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Fellini retrospective at Cinematheque
Along with Sweden’s Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini (1920-1993) was one of two superstar directors to emerge from the international scene in the 1950s. Like Bergman, Italian maestro Fellini quickly became a household name in North America — in fact, for a certain generation of American cinephiles.
Fellini and Bergman were the Alpha and Omega of art-house cinema. The fact that neither is as well-known today as he should be is more a reflection of our media-saturated times than any perceived expiration date attached to their work.
To help rectify the situation, the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque is launching a partial Fellini retrospective (“Nine by Fellini”) this weekend. The fact that “Nine” — the Rob Marshall-directed film version of the 1982 Broadway musical based on Fellini’s “81‚Ñ2” — opens this holiday season probably has something to do with the timing.
Love him or hate him, Fellini was as much a force of nature as a filmmaker.
It’s no accident that he’s one of the only directors to have an adjective (“Fellini-esque”) named after him.
Fellini began his career in the late ’40s, working as Roberto Rossellini’s assistant director. And it was neo- realist visionary Rossellini whose influence is most strongly felt in seminal Fellini works such as “I Vitelloni” (a coming-of-age tale that would inspire everything from “American Graffiti” to “Diner”), “La Strada” and “Nights of Cabiria” (the first Fellini movie to be spun off into a Broadway musical — “Sweet Charity”). The 1959 “La Dolce Vita” marked a turning point in the Fellini canon. By abandoning neo-realism in favor of a more autobiographical type of cinema — “Vita,” “81‚Ñ2,” “Juliet of the Spirits” (his first color film, and a glistening celluloid valentine to wife/artistic muse Giulietta Masina) — Fellini lost many of his early fans. Ironically, it’s the “self-indulgent” and “excessive” latter Fellini that I fell in love with at an impressionable age.
“81‚Ñ2” was the first foreign-language film I ever saw. Yes, it was (atrociously) dubbed into English, cut to ribbons and bracketed by interminable commercial breaks in the pre-TCM era. But for a movie-crazy 10-year-old from Youngstown, “81‚Ñ2” was the most exciting thing imaginable. The story of a wildly successful film director (Fellini alter ego Marcello Mastroianni) in the throes of a nervous breakdown while prepping his latest project, Fellini’s 1963 triumph felt thrillingly grown-up to my precocious young mind.
While I could admire the linear storytelling of Fellini’s pre-“La Dolce Vita” body of work — and even respond emotionally to their sometimes cloying sentimentality — I’ve always preferred his visually entrancing middle (and twilight) phases. The 1970’s “Satyricon” — with its deliciously apt tagline (“Rome: Before Christ; After Fellini”) — remains one of my top-10 favorites of all time. Like everything else in the Fellini series, it positively demands to be seen on the big screen.
The Cinematheque’s mini-retro kicks off Sunday night with “Casanova,” another controversial Fellini phantasmagoria. Fellini’s sublimely decadent deconstruction of the legendary 18th century Venetian rake, “Casanova” was dismissed by critics — and rejected by audiences — at the time of its 1977 U.S. release. Yet, like so many underloved masterworks that seemed ahead of their time (Kubrick’s “Barry Lyndon” and “Eyes Wide Shut” among them), it has steadily built up a fervent cult following over the years. Because “Casanova” is still unavailable on DVD, this could be your only chance to see what is arguably Fellini’s last great film. In other words, it’s an opportunity that no right-minded cineast would dream of passing up.
X“Nine by Fellini” retrospective will run from Nov. 1-Dec. 13 at Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque, 11141 East Blvd., Cleveland; call (216) 421-7450.