Oscar Profile #8: Federico Fellini

Born in Rimini, Italy in 1920, Federico Fellini moved to Rome in 1939 where he became a screenwriter, most notably associated with neorealist director Roberto Rossellini.

Working for Rossellini, he wrote the scripts for some of that director’s best films, including Open City, Paisan and The Flowers of St. Francis. Moving into directing in the early fifties, his films were a unique blend of memory, dreams, fantasy and desire. An international treasure from the mid-1950s to his death in 1993, he was nominated for twelve Oscars but never won. In addition, four of his films won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film of their year.

Fellini was finally given an honorary Oscar shortly before his death.

Contemporary filmmakers from Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese and David Lynch to Tim Burton, David Cronenberg and Pedro Almodovar all site him as having an influence on their work.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

LA STRADA (1954)

Once employed briefly as a circus clown, Fellini used that background to write the screenplay for his first undisputed masterpiece, the one that provided his first unqualified international success as a director.

Anthony Quinn, two years after winning his first Oscar for Viva Zapata!, finally had his first starring role on screen, even if he had to travel to Italy to get it. He plays a brute of a traveling entertainer who buys urchin Giulietta Masina (Mrs. Fellini) to help with his one-man carnival act. He mentally and physically abuses her until they meet a kindly tightrope walker played by Richard Basehart. Tragedy ensues.

The film is beautifully photographed in black-and-white and features exhilarating performances from all three stars. Released in the U.S. in 1956, there’s no doubt that his performance in this film helped Anthony Quinn win his second supporting Oscar for that year’s Lust for Life.

The film itself won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film of 1956, the year in which the award, an honorary one since 1947, had become a competitive one.

NIGHTS OF CABIRIA (1957)

Built as a showcase for his gifted wife who plays a prostitute who no matter how bleak her life becomes, always manages to keep her chin up.

Featuring one of the great last scenes of any movie, the film’s redemptive power stays with you as does the haunting image of Giulietta Masina in one of the greatest performances of all time. Masina was either nominated for or won numerous awards for her work here, but not the Oscar.

The film itself, however, became the second, and second consecutive, winner of the Best Foreign Film Oscar for Italy.

LA DOLCE VITA (1960)

Fellini first met Marcello Mastroianni in the 1940s when he was appearing in a play opposite Masina. The two became fast friends but didn’t work together until Fellini cast him as the disenchanted writer in La Dolce Vita, a film filled with iconic images from the Statue of Christ being flown by a helicopter to Anita Ekberg and Mastroianni swimming in the Fountain of Trevi to Mastroianni waving to the crowds at St. Peter’s Square from the Pope’s window.

The term “paparazzi” was coined by Fellini for this film. The word actually means “sparrows” in Italian. Fellini thought the reporters and photographers swirling around celebrities of the day resembled those birds.

The film was nominated for four Oscars and won one for Best Black-and-White Costume Design.

8 1/2 (1963)

Mastroianni plays Fellini’s alter-ego in this legendary film about a director whose creativity is blocked. The more he tries to come up with an idea for his next film, the more he fails.

Anouk Aimee as his wife, Claudia Cardinale as his muse, and Sandra Milo as his mistress all turn in unforgettable performances.

The film, which became the third Fellini work to win an Oscar for Best Foreign Film also won for Best Black-and-White Costume Design. It became the basis of the 1982 Broadway musical, Nine, which was successfully revived in 2003 but flopped when it became a film last year.

AMARCORD (1973)

Generally regarded as Fellini’s most accessible film, this quietly observant film is about a year in the life of an Italian coastal town in the 1930s.

Bruno Zanin is the film’s credited star, but really it’s Giuseppe Rotunno’s gorgeous cinematography and Nino Rota’s thrilling score that are the real stars of the film.

This was another Best Foreign Film winner for Italy for the Oscar year 1974. It was nominated for two competitive Oscars the following year when it was first shown in Los Angeles.