engl 2020 themes in literature and culture: the grotesque il poeta : federico fellini
TRANSCRIPT
8 1/2 (1963)
“Down, definitely down!
Fellini’s MoviesENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture:
The Grotesque
Fellini Receives an Honorary Oscar
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
“the suspicion--the extreme test of his topicality, the total congruence of the director and his time--that Fellini, a man who has exhausted himself and his life in images, doesn't exist.”
--Liliana Betti on Federico Fellini
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
“When you work with Federico you only learn to discover that there’s nothing to discover.”—Lina Wertmuller, assistant director on 8 ½ and director of Seven Beauties, Swept Away, Which Way is Up?
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
“A flight of fantasy, whether in dreams or daydreams, is no mere sleight of mind. But only children will accept it as being equally as profound as the arbitrary awareness we are taught to regard as reality, and hence, only they are nurtured by it. Later, of course, many of us comprehend our self-imposed poverty and try to double back, but the bread crumbs are always missing and our failures are immense. A true belief in the validity of non-ordinary reality-with all that it can teach us-seems beyond the capabilities of every practicing adult, with the possible exception of Federico Fellini.”
---Garry Trudeau
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
Fellini himself once even proclaimed the need for a “cine-mendacity” to replace “cinema-verite” because “a lie is always more interesting than the truth” (Playboy 58).
Cine-Mendacity
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
ci·ne·ma ve·ri·té noun \ˈsi-nə-mə-ˌver-i-ˈtā; si-nā-ˈmä-ve-rē-ˈtā\: the art or technique of filming a motion picture so as to convey candid realism
“Federico only blushes when he tells the truth.”—Giuletta Masina (Fellini’s wife)
Cine-Mendacity
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
David Thomson, to cite an extreme example, has ruthlessly assaulted Fellini (in his Biographical Dictionary of Film) as an "obsessional vacuous poseur . . . a half-baked, play-acting pessimist, with no capacity for tragedy," whose films are a "doodling in chaos."
Cine-Mendacity
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
“Fellini is not honest, he is not dishonest, he is just Fellini. . . . he has no limits; he's just like quicksilver--all over the place. I have never seen anybody like that before. . . . He is enormously intuitive; he is creative; he is an enormous force. He is burning inside with such heat. Collapsing . . . . The heat from his creative mind, it melts him. . . . He is rich.”
—Ingmar Bergman (Simon 221-22)
Cine-Mendacity
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
Fellini the Autobiographer
Fellini the Autobiographer
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
“My work can't be anything other than a testimony of what I am looking for in life. It is a mirror of my searching . . . for myself freed. In this respect, I think, there is no cleavage or difference of content or style in all my films. From first to last, I have struggled to free myself from the past, from the education laid upon me as a child” ("Interview," Playboy 58).
Fellini the Autobiographer
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
"If I set out to make a movie about a fillet of sole, it would turn out to be about me" (Costello 36).
Fellini the Autobiographer
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
“The pearl is the oyster’s autobiography” (Walter 36).--Federico Fellini
Fellini the Autobiographer
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
“At bottom, I am always making the same film. I am telling the story of characters in search of themselves, in search of a more authentic source of life, of conduct, of behavior, that will more closely relate to the true roots of their individuality” (Kast 182-83).
Fellini the Autobiographer
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
Fellini’s Creative-Life
Fellini’s Creative Life
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
For the "real," he has explained, is not what we assume it to be; “it is neither an enclosure nor a panorama that has just a single surface. A landscape, for example, has several textures, and the deepest, the one that can be revealed only by poetry, is no less real. It is said that what I wish to show behind the epiderm of things and people is the unreal. It is called my taste for the mysterious. I shall readily accept this description if you will use a capital "M." For me the mysterious is man, the long irrational lines of his spiritual life, love, salvation. . . . For me, the key to the mystery--which is to say, God--is to be found at the center of the successive layers of reality . . .” (Murray 35).
