Line #13 Creator/FedericoFellini


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/elx3ipfxkamq6rt.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:Fellini and his wife, Giulietta Masina, his sometimes leading lady]]
3
4
5	->''"There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life."''
6	-->-- '''Federico Fellini''' (1920-1993)
7
8	->''"The Imagination of a man like Fellini is so extraordinary that it seems more real than reality itself".''
9	-->-- '''Tullio Kezich''', author of ''Federico Fellini: His Life and Work'' in the documentary ''Fellini's Homecoming''
10
11	Federico Fellini (20 January 1920 – 31 October 1993) was an UsefulNotes/{{Ital\|y}}ian filmmaker. He was most famous for his "Felliniesque" style, that is, magical realism, but not enough to qualify. Surreal, but not too surreal. Strange, and yet highly sedate.
12
13	But above all, it is generally considered that Fellini is one of the more important filmmakers to come out of the [[ItalianNeorealism neorealist]] movement, eventually abandoning those roots and moving into the world of movie artifice. Or rather he returned to his roots. Before his career in movies, Fellini worked as a cartoonist, a writer for Italian photo-novels (called ''fumetti''), which were comic-books with professionally shot photographs with models instead of panels. He also owned a gag shop in UsefulNotes/{{Rome}} which allowed him to befriend many famous comedians such as Alberto Sordi. When Creator/RobertoRossellini cast Sordi against type in his serious film, ''Film/RomeOpenCity'', he hired Fellini as a dialogue writer. Fellini worked with Rossellini on many major films, such as ''Film/{{Paisan}}'', and even acted in the controversial short film, ''The Miracle''. Eventually Fellini started directing films himself. His earlier films were more sober and realistic -- ''Nights of Cabiria'' and ''La Strada'' -- both starring his wife even received nominations for Oscars for Foreign Films. His career really took off with ''Film/LaDolceVita'', a worldwide box-office hit.
14
15	After he switched to color in the mid-60's, Fellini stopped suppressing his imagination and made a bunch of "What on Earth is going on right now?" movies. At the time, most of them were dismissed by critics and several fans, his universally-loved semi-autobiographical masterpiece ''Film/{{Amarcord}}'' being the exception. Many of his fans, however, heartily and readily agree that his color films are important; in recent times, some such as ''Juliet of the Spirits'', ''Satyricon'', ''Rome'', his version of ''Casanova'', ''And the Ship Sails On'', and ''Intervista'' are gaining stature as being the most mature works. There are a very high number of movie critics and historians who would argue that his "weird" period is the best of his career.
16
17	While his films are what make the artist, his life was equally fascinating, living through the time of [[UsefulNotes/FascistItaly the fascists]], becoming a journalist and cartoonist, writing scripts with the neo-realists, becoming a celebrity in Italy by creating the morally "indecent" ''La Dolce Vita'' (where [[TropeNamer the term]] {{paparazzi}} [[TropeNamer comes from]]), supposedly having many affairs (including one with his actress Sandra Milo), taking a bit of experimental LSD under supervision by Doctors and remarking that he was "unimpressed" with the experience, surrounding himself with clairvoyants and mystics, adopting the principles of UsefulNotes/CarlJung, improvising large chunks of a movie even when there was a script, mistreating Creator/DonaldSutherland on the set of his ''Casanova'' (apparently, he claimed to have gained rights to film the story by having a seance with the spirit of the great lover himself), and shooting a movie on a cruise boat with almost no water [[StylisticSuck where the ocean was made of plastic and characters remark that the sun looks so beautiful it must have been painted on the wall]].
