International Cinema in the 1950s – Italy

THE SECOND ITALIAN FILM RENAISSANCE

Like the American, French, and British cinemas, Italy experienced a decline during the 50s as the neorealist impulse died out, and mass entertainment emphasized spectacle and mildly titillating sex- a “Rosy realism”–merging of telephono bianco and neorealism w. sex symbols Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida, Marcello Mastroianni. (The period was also dominated by the quasi-Roman/Biblical ‘spectacle’ films starring American muscleman Steve Reeves which became internationally famous.)

However, film historians assert that directors of the next generation, such as Fellini and Antonioni, continued the Neorealist mode in the 50s by turning it inward, so that the object of attn becomes not society but the human self–‘introspective neorealism.’  One critic maintains that the strength of the Italian cinema lay precisely in its inability to escape the neorealist heritage, so that even the generation of filmmakers which succeeded that of F and A has felt compelled to confront and come to terms w. the neorealist tradition.

ITALY & FEDERICO FELLINI

Italy’s most famous filmmaker: His movies were especially admired in America, where they won four Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Picture.

As a child, he ran away from home to join the circus, and this fascination remained with him throughout his life, constituting a major motif in his movies.  Show business is usually treated as a symbol of life at the fringes of respectability–tawdry, often deceptive, liberatingly vulgar.  Paradoxically, show business, a metaphor for art, is also redemptive, transcending the loneliness and boredom of everyday life.

Cartoonist-turned-scriptwriter for Rossellini (he wrote the scripts of Rossellini’s Open City, et al.)

Fellini’s earliest films were clearly indebted to the neorealist movement (but without the political aims).  Most of them were shot on actual locations, and feature loose, episodic narratives, which are often circular rather than linear.  The characters are generally from the lower social echelons–misfits, outcasts, con men, prostitutes, vagabonds, and fourth rate “artistes.”

Unlike most Italian filmmakers, he was relatively apolitical, preferring to explore more private obsessions, often with an autobiographical emphasis and emphasizing mood and feelings vs. ideas/analysis.  After the early 1960s, he was a master of the grand style–sensuous, baroquely ornate, operatic

Involved as a writer in the Neorealist movement, he wrote the scripts of Rossellini’s Open City et al.  Rossellini’s Christian humanism had a lasting effect on Fellini’s sensibility, particularly in his fondness for the Holy Fool, an Italian character type loosely based on the revered figure of St. Francis of Assisi.  Although a nonbeliever, Fellini was strongly drawn to naive, foolish characters of childlike faith and simplicity.  The most poignant of these are the child-women played by Giuletta Masina.

Fellini’s earliest films were clearly indebted to the neorealist movement (but without the political aims).  Most of them were shot on actual locations, and feature loose, episodic narratives, which are often circular rather than linear.  The characters are generally from the lower social echelons–misfits, outcasts, con men, prostitutes, vagabonds, and fourth rate “artistes.”

Academy Awards

First international success (over 50 international awards including Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film) was La Strada (1954; the Road) which also signaled his break from neorealism in story of a simpleminded peasant girl (Giuletta Masina) who is sold to a circus strong man (Anthony Quinn) for a plate of pasta. As a result, Zavattini said Fellini betrayed the social commitment of neorealism; this was a highly personal parable abt the relationship between a man and woman which moved beyond simply recording the particulars of the somber reality of life to a more personal vision, one motivated by an interest in a particular mythology concerned w. spiritual poverty and the necessity for grace and salvation…thus central character Gelsomina is more concerned w. the failure of human communication and a lack of love than w. political and social ills.  The Road is the road to personal fulfillment.

WATCH:  La Strada

Academy Award

But perhaps the finest of these early works is The Nights of Cabiria (1956), with Masina playing a tenderhearted prostitute who fancies herself as a streetwise and tough–the spirit of pure love trampled by the realities of human selfishness.

WATCH:  Nights of Cabiria

Cabiria is the purehearted whore, forced to sell her love since no one wants it for nothing. The movie abounds with grotesquely comical characters–a Fellini trademark.  Cabiria is alternatingly bawdy, sentimental, cynical, noisy, ironic, and moving–in short, a typical Fellini circus.

La Dolce Vita (“The Sweet Life” 1959) was another huge intl. hit.  Though tame by today’s standards, the picture created something of a scandal by its depiction of decadence among Rome’s privileged class.  The movie centers on a dissolute journalist who yearns to create something meaningful with his talent yet is constantly seduced by the lure of life in the fast lane, which is established as a metaphor for our entire civilization. Set against the magnificent ruins of earlier time, Fellini shows us a culture based on meaningless intellectual debates, sterile love affairs, and publicity stunts.  Contrasts sensuality vs. spirituality.

