Fellini Quotes

All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster's autobiography.

There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life.

If there were a little more silence, if we all kept quiet...maybe we could understand something.

You have to live spherically - in many directions. Never lose your childish enthusiasm - and things will come your way.

No matter what happens, always Keep your childhood innocence. It's the most important thing.

Life is a combination of magic and pasta.

I don’t like the idea of “understanding” a film. I don’t believe that rational understanding is an essential element in the reception of any work of art. Either a film has something to say to you or it hasn’t. If you are moved by it, you don’t need it explained to you. If not, no explanation can make you moved by it.

Don't tell me what I'm doing; I don't want to know.

A different language is a different vision of life.

Even the most miserable life is better than a sheltered existence in an organized society where everything is calculated and perfected.

Censorship is advertising paid by the government.

We must get beyond passions, like a great work of art. In such miraculous harmony. We should learn to love each other so much to live outside of time... detached.

Put yourself into life and never lose your openness, your childish enthusiasm throughout the journey that is life, and things will come your way.

We can all pretend to be cynical and scheming, but when we’re faced with purity and innocence, the cynical mask drops off.

I don't believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there's one thing that's dangerous for an artist, it's precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and all the rest of it.

There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life.

The only place where you can be a dictator and still be loved is on the movie set

An artist is a provincial who finds himself somewhere between a physical reality and a metaphysical one. It’s this in-between that I’m calling a province, this frontier country between the tangible world and the intangible one. That is the realm of the artist.

There is abundant testimony that if we choose love rather than self, we gain immeasurably.

Georgian film is a completely unique phenomenon, vivid, philosophically inspiring, very wise, childlike. There is everything that can make me cry and I ought to say that it (my crying) is not an easy thing.

There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the passion of life.

و لكن البحث عن الحب لا يضمن العثور عليه، كما أن منح الحب لا يضمن تلقيه

Going to the cinema is like returning to the womb; you sit there still and meditative in the darkness, waiting for life to appear on the screen. One should go to the cinema with the innocence of a fetus

Objects and their functions no longer had any significance. All I perceived was perception itself, the hell of forms and figures devoid of human emotion and detached from the reality of my unreal environment. I was an instrument in a virtual world that constantly renewed its own meaningless image in a living world that was itself perceived outside of nature. And since the appearance of things was no longer definitive but limitless, this paradisiacal awareness freed me from the reality external to myself. The fire and the rose, as it were, became one.

Experience is what you get while looking for something else.

يأسرني أولئك الذين يحبون بلا خوف من العواقب، وينفعلون بلا حيطة، ويكرهون ويحبون بلا تعقل، وأنظر بإعجاب إلى المشاعر البسيطة وإلى السلوك الذي لا يأبه بالمضاعفات.

Happiness is simply a temporary condition that proceeds unhappiness. Fortunately for us, it works the other way around as well. But it's all a part of the carnival, isn't it?

اذا كنت أعرف شيئاً، فإني أعرف أني لا يمكن أن أكون شخصاً آخر

All art is autobiographical.

Oh, no. This has "marriage" written all over it. Travis, read my lips: remember that Fellini film with the prostitute who says that every new sunrise makes her a virgin? It doesn't work that way with me. Even the sun thinks I'm a slut.

Only the early Fitzgerald was great. Then came an orgy of brutal realism

I’m a liar, but an honest one. People reproach me for not always telling the same story in the same way. But this happens because I’ve invented the whole tale from the start and it seems boring to me and unkind to other people to repeat myself.

I’m just a storyteller, and the cinema happens to be my medium. I like it because it recreates life in movement, enlarges it, enhances it, distills it. For me, it’s far closer to the miraculous creation of life than, say, a painting or music or even literature. It’s not just an art form; it’s actually a new form of life, with its own rhythms, cadences, perspectives and transparencies. It’s my way of telling a story.

I even see the cinema itself as a woman, with its alternation of light and darkness, of appearing and disappearing images

A mass-circulation magazine asked me to explain to its readers what was going on. I had this Fellini scene: We are all at a wonderful ball where the champagne sparkles in every glass and soft laughter falls upon the summer air. We know, by the rules, that at some moment the Black Horsemen will come shattering through the great terrace doors, wreaking vengeance and scattering the survivors. Those who leave early are saved, but the ball is so splendid no one wants to leave while there is still time, so that everyone keeps asking “What time is it? What time is it?” but none of the clocks have any hands. The Black Horsemen did come, of course, and

Chaque langue voit le monde d’une manière différente.

Julia edged closer, wondering what kind of vocabulary dogs understood. Frederico Fellini, her cat, was an intellectual and she could talk about books and films to him, as long as it was after he'd been fed, and fed well. She had the vague notion that dogs preferred football and politics.

