In his superb article, “A Religion of Film”, TIME, September 20, 1963, critic Brad Darrach wrote,“Imagination minus taste – in “I Vitelloni” (1953), he put together a conventional but faultlesssocial satire. In “La Strada” (1954), a poetic comedy, he followed in Chaplin’s footsteps butcouldn’t quite fill the little fellow’s shoes. In “La Dolce Vita” (1960), the film that made him andactor Marcello Mastroianni famous around the world he constructed a spectacular travesty ofthe Apocalypse in which the prophecy is luridly fulfilled and Rome, the Great Prostitute ofRevelation, wallows gorgeously through seven nights of destruction. In “8 ½” (1963) his mostdaring film to date, he aimed his camera into his own psyche and let it record his fears andfantasies, desires and despairs in a cinematic language that owes more to Joyce than it does toD.W. Griffith.”Brad’s point, of course, is that all these extraordinary features were shot with vivacity,challenge, courage, and good old Italian gusto – proving to the Master of Them All, AkiraKurosawa, that was a force to reckon with, a rival without a Japanese sword. In his brilliantpiece, Brad Darrach argues that unfortunately Fellini’s imagination is not controlled by taste.“He panders incessantly and shamelessly to the public letch for sensations. He is a vulgarian inthe grand manner, the Barnum of the avant-garde.” As for this simple reviewer who walkedinto the darkness with a box of popcorn in hand, he was unaware what to expect in “8 ½” and“La Dolce Vita”. Emerging into the sunlight after more than 2 hours later for each, he still yearnsfor that man, a piece of the sun himself, to have devoted his energy and time, the money toproduce, that heart-endearing gentleness to have made MORE films such as his truly great “LaStrada” and “I Vitelloni”. If I had known him when he attended Bologna University, or began hiscareer as a cartoonist, journalist, and scriptwriter, I would have said, “Senti, listen, my friend,sure, ‘La Dolce Vita’ will win you a top prize at the Cannes Film Festival as a “. . . success de
scandale” for its cynical evocation of modern Roman high life. But it is the love and warmth of
your wife Giulietta Masina in ‘La Strada’ and makes us cry, then cry again for film as the mostemotionally powerful of all Mankind’s arts and humanities”.Author Manoah Bowman, a photograph, writer, and the proprietor of the independent VisionsArchive, a unique collection of imagery, ephemera, and original camera negatives now housedin the Academy of Motion Pictures and Television, has given us a truly magnificent gift, one thatshould never be absent from the living room coffee table. Visiting family and friends should beintroduced to Federico Fellini, come to know the meaning and imagination of the man, watchhis work that shows it, then decide for themselves his nature, lessons, and the incredible art
born of his mind translated into celluloid.