Fellini’s Creative Life
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
“For me the only real artist is the visionary because he bears witness to his own reality. A visionary--Van Gogh, for instance--is a profound realist. That wheat field with the black sun is his; only he saw it. There can't be greater realism” (Samuels 226).
Fellini’s Creative LifeENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture:
The Grotesque
“[Fellini] creates the way he sees" (Hughes 157). --Dadaist/Surrealist Hans Richter
Fellini’s Creative Life
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
“My films happen because I sign a contract. I get an advance I don’t want to repay so I have to make the film. I’ll say it again; you may think I’m being facetitious, but it’s absolutely true. I don’t believe in total creative freedom. A creator, if he is given total creative freedom, would tend, I think, to do nothing at all. The greatest danger for an artist is total freedom, to be able to wait for inspiration, that whole romantic discourse. Psychologically, the artist is an offender. He has a childish need to offend, and to be able to offend, you need parents, a headmaster, a high priest, the police. . . . I need opposition, someone who annoys me, someone who opposes me, to work up the energy that I need to fight for what I’m doing. I need an enemy.”
Federico Fellini in Damian Pettigrew’s documentaryFellini: I’m a Born Liar
Fellini’s Creative Life
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
“One day I met an angel who stretched out his hand to me. I followed him, but after a short time I left him and went back. He stopped and waited at the same place for me. I see him again in difficult moments and he says to me, ‘Wait, wait,’ just as I do to everyone. I am afraid that when I call him one day, I shall not find him. It is the angel who has always awakened me from my spiritual torpor. When I was a boy, he was the incarnation of an imaginary world, and then he became the symbol of a vital moral need” (quoted in Murray 75).
Fellini’s Creative Life
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
Fellini-Grotesque
When infamous critic Leslie Fiedler turns to the subject of the grotesque in his Freaks: Myths and Images of the Secret Self, it is, of course, Fellini he thinks of.
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
“Fellini is the patron saint of the freaks of Rome.”--Theologian Harvey Cox
Fellini-Grotesque
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
Fellini-Grotesque
“For the hard of hearing you shout, for the blind you draw large and startling figures.”—Flannery O’Connor on the reason behind her use of the grotesque.
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
The "grotesque" body depicted in pre-Renaissance art in general and Gargantua and Pantagruel in particular is one which, according to Bakhtin, unashamedly "fecundates and is fecundated, that gives birth and is born, devours and is devoured, drinks, defecates, is sick and dying.”
Fellini-Grotesque
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
According to Bakhtin, the bodily canon seeks to:1. close all orifices; 2. stop all mergers of the body with the external
world; 3. hide all signs of inner life processes and bodily
functions (hence, for example, prohibitions against farting or belching in public);
4. ignore all evidence of fecundation and pregnancy;
5. eliminate protrusions; 6. present an image of a completed, rational,
individual body.
Fellini-Grotesque
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
Fellini-Grotesque
On the way into the seminar room to defend my doctoral dissertation, a skeptical member of my committee, with whom I had previously talked about doing a dissertation on Native American literature, sarcastically asked how my impossibly interdisciplinary diss had managed to avoid any comparisons between Fellini and Native American culture. "Now that you mention it," I responded, pulling out of my backpack a book I had just checked out from the library . . .
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
Fellini-Grotesque
Jamake Highwater's Ritual of the Wind: North American Indian Ceremonies, Music, and Dances. I showed him a passage in which Highwater, considering the “contrariness” of American Indian sacred clowns, known for their scatological and obscene parodies of tribal holy men, naturally thinks of Fellini when he seeks to explain the revulsion missionaries experienced confronting the clowns’ behavior:
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
Fellini-Grotesque
“The shock techniques of Dadaism and the late films of Federico Fellini, have a great deal in common with the contrariness of sacred clowns, especially those of the Southwest.”
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
“When I introduce rather odd characters into my films, people say I’m exaggerating, that I’m “doing a Fellini.” But it’s just the opposite; in comparison with what happens to me all the time, I feel I’m softening things, moderating reality to a remarkable degree” (Strich 52).