أنا لا أتذكر أيام المدرسة جيدًا. لقد اختلطت كلها، فصار العام كأنه يوم، واليوم كأنه تكرارٌ للأيام السابقة كلها. لكن لم تكن حياتي في المدرسة.ففي أثناء الدروس كنت أشعر دائمًا وكأني أفتقد شيئًا أكثر أهمية، شيئًا أروع من أي شيء يُعرف في غرف الصف.

No.. no questo tipo no, non è capace. Questo vuole prendere tutto, arraffare tutto, non sa rinunciare a niente; cambia strada ogni giorno perché ha paura di perdere quella giusta, e sta morendo, come dissanguato.

Borges is particularly stimulating to a man who works in the cinema, because the unusual thing about his writing is that it is like a dream, extraordinarily farsighted in calling up from the unconscious complete images in which the thing itself, and its meaning, coexist - exactly as happens in a film. And, just as happens in dreams, in Borges the incongruous, the absurd, the contradictory, the arcane and the repetitive, although as powerfully imaginative as ever, are at the same time illumined like the careful details of something larger, something unknown, and are the faultless elements of a cruelly perfect, indifferent mosaic. Even the fact that Borges's work is strangely fragmentary makes me think of a broken dreamlike flow; and the heterogeneous quality of his work - stories, essays, poems - I prefer to see not as the union of the multiple threads in a greedy, impatient talent, but as a mysterious sign of unending change.

Loneliness is a heavy burden, but i'd rather be alone than make compromises.

Fate is written in the face.

Jung acompanha-nos à porta do incognoscível e deixa que vejamos e comprendamos por nós próprios.

A face, he believes, is a piece of sculpture that has taken a lifetime to mold, so it tells more than any actor’s technique possibly could. I’ve watched Fellini work, and he did

Rome is a very loony city in every respect. One needs but spend an hour or two there to realize that Fellini makes documentaries.

But then she looks at you, and in you there is sun, there is love, there is life. —FELLINI

Talking about dreams is like talking about movies, since the cinema uses the language of dreams; years can pass in a second and you can hop from one place to another. It’s a language made of image. And in the real cinema, every object and every light means something, as in a dream.

Movies do not change, but their viewers do. When I saw La Dolce Vita in 1960, I was an adolescent for whom “the sweet life” represented everything I dreamed of: sin, exotic European glamor, the weary romance of the cynical newspaperman. When I saw it again, around 1970, I was living in a version of Marcello’s world; Chicago’s North Avenue was not the Via Veneto, but at 3 a.m. the denizens were just as colorful, and I was about Marcello’s age. When I saw the movie around 1980, Marcello was the same age, but I was 10 years older, had stopped drinking, and saw him not as a role model but as a victim, condemned to an endless search for happiness that could never be found, not that way. By 1991, when I analyzed the film a frame at a time at the University of Colorado, Marcello seemed younger still, and while I had once admired and then criticized him, now I pitied and loved him. And when I saw the movie right after Mastroianni died, I thought that Fellini and Marcello had taken a moment of discovery and made it immortal.

When I felt I was dying, these past few days, things were no longer anthropomorphic. The telephone, which looks like a sort of upturned black snake, was merely a telephone. Every thing was just a thing. The couch, which looked like a big square face drawn by Rubens, with buttons on the cover like wicked little eyes, was just a couch, rather shabby but nothing more. At such a time things don’t matter to you; you don’t bathe everything in your presence, like an amoeba. Things become innocent because you draw away from them; experience becomes virginal, as it was for the first man when he saw the valleys and the plains. You feel you are set in a tidy world: that is a door and it behaves like a door, that is white and behaves like white. What heaven: the symbolism of meanings loses all meaning. You see objects which are comforting because they are quite free. But suddenly you are flung into a new form of suffering because, when you come to miss the meaning of, say, a stool, reality suddenly becomes terrifying. Everything becomes monstrous, unattainable.

Team-building exercises. It’s bad enough that we all have to work together day in and day out; do we really have to work on our working? It’s like starring in a bad Fellini movie but with worse coffee. Beginner: Take a vacation day. Intermediate: Take a sick day. Expert: Take a personal day.

McKee's a genius. And hillarious. You'll like him, too, Charles. He's all for originality, just like you. He says that we have to realize that we all write in a genre and we must find our originality within that genre. As it turns out, there hasn't been a new genre since Fellini invented the mockumentary. My genre's thriller, what's yours?

By the time she was their age, she’d seen all the Kurosawas, all the Tarkovskys, all the Fellinis, all the Antonionis, all the Fassbinders, all the Wertmullers, all the Satyajit Rays, all the René Clairs, all the Wim Wenderses, all the Truffauts, the Godards, the Chabrols, the Resnaises, the Rohmers, the Renoirs, and all these kids have seen is Star Wars.

