Not only is this monumental Criterion Collection release “essential” Federico Fellini (1920-1993), it also represents the large majority of films in the Italian maestro’s oeuvre, missing only I Clowns, Fellini’s Casanova, Orchestra Rehearsal, City of Women, Ginger and Fred, The Voice of the Moon, and a couple of segments from anthology films. Fourteen features from 1950-1987 are included in this handsomely packaged set, which kicks off with the early entries Variety Lights (1950) and The White Sheik (1952), followed by the filmmaker’s more assured I Vitelloni (1953), a portrait of “young bucks” coping with early adulthood.
But the Fellini knew and loved by most begins with the Oscar-winning La Strada (1954), starring Anthony Quinn as brutal, insensitive strong man Zampano, who performs his chain-breaking act in villages across the Italian countryside. Giulietta Masina (Fellini’s wife) delivers a heartrending performance as Gelsomina, the spirited waif who is purchased—and badly mistreated—by Zampano.
After Il Bidone (1955), a lesser slice-of-con-men-life drama, Fellini struck Oscar gold again with Nights of Cabiria (1957), the story of a waif-like prostitute named Cabiria (Masina), whose taste in men is decidedly unlucky, but whose joie de vivre is unshakable (and captured in one of the most luminescent cinematic finales ever).
Fellini’s growing taste for grand spectacle became evident in his next film, La Dolce Vita (1960), a picaresque portrait of Rome, starring Fellini alter ego Marcello Mastroianni as Marcello Rubini, a womanizing would-be serious writer who can't seem to raise himself above the level of scandal sheet hack, racing back and forth across the Eternal City to cover a myriad of strange events.
Mastroianni returns in Fellini’s Oscar-winning autobiographical masterpiece 8 1/2 (1963), playing harried director Guido, who simultaneously tries to direct a new film and his life, constantly intermingling the two, and successfully managing neither, as presented in a series of dreamlike reveries and reminiscences prompted by the most bizarre connections.
Juliet of the Spirits (1965), Fellini’s first color film, stars Masina as Juliet, a neglected wife whose suspicion of her husband’s infidelities leads her on a journey of exploration that blurs (and occasionally obliterates) the demarcation between reality and fantasy.
Unfortunately, Fellini’s next two films—Fellini Satyricon (1969) and Fellini’s Roma (1972)—serve up a bloated spectacle that pushes character and plots out to the fringes. Satyricon, based on the titular fragmentary novel by first-century Roman writer Petronius about decadent life under Nero, plunges viewers into a hellish moral landscape where gluttony, sexual debauchery, and sloth are the order of the day.
Through these decadent tableaus wanders one utterly vacuous boy toy (Martin Potter), whose sexual journey from pique over losing one rosy-lipped male minor, to impotent dalliances with Italian beauties, to a Viagra-like resurrection courtesy of a mythical matron with mammaries the size of Manhattan, does not lend itself to easy exegesis.
Roma is somewhat better, particularly in the opening half-hour as it wonderfully celebrates Rome’s vibrant, bustling pre-WWII street life, but it eventually runs out of steam as it vacillates between an idealized past (Fellini’s childhood and early adult years) and chaotic present (’70s Rome).
Fellini’s third Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film, Amarcord (1973), marks a triumphant return to form, serving up a gorgeously picturesque, fictionalized paean to Fellini's childhood hometown of Rimini in pre-WWII Fascist Italy, filtered through the director's larger-than-life imagination (full of those surreal touches that eventually gave rise to the adjective Felliniesque).
And the Ship Sails On (1983) charts the 1914 journey of an ocean liner carrying opera singers and aficionados who are on a mission to celebrate a late diva when real-world events intrude—in the form of Serbian refugees thrown into disarray following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, an act that ultimately sparked World War I. Consciously breaking the fourth wall throughout, the film wraps with an incredible tracking shot revealing that the foregoing nautical adventure all took place on a soundstage.
Finally, Intervista (1987), made partially to celebrate major Italian film studio Cinecitta’s 50th anniversary, is a film within a film in which a Japanese TV crew interviews “maestro” Fellini as he goes through the motions of casting and directing a new feature loosely based on Fellini’s own entrance into filmmaking (as played by Fellini protégé Sergio Rubini). Toward the end, Mastroianni (playing himself) and Fellini visit the home of Anita Ekberg, and in a wonderful segment, Mastroianni and Ekberg watch a scene of themselves in La Dolce Vita—a fitting metafictional end to this collection of Fellini films that increasingly test and ultimately redefine the boundaries of cinema.
Presented with new 4K digital restorations for 11 of the films, the bounteous extras include audio commentaries on six films, Fellini’s short film Toby Dammit (1968) and the TV film Fellini: A Director’s Notebook (1969), the feature documentaries Fellini: I’m a Born Liar (2002) and Marcello Mastroianni: I Remember (1997), a four-part 1960 TV interview with Fellini by filmmaker André Delvaux, behind-the-scenes documentaries, the 2004 documentary Giulietta Masina: The Power of a Smile, archival interviews (video and audio) with Fellini stars and collaborators, video essays, and two illustrated books with notes on the films and essays.
Although Fellini’s films can be uneven, this collection underscores his genius in making cinematic magic while presenting a cavalcade of some of the most memorable faces in the history of film. Highly recommended. Editor’s Choice.