Fellini-Grotesque
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
“[The ideal] imposes impossible standards and unattainable aspirations that can only impede the spontaneous growth of a normal human being, and may conceivably destroy him. You must have experienced this yourself. There arrives a moment in life when you discover that what you've been told at home, at school, or in church is simply not true. You discover that it binds your authentic self, your instinct, your true growth. And this opens up a schism, creates a conflict that must eventually be resolved or succumbed to. In all forms of neurosis there is this clash between certain forms of idealization in a moral sense and a contrary aesthetic form. “—Federico Fellini, Playboy Interview
Fellini-Grotesque
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
“For me there’s no difference between a scent and a stink. Perhaps if we’d been taught that a stink is nice and scent nasty, the world would see things in a different light. God knows why there’s all this fuss about a bit of shit! It’s a human product, just as much as our thoughts are!”-- Eau de Cologne in Amarcord: Portrait of a Town (36)
Fellini-Grotesque
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
In Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, Marco Polo regales Kublai Khan with the story--one of five in the book designated as tales of “Cities & the Sky”--of Perinthia, a metropolis which, from its very inception, had been intended as a utopia, its ordering cosmologically inspired.
In Perinthia, we learn, all aspects of the city are laid out according to the highest wisdom of astrology and astronomy. Buildings, for example, are cited in such a way as to receive “the proper influence of the favoring constellations.” The astronomers who oversaw Perinthia’s development from the ground up guaranteed the city that it would, without question, “reflect the harmony of the firmament.”
Fellini-Grotesque
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The
Grotesque
Reality, of course, turns out to be anything but ideal. For, Marco Polo informs us,
In Perinthia’s streets and squares today you encounter cripples, dwarfs, hunchbacks, obese men, bearded women. But the worse cannot be seen: guttural howls are heard from cellars and lofts, where families hide children with three heads or six legs. (144) Such grotesques bring the astronomer/architects of Perinthea to an intellectual impasse, one that crops up all through Calvino’s splendid fictions/thought experiments:
Fellini-GrotesqueENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture:
The Grotesque
Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong and their figures are unable to describe the heavens, or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters. (145) In the grotesque cinematic world of Federico Fellini--Calvino’s contemporary, countryman, and close friend--clearly the second alternative seems the only viable one, and yet Fellini does not embrace it out of deductive necessity. Filmed on location in Perinthia, his movies celebrate the revelation that “the order of gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters.” They bring us “news from Africa.”
Fellini-Grotesque
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
• Variety Lights (1950)• The White Sheik (1951)• I Vitelloni (1953)• Love in the City (1953)• La Strada (1954)• Il Bidone (1955)• The Nights of Cabiria (1957)• La Dolce Vita (1960)• 8 1/2 (1963)• Juliet of the Spirits (1965)• Spirits of the Dead (1969)• Fellini-Satyricon (1969)• The Clowns (1971)
• Fellini's Roma (1972)• Amarcord (1974)• Fellini's Casanova (1976)• Orchestra Rehearsal (1979)• City of Women (1980)• And the Ship Sails On (1984)• Ginger and Fred (1986)• Intervista (1987)• The Voice of the Moon (1989)
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
The Jungian psychologist James Hillman has suggested that artists be thought of as obsessional neurotics--like Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare’s play, perpetually washing and washing her hands—”Out, out damn spot”—fixated on a particular sign or symbol. Or, they are like the veteran who has lost a limb in battle and returns again and again to the scene of his loss. The artist obsesses over a decisive moment or theme or symbol, following a repetition compulsion until he or she gets it right—finds a way to make sense of it via story or image.