WATCH:  trailer La Dolce Vita

Also represents a stylistic shift for Fellini: in its widescreen compositions it is less realistic in its mise en scene, more richly textured and photographically ornate.  It is filled with fantastic processions, weird characters, and quasi-surrealistic settings–characteristic elements of Fellini’s later works. This film thus began Fellini’s exploration of various levels of consciousness which has resulted in him being charged with critics for becoming involved in self-indulgent egotism

Academy Award

1963: 8 1/2 concerns a film director who has taken on a large-scale production but runs out of creative energy in the process.  To escape he lapses into a world of adolescent sexual fantasy and childhood memory of the major influences on his life–his boyhood, his church, his relations w. his parents, and his relationships w. women all conveyed in flashback.  These are seen as the best and worst of times–it is only when he contemplates suicide at the end of the film that he can be reborn.   This surrealistic parable about. the agony of artistic creation won many intl. awards.  Structurally, the film moves backwards (dealing w. the preparation of the film) to go forward so that the end of the film comes when the director begins to make a new film.

Mast: “The director’s emotional problem in the film–and undoubtably [sic] Guido represents Fellini here–is wondering whether he is successful at either life or art, wondering whether he hasn’t prostituted his life for his art and his art for his life, whether he has the right or the ability to make films….(end of party becoming a gigantic circus of characters of his memories and of his film… “Guido stares at the dancing creatures; he then steps into their circle and joins the dance.  His life is what it is; his art is what it is.  There is nothing for him to do but live it and create it.  The artist’s tension has been resolved; he cannot be separated from the dancing ring of his thoughts, his loves, his creations, his memories.  The film that could not be made has been made because whatever Guido’s (and Fellini’s) deficiencies as a human being, he is a maker of films.  That is his dance. (331)

Academy Award

 Amarcord (“I Remember,” 1974) is a stylized reminiscence of Fellini’s boyhood in Rimini during the 1930s.  Eschewing plot, the film is unified by a seasonal structure, beginning and ending with the arrival of spring, a time of rebirth.  Robust, bawdy, and poignant, the movie is steeped in tenderness and love.  It features a wide assortment of off-beat personalities are are sketched in with a few bold strokes, more like cartoon figures than conventional characters.

Deeply influenced by neorealism in the formlessness and circularity of his narratives, Fellini structures his work through the sheer force of his own personality and obsessions.  Fellini is first and foremost a great ringmaster whose circus is the human comedy as it exists both inside and outside himself.

His recurring theme is the mystery of identity (his own or characters played by his wife), and he has learned to tap a large portion of the cinema’s vast but generally unrealized potential to objectify subjective states, and vice versa.

Characteristics:

1. Extensive usage of circus imagery: His films reveal the flamboyant romantic…he prefers the places of mystery, magic, and make-believe–the circus, the variety theatre, the nightclub, the opera house–to the squalid slums of reality. His characters search for happiness, for love, for meaning, not for social security.
2. Deeply influenced by neorealism in the formlessness and circularity of his narratives, Fellini structures his work through the sheer force of his own personality and obsessions. Fellini is first and foremost a great ringmaster whose circus is the human comedy as it exists both inside and outside himself
3. Mast says primary theme is sensuality vs. spirituality; What substitutes for thought in Fellini is a romantic rebelliousness and an ambivalent reaction to the grotesque.

A consistent Fellini target is the Roman Catholic Church.  For Fellini, the Church is a hypocritical and empty show that bilks its public by playing on its insecurities and fears.  The Church is the arch-sensualist masquerading as a spiritualist.

…he treats the glamorous world of the rich w. a stylish grotesqueness that reveals both its emptiness and its fascination…Fellini’s social criticism of the fashionably idle pulls him one way; his hypnotized attraction to their visually stunning exteriors and their uncompromising sensuality pulls him another. .  (329)

4. Another prevalent theme is the mystery of identity (his own or characters played by his wife), and he has learned to tap a large portion of the cinema’s vast but generally unrealized potential to objectify subjective states, and vice versa.
5. Visual design of rich frescoes and intoxicating images create a stylized world of mental fantasy in which reality is reinterpreted and made signif by the imagination of the artist.

***Critic Foster Hirsch has asserted: “ In his own way, Fellini combines the two strains that have always dominated Italian movies: the epic tradition, w. its fondness for spectacle and operatic gesture, and the humanist tradition, w. its deep feeling for the outcast and the oppressed.”

WATCH:  Biography: Fellini (45)

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