A created thing is never invented and it is never true: it is always and ever itself.

A more miserable life is better...believe me..than an existence protected by an organized society...where everything is calculated....where everything is perfect...

نحن لا نتحكم في ذكرياتنا، و واحدنا لا يملك ذكرياته بل هي التي تملكه

Nothing is more honest than a dream.

One doesn't remember one's own life chronologically, the way it happened, what was most important, or even what seemed most important. We are not in control of our memories. One doesn't own one's memories. One is owned by them.

What can you possibly say about Rome? That it's eternal? That all roads lead to it? That it wasn't built in a day? That when there you should do as the locals do? Please. For millennia, Rome has embodied and repelled every cliché, description, and act of comprehension or explanation applied to it. As a city, it has been built and destroyed and rebuilt by - and has celebrated and signified and outlasted - caesars and barbarians and popes and Fascists and prophets and artists and pilgrims and schemers and migrants and lovers and fools.

Poets may be the “unacknowledged legislators” but I don’t know if we’re that important. My fear overwhelms me at times; I gave you my fear, a withered gift. You are the true poet of the family. You gave me the cry of a baby in its mother’s arms, cotton candy at the circus, John Cage exhibits at the museum, lying under the light of the full moon. You gave me Fellini films and old Romances, a glass of Burgandy in a darkened restaurant where lovers cling to hope of passion and contentment. You gave me hope and love, but most of all, you gave me poetry.

During his time at VGIK, Tarkovsky and his fellow students studied all aspects of filmmaking, watching the classics of Soviet cinema and taking part in workshops in which they would demonstrate their technical ability. This even included acting; Tarkovsky’s fellow student and friend, Alexander Gordon, remembers him giving a superb performance as the aging Prince Bolkonsky when Romm got the students to perform scenes from War and Peace during their third year at VGIK. Tarkovsky saw many classics from outside the Soviet Union, including Citizen Kane, the films of John Ford and William Wyler, and the works of the fathers of the French New Wave, Jean Renoir and Jean Vigo. Tarkovsky developed a personal pantheon that included Bergman, Bunuel, Mizoguchi and Kurosawa, Fellini and Antonioni. The only Soviet director who made it into his pantheon was Dovzhenko, although he was good friends with the Georgian director Sergei Parajanov, whom he regarded as ‘a genius in everything’. He also spoke highly of Iosseliani, and, on occasion, of Boris Barnet. But above them all was the towering figure of Robert Bresson, whom Tarkovsky regarded as the ultimate film artist.

يخطر لي أحيانا أن المهتمين بالأفلام نوعان: صانعوا الأفلام والذين لا يصنعون أفلاما. وحين يأتيني أحدهم ويقول: ما معنى فيلمك يا سيد فيلليني؟ أعرف على الفور أنه من غير صانعي الأفلام. إن الذين لا يصنعون أفلاما لا يتقبلون سحر السينما من غير إخضاعه إلى تحليل فكري. وهذا تشريح للنسيج الحي المستأصل ينذر بالتحول إلى تشريح للجثة. ولو طلبوا معرفة كيف تنفذ الحيل، لما أعجزني فهم الطلب، ولكنهم يريدون أن يعرفوا فيما كان الساحر يفكر في أثناء أداء الحيلة، والأسباب التي دعته إلى أدائها في المقام الأول. من المرجح أنه كان يتساءل إن كان سيحصل على حجز آخر، أو إن كانت الأرانب لا تزال في القاع الخادع، أو إن كان يستطيع إغراء تلك الشقراء المكتنزة الجالسة في الصف الثالث، والتي ابتسمت له. وربما انتهى لتوه من جدال مع السيدة التي يوشك أن يشطرها بالمنشار.