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The
Grotesque
Amore in città (Love in the City) (1953)—contributed “Un'agenzia matrimoniale” ("A Marriage Agency”)
3.5
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
La Strada (1954) 4.5
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
Fellini: Ending in Despair
La Strada (1954)Watch on YouTube
Il Bidone (1955) 5.5
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
Fellini: Ending in Despair
Il Bidone (1955)Watch on YouTube
The Nights of Cabiria (1957)
6.5
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
Fellini: Ending in Despair
Le Notti di Cabiria (1957)Watch on YouTube
“The death of cinema as a public spectacle”—Richard Schickel
8.5
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
8 1/2 (1963)
The Opening Sequence of 8 1/2 (1963)Watch on YouTube
Juliet of the Spirits (1965)
Fellini’s First Color Film
The Final Sequence of Juliet of the Spirits (1965)
Watch on YouTube
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
Fellini-Satyricon (1969)
“You should take your friends to see Satyricon to see if they are in fact your friends.”—Federico Fellini
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
Spirits of the Dead (1969)—contributed “Toby Dammit”
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
White Clown: overbearing, pompous, rational, bossy, a moralisticAuguste Clown: impetuous, emotion-driven, a screw-up, a sinner
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
Fellini’s Two Clowns Theory
Sigmund Freud C. G. Jung
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
Fellini’s Two Clowns Theory
Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
Fellini’s Two Clowns Theory
Oliver Hardy (right) Stan Laurel (left)
Fellini’s Two Clowns Theory
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
Dick Cheney George W. Bush
Fellini’s Two Clowns Theory
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
Fellini’s Two Clowns Theory
White (l)/Auguste (r)
Bud Abbott—Lou CostelloMoe—Curly (from the Three Stooges)Dan Rowan—Dick MartinDick Smothers—Tom SmothersDean Martin —Jerry LewisJohnny Carson—Ed McMahonRicky Ricardo—Lucy RicardoGracie Burns—George BurnsJerry Seinfeld—George CostanzaRen—StimpyMarge Simpson—Homer SimpsonHillary Clinton—Bill ClintonLeft Brain—Right BrainStephen Colbert—Jon StewartObama—Biden
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
Though there's many a charming townAnd the world abounds with beauty.At evening when the sun goes downAnd finds you in some far-off placeSitting at a stranger's hearth,The Borgo [Rimini] in your heart will seemThe loveliest place on earth.Oh, how will you will live, so far from home? (Amarcord 141)
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
About the time I completed my doctoral dissertation
To Discover That There’s Nothing to Discover: Imagination, the “Open,” and the Movies of Federico Fellini
in the summer of 1978, I wrote Fellini to inquire whether I might visit him in Rome and, perhaps, interview him. (My wife of six months worked for Delta Airlines and we could fly to Italy for next to nothing.)
Fellini responded—a scan of the letter is on the next slide--and invited me to the set of City of Women (1980), but he would not, alas, have time for an interview.
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
I gave Fellini a copy of this poem on the set of City of Women in November 1979 at Cinecitta Studios in Rome. I also gave him a copy of The Doonesbury Chronicles. He took out his glasses there on the set, read the poem, and then touched me on the cheek in a classic Italian gesture of gratitude._______________________________________________
FELLINIESQUE
Consummation of the poet
then the passage winds describeto breadcrumbs in his iris,ambit of quicksilver re-memberings,the center-ring agreements,
inventions of the sesame (Ass Nisi Masa)—"where the eyes move" in amarcord's serenade
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
"true friends" guide,dawns of angelic exercise,the tour of la strada,vouching "Buena sera!"—
the mother's pedagogy,like a peacock's benedictionAuguste reconnoiterings,grotesque sagas
of confessed misogyny,prodigal from wrapping sheetsand afraid of being happy,ascend trees wanting woman—
her glance of shy epiphany
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque
"there the treasures are"little hands of springin seminars of weatherthe photogenic seasons
Nothing to say
6/25/78
On the set that day we met Giulietta Masina, Fellini’s wife (to our greeting she replied, in perfect English, “I am so sorry. I don’t speak English”).
On the way to be seated before filming commenced, Joyce bumped into someone. When we turned to look back we saw that it was Marcello Mastroianni.
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque