer, and in this version the cast were dressed in dark clothes. Somewhere in his imagination the suggestion of death, represented by the white clothed cast disappearing into the tunnel, has merged with the ongoing dance of life round the circus ring, as the white clothes are introduced. Guido's parents (representing Fellini's) appear in both versions.....
 |
The final version - Guido's parents in white |
Recently digitally remastered
(coinciding with its fiftieth anniversary) the film, which won another Oscar
for Fellini yet again as Best Foreign Language Film, is, in the words of
François Truffaut, complete, simple, beautiful, honest, or, as Les
Cahiers du Cinéma put it, we must all admit that 8½, leaving aside for the moment all
prejudice and reserve, is prodigious. Fantastic liberality, a total absence of
precaution and hypocrisy, absolute dispassionate sincerity, artistic and
financial courage – these are the characteristics of this incredible
undertaking (Pierre Kast).
.jpg)
what
good is giving up my independence, my friends, my roman restaurants, my crazy
Italian people, traffic at rush hour by the coliseum? I would have made money
and lost my joy of life. and that's all filming has been about for me: joy of
life, battle of life, comedy of life, fascination of life. life! life! life!
Although Fellini continued to dazzle, and in some respects grew more fantastic, few of his works in the last thirty years of his life come close to the brilliance of 8½. I Clowns (1970), Roma (1972) and Amarcord (1973) are all wonderful in many ways (the ecclesiastical fashion show in Roma, the family day out in Amarcord and the final scene of I Clowns are superb examples of not only Fellini’s imagination but also his cinematic range) but from Casanova (1976) on I think it fair to say that his star was waning.
Fellini Satyricon (1969)
was perhaps the turning point, when he reached a peak of extravagant invention
with colour and visual creativity. The
“autobiographical” trilogy of the early 70s showed his sense of irony and
humanity, and explored his own childhood and youth, but it could be thought
that his later preoccupation with colour may have sapped his imaginative
strength……
When you shoot a film, you don't really know what it is about
I lived in Fellini’s Rome
in the 70s and 80s. Il Maestro would
emerge from his flat in Via Margutta and take a morning coffee at Bar Canova on
Piazza del Popolo. Friends and acquaintances (Charlie Borromel, John Francis Lane, et al) were appearing regularly in his films, and it seemed as if everyone would queue at Cinecittà when the call went out for extras. My first encounter
with Amarcord was in a cinema d’essai (arthouse cinema) near the Colosseum one
Christmas Day. Two young men in military
uniform smoked continuously in the stalls, the blue trails rising in the lazy
afternoon, the audience (cumulatively of about five) sleepily submerged in
Fellini’s strangely unreal world….
Later I watched as his story unfolded – Orchestra Rehearsal, City
of Women (Snaporaz again), And
the Ship Sails On… to The
Voice of the Moon…. Then, in
1993, at only 73, Il Maestro was felled by a stroke, and ended his days in
hospital, dying of a heart attack on October 31st, his death mask
snapped on a marble slab by a fan who caused immediate public outrage at the
ironic intrusion….
And so ended a career of 25 films, four Oscars, and countless other awards.
It comes back to me in the Grand Hotel,
The Grand Hotel itself is a memorial to Fellini, with its film set qualities and its ability to stir the imagination, to have visions of what it might be like to be rich, or famous, or powerful….
Those few moments in the foyer, waiting for Gradisca, brought the
spirit of Fellini to life for me, and sent me back to Otto e Mezzo, and then to
the other films. Wonderful. Wonderful…..
And then I go down to the beach, to watch La Rumba….. Life is a party – let’s live it together!
ASA NISI MASA…..
Pictures from films used solely for illustrative and promotional purposes; not for profit.
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