Fellini's strongest period of filmmaking was during the 50s when postwar Italy sunk deep on the auteur's shoulders. He was tethered to the neorealist-influenced dramas of the era, but also found ways to lyrically break with the documentary precision of the tradition. These films had moments that revealed human beings hidden inside his downtrodden characters. I VITELLONI (1953), LA STRADA (1954) and NIGHTS OF CABIRIA (1957) are three of his best examples that offered more grounded, character-driven stories loaded with pathos and compassion, feeling and humanity, even while signaling the surrealism yet to come.
Neorealism, with all its political and ideological perspective, was ultimately a dead-end for the auteur. His move towards surrealism and reconstruction began with LA DOLCE VITA…
Fellini's strongest period of filmmaking was during the 50s when postwar Italy sunk deep on the auteur's shoulders. He was tethered to the neorealist-influenced dramas of the era, but also found ways to lyrically break with the documentary precision of the tradition. These films had moments that revealed human beings hidden inside his downtrodden characters. I VITELLONI (1953), LA STRADA (1954) and NIGHTS OF CABIRIA (1957) are three of his best examples that offered more grounded, character-driven stories loaded with pathos and compassion, feeling and humanity, even while signaling the surrealism yet to come.
Neorealism, with all its political and ideological perspective, was ultimately a dead-end for the auteur. His move towards surrealism and reconstruction began with LA DOLCE VITA in 1960, marking a turning point in his career that sought to capture not just social reality, but also spiritual and metaphysical reality. For Fellini, life was a never-ending circus. A carnivalesque fairground for indulging in whim and grotesquerie. His dream would be to make fanciful autobiographical films that celebrated the bigness and strangeness of life, exploring his own obsessions related to women, poetry, oddity, and the circus.
In his own words, "I make a film in the same manner in which I live a dream…"
I've come to terms with the fact that Fellini really doesn't care for narrative, drama, depth, or characters. He's a showman whose visual imagination thrives on bells and whistles, artifice and excess, doing what pleases him even if it means leaving his audience behind. He's a director of individual scenes and grand gestures, most of which work best in the omnibus tradition. Almost invariably when he moves beyond 60 minutes, his style strains, his pace bores, and his vision becomes unnecessarily muddled. To his credit, Fellini cares far more about the journey than the destination. He wants to dazzle you in the moment with glorious set pieces and spectacular visuals, even if he doesn't know where he's going or what any of it means.
He's a visionary, not an intellectual.
A filmmaker whom I have an academic appreciation for, even if I don't always enjoy watching his stuff.