Azt halljuk, hogy a művészet elkerülhetetlenül művészetkommentálássá vált; félünk attól, hogy a technika elnyeli azt, ami egykoron tartalomként volt ismeretes. Minderről azt mondják, siralmas dolog, gyenge látvány, szomorú állapot. És mégis, nézzük csak meg, hány a fentiekhez hasonló módon fogant művészi alkotás virágzik, talál lelkes követésre, és indít meg mélyen bennünket. Kell valami jónak is lennie mind e negatívumokban. És van is. Ezek a művek állandóan a jelentőségteljesség mind költőibb területei felé tartanak. Legyünk konkrétabbak: a Godot-ra várva rendkívül megindító és részvétteli antidráma. Az ürességgel és cifrasággal foglalkozó Az édes élet furcsa módon éltető, sőt ösztönző film. Nabokov antiregénye, a Sápadt tűz (Pale Fire) szenzációs mestermű, hőse, Charles Kinbote valódi antihős. Balanchine legabsztraktabb, legelvontabb balettjai bombasikerek. De Konoing képei csodálatosan dekoratívak, szuggesztívek, serkentőek és rendkívül drágák. Ez valóban igen hosszú lista lehet, ám egyvalamit nem foglalhatnék bele – valamely komoly antizene-darabot. A zene nem boldogulhat mint anti-művészet, mivel gyökerében és radikálisan absztrakt, míg a többi művészet mind alapvetően a valóság képével foglalkozik – szavakkal, formákkal, történetekkel, az emberi testtel. És amikor egy kiváló művész a valóság képét absztrahálja, vagy másik, látszatra nem odaillő képpel kapcsolja össze, vagy illogikus módon vegyíti – ez a költői formába öntés. Ebben az értelemben Joyce poétikusabb, mint Zola, Balanchine, mint Petipa, Nakobov, mint Tolsztoj, Fellini, mint Griffith. De John Cage nem költőibb Mahlernál, s Boulez sem Debussynél.

„Мисля, че животът крие повече от онова, което знаем или някога ще узнаем. Религиозното, мистичното, психичното, чудодейното; съдбата, предназначението, съвпадението. Страната на име Неизвестното. Зная, че понякога ми се смеят и подиграват за готовността да възприемам всичко от А до Я, от астрологията до ясновидството, от Юнг до спиритическите сеанси и кристалните топки, но обещанието за чудеса ме омайва. Подигравачите и мърморковците не ме спират. Нека си живеят, вкоренени в земното, онези, които считат, че всичко трябва да има прагматично научно обяснение. Не желая да познавам хора, които не могат да кажат; „Представяш ли си!“ в отговор на някакво вдъхновяващо благоговение, необяснено явление. Мисленето наужким е най-важният вид мислене. Човек се развива натам, накъдето може да се развие, без да взема предвид вече известното.

Se vieron el sábado siguiente y todos los demás sábados de otoño, con Ferguson desplazándose en autobús desde Nueva Jersey hasta la terminal de Port Authority y cogiendo luego la línea IRT del metro hasta la calle Setenta y dos Oeste, donde se apeaba para luego caminar tres manzanas en dirección norte y otras dos en dirección oeste hasta el piso de los Schneiderman en Riverside Drive esquina con la Setenta y cinco, apartamento 4B, que se había convertido en la dirección más importante de la ciudad de Nueva York. Salidas a diversos sitios, casi siempre los dos solos, de vez en cuando con amigos de Amy, cine extranjero en el Thalia de Broadway esquina con la calle Noventa y cinco, Godard, Kurosawa, Fellini, visitas al Met, al Frick, al Museo de Arte Moderno, los Knicks en el Garden, Bach en el Carnegie Hall, Beckett, Pinter y Ionesco en pequeños teatros del Village, todo muy cerca y a mano, y Amy siempre sabía adónde ir y qué hacer, la princesa guerrera de Manhattan le enseñaba cómo orientarse por la ciudad, que rápidamente llegó a convertirse en su ciudad también. No obstante, pese a todas las cosas que hacían y todo lo que veían, lo mejor de aquellos sábados era sentarse a charlar en las cafeterías, la primera serie de incesantes diálogos que continuarían durante años, conversaciones que a veces se convertían en feroces discusiones cuando sus puntos de vista diferían, la buena o mala película que acababan de ver, la acertada o desacertada idea política que uno de ellos acababa de expresar, pero a Ferguson no le importaba discutir con ella, no le interesaban las chicas facilonas, las pánfilas llenas de mohínes que sólo perseguían imaginarios ritos amorosos, eso era amor de verdad, complejo, hondo y lo bastante flexible para albergar la discordia apasionada, y cómo no podría amar a aquella chica, con su implacable y penetrante mirada y su risa inmensa, retumbante, la excitable e intrépida Amy Schneiderman, que un día iba a ser corresponsal de guerra, revolucionaria o doctora entregada a los pobres. Tenía dieciséis años, casi diecisiete. La pizarra vacía ya no lo estaba tanto, pero aún era lo bastante joven para saber que podía borrar las palabras ya escritas, suprimirlas y empezar de nuevo siempre que su espíritu la impulsara a ello.

