His fiction, when told, when seen, becomes life. He has reversed the maxim that life, like history, when told, becomes fiction. Fellini shortened our road to a deeper understanding of the nature of media. How quick we were to deride Fellini, then 30 years ahead of his time for “fictionalizing reality” at a time when neorealism, in its heyday, hid its artifice in folklore.
Federico fellini movies tv#
Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Every film is a documentary” is quaint in a world thickly smeared with a layer of TV sets hourly proving every documentary to be a fiction. Isn’t it Fellini’s you would mention first when asked for names that might remain as our century’s prime artists, just as it is Leonardo’s and Michelangelo’s when thinking of the Renaissance?įellini has outlasted the critics who said he was neither concerned with sociology nor politics and we now live in an age marked by a renewed faith in art as fantasy. I project myself into a future century and imagine looking back on this one, bemoaning the demise of its art as today we bemoan the passing of that of the 15th, extolling in the same breath its outstanding practitioners. We often say, “Isn’t it just like out of a Fellini film?” A far cry from the days when in a film we used to exclaim, “That’s so natural!” The Fellini vision has become an integral part of the language we use to deal with reality. It’s that suddenly things are concrete that we’ve always known but couldn’t express. Of course, “invent” isn’t really the proper verb. And much more has come from Fellini things that not only the Italians are living. In Italy, it is not just a saying, it is the truth. Only a foreigner finds it funny, therefore, to repeat the old saying that Federico Fellini invented the Via Veneto and that the Italians have tried to live it ever since. Otherwise there would have been no Renaissance and none of that miraculous life-force continuity surviving the proverbial and perennial crises which, as Boswells from Goethe to Barzini have observed, Italians thrive on. The Italians say, “History isn’t made, it is told.” And they are the best proof that we invent not only our past but our present as well. This week, read Gideon Bachmann’s conversation with the Italian master, FSLC’s 1985 Chaplin Award Gala honoree.
Federico fellini movies archive#
To celebrate the upcoming 50th Anniversary of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, Film Comment will be making some classic pieces from our archive available online. Interview: Jack Nicholson By Beverly Walker
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