Last Saturday, January 20, was the birthday of Federico Fellini, the late Italian director. Fellini, one of the most influential and widely-revered film-makers of the 20th century, created films which were a montage of the surreal, the bizarre and the every-day. So distinctive is his style that the term "felliniesque" has come to describe any scene in which a hallucinatory image invades an otherwise ordinary situation. His films include I Vitelloni (1953), La Strada (1954), Le notti di Cabiria (1957), La Dolce Vita (1959), 8½ (1963), Satyricon (1969), and Roma (1972). Explore the works of Fellini here. Also, a thorough essay by Antonia Shanahan of the director's life and key films is available here. For a complete filmography of Fellini's career, check out his listing at IMDb.
I recently re-watched the classic La Dolce Vita. This film, starring Anita Ekberg and Fellini's long-time acting partner Marcello Mastroianni, is regarded by many to be Fellini's masterpiece. Amazon.com describes it as "a rich, detailed panorama of Rome's modern decadence and sophisticated immorality, the film is episodic in structure but held tightly in focus by the wandering protagonist through whom we witness the sordid action. Marcello Rubini (extraordinarily played by Mastroianni) is a tabloid reporter trapped in a shallow high-society existence. A man of paradoxical emotional juxtapositions (cool but tortured, sexy but impotent), he dreams about writing something important but remains seduced by the money and prestige that accompany his shallow position." John Powers, critic-at-large for NPR, reviews the 2004 2-disc DVD release of the movie on NPR's Fresh Air, available here.
One lasting effect of Fellini's La Dolce Vita is the word paparazzi, used to describe photographers who tirelessly hunt celebrities, public figures and their families for the opportunity to photograph them in candid, unflattering and at times compromising moments. The word is derived from a character in the film, a photographer named Paparazzo, who reminded Fellini of "a buzzing insect, hovering, darting, stinging." Fellini's inspiration for the character was the famous Italian "street photographer" Tazio Secchiaroli. Fellini consulted Secchiaroli for research while developing the script for his classic film. Secchiaroli became famous as a photographer when he captured candid photos of the former Egyptian King Farouk turning a table over at a restaurant in rage. On the same night, Secchiaroli also snapped photos of actor Anthony Steele in a public spat with actress Anita Ekberg. These photos started a trend in European publications, moving away from posed promotional shots of celebrities and toward surreptitiously captured candid photos.
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