Често ме питат дали Марчело е вторият ми Аз. Марчело Мастрояни е много неща за много хора. За мен той не е вторият ми Аз. Той е Марчело, актьор, който пасва съвършено на онова, което искам от него, и може да се огъва на всички страни подобно на човека-„каучук“. Като приятел е съвършен – той е от онези приятели, които се срещат в английската художествена литература, където от благородни съображения мъже, които са едни за други като братя, залагат живота си един за друг. Нашето приятелство е такова или там както си го представяте – защото ще трябва да си го представите, тук като в реалния живот, освен когато работим заедно, никога, ама практически почти никога не се виждаме. Вероятно това е една от причините приятелството ни да е съвършено, понеже всеки от двамата може да си въобразява, че другият е винаги на разположение. Не сме се проверявали никога,. Вярвам в него повече, отколкото на себе си, защото знам, че аз самият всъщност не съм приятел, на когото би могло да се разчита. Може би Марчелино ми вярва повече, защото познава по-добре себе си. Помежду ни никога не е имало неискреност. Играем, но без претенции. В искрената игра си има своеобразна истина.

„Понякога се срещахме по ресторантите. Той винаги ядеше много. Забелязах това, защото изпитвам естествен афинитет към хората, които обичат да ядат. Винаги можете да различите онзи, който обича да яде, не по количеството храна, което поглъща, а по густото, с което го прави, понеже има вид на човек, изпитващ истинско удоволствие. Затова отначало забелязах Мастрояни именно поради тази наша ресторантска хармония с него.

Понякога завиждам на живописците. Когато ме посети Балтус, той ми каза, че ми завиждал, задето правя изкуство, което се движи. Аз пък му завиждах, защото можеше да работи всеки божи ден от живота си. Трябваха ми само бои, платно и малко супа.

… the conjunction of Beethoven’s last symphonic masterpiece with crucial works or events in the lives of so many other outstanding artists made 1824 a particularly fertile year…. The fact that the Ninth Symphony, Byron’s death, Pushkin’s Boris Gudunov and “To the Sea,” Delacroix’s Massacres at Chios, Stendhal’s Racine and Shakespeare, and Heine’s Harz Journey and North Sea Pictures all futhered, in one way or another, Romanticism’s rear-guard action against repression underlines the significance of that speck of time. And perhaps these brief glances at those artists and their states of being at that moment will have helped to remind readers—as they reminded this author—that spiritual and intellectual liberation requires endless internal warfare against everything in ourselves that narrows us down instead of opening us up and that replaces questing with certitude. Nearly two centuries later, the world still overflows with people who believe that truth not only exists but that it is simple and straightforward, and that their truths—be they political, religious, philosophical, moral, or social—constitute The Truth. Federico Fellini’s characterization, a generation ago, of the fascist mentality as “a refusal to deepen one’s individual relationship to life, out of laziness, prejudice, unwillingness to inconvenience oneself, and presumptuousness” describes the obedient adherents of most prefabricated beliefs, everywhere and at all times. The others—the disobedient, the nonadherents, those who think that the world is not easily explained and that human experience does not fit into tidy little compartments—are still fighting the eternally unwinnable War of Liberation. Until our sorry species bombs or gluts itself into oblivion, the skirmishing will continue, and what Beethoven and company keep telling us, from the ever-receding yet ever-present past, is that the struggle must continue (pp. 110-11).

Directed By: Federico Fellini Starring: Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimee

This life is so full of confusion already, that there's no need to add chaos to chaos. (...) Destroying is better than creating when we're not creating those few, truly necessary things. But then is there anything so clear and right that it deserves to live in this world? (...) We're smothered by images, words and sounds that have no right to exist, coming from, and bound for, nothingness. Of any artist truly worth the name we should ask nothing except this act of faith: to learn silence. (...) Our true mission is... sweeping away the thousands of miscarriages that everyday... obscenely... try to come to the light. And you would actually dare leave behind you a whole film, like a cripple who leaves behind his crooked footprint. Such a monstrous presumption to think that others could benefit from the squalid catalogue of your mistakes! And how do you benefit from stringing together the tattered pieces of your life? Your vague memories, the faces of people that you were never able to love...

Миний сэтгүүлч ч гэж бас юу байх билээ. Гэсэн ч эргэлзээнгүй анхны минь ажил юм даа. Америк кинон дээр гардаг шиг дэгжин хүрэмтэй хүн тэнд байгаагүй ч "Хүссэнээ хийгээд амьдраад байж болох юм" гэсэн итгэл тэр үед л анх төрсөн. Харин Ромд очих тухай бодол намайг амар тайван байлгаагүй тул тэнд дөрөвхөн сар л ажилласан юм.

Харин хүсэн хүлээсээр очиход Ром хот урмыг минь хугалсан удаагүй.

Бас эрт гэрлэхгүй гэхдээ тэднээс зай барьдаг байв. Эцэг эх шигээ ахуй амьдралд хүлэгдэхгүйг, надад зэхсэн хувь тавилан хаа нэгтээ бий бол түүнийгээ олохыг хүссэн. Эрх чөлөө гэдэг надад юм бүхнээс үнэтэй.