18
19	The city of Rimini, his birthplace, has named its airport after him.
20
21	!! Films directed by Fellini include:
22	[[index]]
23	* ''Film/VarietyLights'' (''Luci del Varietà'', 1950) (co-credited with Alberto Lattuada)
24	* ''The White Sheik'' (''Lo Sceicco Bianco'', 1952)
25	* ''Film/IVitelloni'' (1953)
26	* ''Film/LaStrada'' (1954)
27	* ''Il Bidone'' (1955)
28	* ''Film/NightsOfCabiria'' (''Le Notti di Cabiria'', 1957)
29	* ''Film/LaDolceVita'' (1960)
30	* ''Film/EightAndAHalf'' (1963)
31	* ''Film/JulietOfTheSpirits'' (''Giulietta degli Spiriti'', 1965)
32	* ''Film/SpiritsOfTheDead'' (1968) (segment "Toby Dammit")
33	* ''Fellini: A Director's Notebook'' (1969)
34	* ''Film/FelliniSatyricon'' (1969)
35	* ''I Clowns'' (1970)
36	* ''Film/{{Roma\|1972}}'' (1972)
37	* ''Film/{{Amarcord}}'' (1973)
38	* ''Film/FellinisCasanova'' (1976)
39	* ''Orchestra Rehearsal'' (''Prova d'orchestra'', 1978)
40	* ''City of Women'' (''La Città delle Donne'', 1980)
41	* ''And the Ship Sails on'' (''E la Nave Va'', 1983)
42	* ''Film/GingerAndFred'' (''Ginger e Fred'', 1986)
43	* ''Intervista'' (1987)
44	* ''The Voice of the Moon'' (''La Voce della Luna'', 1990)
45	[[/index]]
46	----
47	!!Tropes in Fellini's movies include:
48
49	* AllJustADream ([[DreamWithinADream Within a dream]], even).
50	* AssociatedComposer: Music/NinoRota composed the soundtrack of many of his films.
51	* AuteurLicense: He head-butted several times with producer Dino De Laurentiis, specially over casting decisions, and pretty much always prevailed.
52	* AuthorAppeal:
53	** Fellini once said: "If if I would make a movie about life itself, it would still be about me in the end."
54	** Several of his dream-inspired drawings were about {{big beautiful wom\|an}}en, and his films generally feature at least one such.
55	* BadLiar: To Fellini lies and truth were almost the same.
56	* BigBeautifulWoman: A trademark of many of his films and drawings. Usually they're even so imposing that they become frightening.
57	* BreakingTheFourthWall: Happens occasionally.
58	* CorruptChurch: Whenever priests and nuns appear it's comical and with no respect for their authority.
59	* CreatorProvincialism: He adored UsefulNotes/{{Rome}} so much that he dedicated an entire movie to it: ''Roma''. The city also returns in most of his other movies.
60	* DaydreamSurprise: Dreams are an important trademark of Fellini's work.
61	* EveryoneComesBackFantasyPartyEnding: He was probably the TropeMaker for this, most famously using it in ''Film/EightAndAHalf''.
62	* GainaxEnding
63	* GrotesqueGallery: Many people in his movies were cast because of how eccentric or bizarre they looked. Fellini himself was a cartoonist, so that might explain it a bit.
64	* HongKongDub: His early films were shot without sound for later dubbing (which was standard for the Italian film industry at the time), and he wasn't all that concerned with how well the dubbing matched the lip movements. In fact, he often wouldn't even have the actors recite their lines on-set. Instead, he'd just have them count out loud, based on the number of lines they had in a scene (usually at a double rate. For example, if you had four lines, Fellini had you count to eight). Then with his later films, sometimes they were very badly dubbed, mostly because Fellini thought up new dialogues for the actors to say even after every scene was already shot.
65	* HowIWroteThisArticleArticle: As early as TheSixties, Fellini makes a film about making a film when you've run out of ideas; aka Film/EightAndAHalf.
66	* ImagineSpot: To the point that it's difficult to separate dream from reality.
67	* LargeHam: Some of the acting in his later films borders to this.
68	* MonsterClown: Fellini had a love-hate relationship with clowns. They recurr often in his work. One of his film, "I Clowns", is a documentary about them.
69	* MrImagination: Fellini himself.
70	* {{Neologism}}: The word "paparazzo" was derived from his film ''Film/LaDolceVita''.
71	* NunsAreSpooky: In his films they are.
72	* PostModernism: "8 1/2"
73	* SceneryPorn: Most of the locations count as this.
74	* ShoutOut: Shout-outs to classic 1930s movie icons like Creator/MaeWest, Creator/LaurelAndHardy and Creator/TheMarxBrothers are not uncommon.
75	* SurrealHumor: One of his trademarks, especially from ''Film/EightAndAHalf'' on forward.

Context Creator / FedericoFellini