Өөрийгөө олны анхаарлын төвд байгааг мэдрэх бүртээ би улам бүрэг болж, хоолоо олохын тулд л ийм зүйл хийж байна гэж бодохоос дотор зарсхийдэг.

Хүмүүс надаас "Жаргалтай сайхан амьдарсан уу?" гэж асуух нь олонтаа. Би үргэлж "Илүү хүсэх юмгүй. Санаснаараа, бүрэн дүүрэн амьдарсан." гэж хариулдаг. Аз жаргал гэдэг хөдөлшгүй, хэзээд зуураад байж болох барьцтай эд биш юм даа.

Зөвхөн өөрийгөө баясгах гэж кино хийдэг гэсэн шүүмжлэлийг би олонтаа сонсож байлаа. Тэгж дүгнэсэн хүмүүст би харин ч талархана. Учир нь тэдний зөв юм. Хүн бүрийн санаанд нийцэх гэж хичээвэл хэний ч сэтгэлд хүрэхгүй, хүссэнээрээ хийж байж л кино бүтээнэ. Тэгэхээр эхлээд өөрийнхөө сэтгэлд нийцэх, өөрөө өөртөө таалагдах нь чухал юм. Миний сэтгэлд хүрсэн зүйл бусдад ч мөн таалагдвал ажлаа үргэлжлүүлж болно гэсэн үг.

Өрөөлд таалагдахыг хичээдэг хүн хэзээ ч урлан бүтээгч болж чадахгүй. Тийм хүн өөрийн гэсэн бүхнээ энд тэнд зольж явсаар эцэст нь өөрийгөө нэг мөр алдана.

Each moment presented may be your last, so fill it up until you vomit

Beethoven and Paul McCartney cited dreams as the spark behind some of their musical compositions (including McCartney’s famous “Yesterday”). Some of the most recognizable sequences in film—sections of Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, Fellini’s 8 ½, Richard Linklater’s Waking Life—are translations of the directors’ dreams. Mary Shelley credited dreams with inspiring Frankenstein; E. B. White with Stuart Little.

L’aspetto piú affascinante quando si analizzano opere del passato è la necessaria inconsapevolezza, in chi le ha immaginate e realizzate, del capolavoro. Per quanto fossero Fellini e Visconti, per quanto venissero da altri due capolavori − ma pieni di problemi, attacchi, censure − è impossibile percepire la grandezza che avrà qualcosa che si sta facendo. E poiché succede in qualsiasi caso, è successo anche con Otto e mezzo e Il Gattopardo. Del resto, guai se fosse il contrario − se chi sta realizzando un’opera la immaginasse già come un capolavoro, avesse già la percezione chiara di ciò che sarà. Tutto questo riguarda anche coloro che le recepiscono, sul momento. I contemporanei: i critici, gli spettatori, i colleghi. Anche se qualcuno uscendo dal cinema ha detto: che capolavoro!, lo ha detto con quella inconsapevolezza della contemporaneità; e probabilmente lo ha detto tante altre volte, e per opere che nel tempo hanno dimostrato di non avere altrettanto valore.

uno dei grandi libri della critica letteraria, Mimesis di Erich Auerbach: fu scritto durante la guerra, a Costantinopoli, dove non esistevano biblioteche fornite per studi sui testi europei, e dove non esistevano nemmeno edizioni critiche fidate dei testi. E Auerbach dice: «Del resto, è possibilissimo che il libro debba la sua esistenza proprio alla mancanza d’una grande biblioteca specializzata; se avessi potuto far ricerche, informarmi su tutto quello che è stato scritto intorno a tanti argomenti, forse non mi sarei piú indotto a scriverlo. Sto cercando di dire che forse è addirittura grazie a quella sua parziale ma sperimentata superficialità che Fellini ha concepito un film cosí ambizioso con il rischio di sbagliarlo.

Sa meeldid mulle." "Sitta ma sulle meeldin." "Sa oled ilus." "Persse see ilu.

Kes teab, kust see vastikus sita vastu. - See on niisamuti meie produkt nagu mõttedki! (Carlini, otsides kuivkäimla vedela ja paksu sisse sukeldudes krahvinna sõrmust)

Tallis mängivad Bobo ja ta vend eesliga. Poisid toksivad luuavarrega looma munade pihta. Nad naeravad. Eesel lööb takka üles, kabjahoobid lähevad aina raevukamaks. Läbi väikese ukse talli tagaseinas on näha tibudega kana mööda minemas. Bobo kutsub venda. "Tule. Situme siia ja pühime siis tibudega perset." Nad jooksevad uksest välja. Kumbki püüab kinni kolm-neli tibu.

I became burdened…with useless baggage that I now want off my back. I want to uneducate myself of…worthless concepts, so that I may return to a virginal personality…to a rebirth of real intent and of real self. Then I won’t be lost in a collective whole that fits nobody because it’s made to fit everybody. Wherever I go, from the corner of my eye, I see…people moving in groups, like schools of fish… This is one of the things I fear more than anything else. I loathe collectivity. Man’s greatness and nobility consists in standing free of the mass. How he extricates himself from it is his own personal problem and private struggle.

One of the greatest handicaps is to fear a mistake. You have stopped yourself. You have to move freely into the arena, not just to wait for the perfect situation, the perfect moment... if you have to make a mistake, it's better to make a mistake of action than one of inaction.

The influence of the mid-to-late-Sixties English counterculture is clearer in The Beatles’ music than in that of any of their rivals. This arose from a conflux of links, beginning with their introduction by Brian Epstein to the film director Richard Lester, continuing with McCartney’s friendships with Miles and John Dunbar, and culminating in the meeting of Lennon and Yoko Ono. Through Lester and his associates - who included The Beatles’ comedy heroes Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers - the group’s consciousness around the time of Sgt. Pepper was permeated by the anarchic English fringe theatre, with its penchant for Empire burlesque (e.g., The Alberts, Ivor Cutler, Milligan and Antrobus’s The Bed Sitting Room). This atmosphere mingled with contemporary strains from English Pop Art and Beat poetry; the ‘happenings’ and experimental drama of The People Show, Peter Brook’s company, and Julian Beck’s Living Theatre; the improvised performances of AMM and what later became the Scratch Orchestra; the avant-garde Euro-cinema of Fellini and Antonioni; and the satire at Peter Cook’s Establishment club and in his TV show with Dudley Moore, Not Only . . . But Also (in which Lennon twice appeared). From the cultural watershed of 1965-6 onwards, The Beatles’ American heroes of the rock-and-roll Fifties gave way to a kaleidoscopic mélange of local influences from the English fringe arts and the Anglo-European counterculture as well as from English folk music and music-hall.

In Rome, my mother inevitably became a protagonist of the snapshots taken by roaming freelance photographers, later dubbed “paparazzi” after Walter Santesso’s character, Paparazzo, in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita.

Quisiera decirles, muchachos, que cada cual cuenta sólo aquello que conoce.

but I remained bouncy and immune throughout – by the early eighteenth century the Electors’ tombs are entirely out of control and indeed strongly anticipatory of the fine moment in Fellini’s Roma where the Vatican holds an excitingly modern ecclesiastical fashion show featuring neon-clad, roller-skating priests and entire reliquary skeletons of saints hanging like the Andrews Sisters from the sides of a jeep. Just

Cinema is a collaboration where everyone tries to erase everyone else’s work.

different language is a different vision of life.” —Federico Fellini

This morning I met a woman with a golden nose. She was riding in a Cadillac with a monkey in her arms. Her driver stopped and she asked me, “Are you Fellini?” With this metallic voice she continued, “Why is it that in your movies, there is not even one normal person?” —FEDERICO FELLINI

A different language is a different vision of life.” —Federico Fellini

A new generation of American directors, reared on Fellini and Godard, was itching to rewrite the rules: Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich.

In un documentario Fellini a un certo punto usa questa espressione: la vitale confusione della vita. E una volta a Simenon che lo sta intervistando risponde: «In fin dei conti lei e io abbiamo sempre raccontato delle sconfitte. Credo che l’arte sia questo, la possibilità di trasformare la sconfitta in vittoria, la tristezza in felicità».

Vivere la vita come un blocco unico e coerente, vivere la vita come esplosa in tanti frammenti. È la storia della volpe e del riccio di un frammento di Archiloco, e su cui Isaiah Berlin ha costruito un saggio. «La volpe sa molte cose, ma il riccio ne sa una grande». Berlin ne fa uno spartiacque degli scrittori, dei pensatori, e dell’umanità in generale. Gli esseri umani si dividono in volpi e ricci. Ricci sono quelli che si rifanno a un unico principio ispiratore, sulla base di una visione morale del mondo. Volpi sono quelli che si appassionano a modelli diversi e contraddittori, senza un faro etico. Per esempio, ricci secondo Berlin sono Platone, Lucrezio, Pascal, Hegel, Dostoevskij e Proust. E volpi: Erodoto, Aristotele, Montaigne, Erasmo, Molière, Goethe, Puškin, Balzac e Joyce. Otto e mezzo racconta che Guido è volpe. Il Gattopardo racconta che don Fabrizio è riccio. Tutti e due concludono il film accettando la propria essenza. E forse, Fellini, Mastroianni sono volpi; Visconti, Lancaster sono ricci. Non so, potrebbe essere cosí. Ma di sicuro, questi due film contemporanei rappresentano i due aspetti dell’umanità, secondo questo principio. Insieme, riempiono tutti i tasselli possibili.

Questo apice e questo inizio della decadenza è rappresentato da due film che sono il punto piú alto del momento d’oro ma anche, essendo il punto piú alto, il primo passo verso la decadenza; ma la cosa piú interessante è che sia Otto e mezzo, sia Il Gattopardo sono dei film decadenti che hanno al centro dei personaggi decadenti, che si pongono il problema della fine di un’era. Nel Gattopardo si tratta della fine di un’epoca storica. In Otto e mezzo c’è la fine della giovinezza (o la paura della fine della potenza) per un individuo e soprattutto per un artista. Uno non ha piú niente da dare al mondo, l’altro non ha piú niente da dire al mondo. Questo raccontano i due film che segnano la fine dell’età d’oro del cinema italiano e l’inizio della sua decadenza. Allo stesso tempo, rappresentano la risposta piú concreta all’inizio della crisi e alla concorrenza della tv: lo sfarzo della messinscena del Gattopardo, la grandiosità della messinscena libera e autoriale di Otto e mezzo. Sono due risposte produttive molto concrete, che infatti danno risultati sia di prestigio sia commerciale. Ma quella potenza produttiva non si vedrà piú; già Il sorpasso, loro contemporaneo, sceglie costi piú abbordabili con risultati ottimi. Da ora in poi, il cinema italiano non si permetterà piú facilmente film spettacolari; né Visconti e Fellini riusciranno a ottenere produzioni del genere senza lotta e sacrificio, e comunque non a questo livello. In piú, a suggellare la veridicità di questo ragionamento, la doppietta Sodoma e Gomorra e Il Gattopardo, cosí onerosi, distrugge la Titanus, che per riprendersi dovrà affidarsi a musicarelli e film con Franco Franchi e Ciccio Ingrassia. È la fine di un’epoca d’oro del cinema italiano. È la fine di un’epoca per don Fabrizio e la sua classe aristocratica. È la fine di un’epoca per Guido e la sua creatività senza freni. Il Gattopardo in particolare rappresenta la reazione del cinema al cambiamento che sta per avvenire: con il grande schermo, il colore, le grandi scenografie, è il kolossal italiano che si contrappone al decadimento del cinema. Lombardo ne parlerà cosí: «Il film è piú di Via col vento, è una cosa enorme. È favoloso. È difficilissimo per un film che tutti gli elementi siano contemporaneamente efficienti allo stesso modo. Io credo che Il Gattopardo segnerà un’epoca nel cinema italiano. Per me come produttore penso che nella mia vita di produttore mi basterà di avere fatto Il Gattopardo».

Questa disponibilità all’imprevisto, Fellini la teorizza: «Tutto fa parte del film. E un’altra cosa vorrei dire: non esistono condizioni ideali per la realizzazione di un film, o meglio: le condizioni sono sempre ideali, perché sono quelle che in definitiva ti hanno permesso di fare il film cosí come lo stai facendo; la malattia di un attore, che obbliga alla sua sostituzione, la scaltra testardaggine di un produttore, un incidente che arresta la lavorazione: non sono degli ostacoli, ma gli elementi stessi di cui il film viene via via componendosi. Ciò che è finisce sempre per prendere il sopravvento, per sostituirsi a ciò che avrebbe potuto o dovuto essere. Gli imprevisti non solo fanno parte del viaggio, ma sono il viaggio stesso».

Una volta, sul set di Lattuada e Fellini, Luci del varietà, tutti quelli che avevano in mano la sceneggiatura avevano letto che c’era scritto: alba livida. E quindi bisognava fare l’alba livida. Da immagine letteraria, l’alba livida pian piano aveva cominciato a trasformarsi in una cosa da fare, una cosa concreta. L’ostinazione con cui una troupe cerca di realizzare quello che è scritto in una sceneggiatura, rende le parole della sceneggiatura un oggetto concreto nella vita di un set. E cosí, ogni tanto, mentre si girava, qualcuno irrompeva negli studi e urlava: «L’alba livida! Ce sèmo! Fóri tutti! C’è l’alba livida!» E per giorni, con preoccupazione, ognuno dei macchinisti della troupe diceva a Lattuada o a Fellini: «Voi vede’ che manco stamattina potemo fa’ ’st’alba livida? Er mese scorso semo stati pieni d’albe livide!» Fare l’alba livida. Ecco cosa è il cinema.