Original subtitles

Your first love?

Downloaded from YTS.MX

I'm still waiting for it.

No, let me think about that.

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX

Who was my first love?

Do you mean from a sentimental point of view?

Or my first erotic or sexual experience?

Both, if they were different things.

FELLINI'S STORY 3 WALKS DOWN MEMORY LANE

I don't think I put this in my films,

so it should be quite an original contact

with that area of my memories.

Maybe my first love was a —

Or at least the first apparition

that provoked unknown turmoil within me,

different from the feelings caused by chocolate

or Christmas or the puppet theater —

In other words, a different emotion.

I think I felt it for a lay sister

who worked in the San Vincenzo nursery school, run by nuns.

Please, don't be surprised by this rather incredible precocity.

It's the truth. She was a girl...

who wasn't a nun yet. She was probably waiting to become one.

She wore a long black apron,

and perhaps she wasn't wearing anything under it.

She had a young and fresh body that was expanding.

She often caught hold of me and pulled my head against her tummy.

I could feel the soft and elastic bulging of her breasts.

I had no clue

which part of the body they were.

She gave off an intense smell of potato peel,

as she also helped the nuns in the kitchen.

So she would press my head against her chest.

I remember that,

along with the intense smell of salads and sardines,

I could feel a different form of turmoil.

A sort of tickle, a sort of dizziness.

Even today, the smell of potato peel

evokes a slight erotic rapture in me.

The province where I lived, in Rimini,

Chaplin's films were the most relevant, even at the box office.

Therefore, they were usually screened around Christmas.

So Charlot appeared in my childhood alongside the panettone,

the Christmas star, snow, Father Christmas.

Even this way of appearing

associated him with something mythical and eternal.

He belonged among the great myths, and that's how I've always envisioned him.

We awaited his films and accepted them like natural events,

like snow during the winter or the seaside in summertime.

He was accepted like baby Jesus.

I remember a story about a school teacher who was a big fan of Charlot's.

I owe him the first explanations

and analytical interpretations on Chaplin.

He assigned an essay, and a girl won.

I think a panettone was the award.

In her essay, baby Jesus welcomed Charlot in his cradle,

offering to share with him the Bethlehem cradle.

The teacher read her essay aloud.

Thus, also due to these chaotic memories, the figure of Charlot

goes beyond cinema.

I associate him with cinema because of the smoke, the dark, the heat

and the smell of disinfectant they used to spray in the Fulgor theater in Rimini.

So I associate him with cinema as a sort of padded and warm lair,

a kind of amniotic sac where we'd chaotically seek refuge.

Listen well, men and women of Italy!

The hour marked by destiny...

reverberates in the sky of our homeland.

My memories of the war consist of declarations of war.

Nobody was around.

The streets were empty. Many were in Piazza Venezia,

and the rest were at home.

I went to the janitor's quarters, to listen to the radio.

I remember the janitor had a pregnant dog.

So he was uncertain whether he should listen to Mussolini,

who was inviting the people to take up arms,

or if he should tend to his dog, who was moaning in a fruit basket.

The dog was heavily pregnant,

and gave birth to four or five very wet puppies.

I remember Mussolini's voice declaring that we would win...

and the janitor and his daughters carrying these drenched puppies.

I wanted to be a reporter, not a writer.

I didn't want to be a reporter because of reading the newspapers.

As a kid, I only read Corriere dei Piccoli and L'Avventuroso,

which were mostly illustrated.

No. I wanted to be a reporter because I loved Fred MacMurray,

an American actor who usually played the reporter,

and who would enter newsrooms by throwing his hat

and always hitting the coat rack.

I think that gesture,

my admiration for that panning shot

following MacMurray's hat from the doorway

all the way to the coat rack on the opposite side of the room,

ended up defining my career as a director.

Ready! Let's go!

Let's rehearse, please.

One year as a reporter would be very good for anyone,

because it's a great school.

It's a school of discipline, order, selection.

I remember an experience that was like an exam for me.

There was a newspaper in Rome called Il Piccolo.

It came out at noon, and the director had a smoky gray monocle.

It made him look like a character out of Chester Gould's comics.

He looked like a criminal straight out of Dick Tracy.

He had a huge hat and a long scarf down to his feet,

wore gaiters and a big camel-hair coat.

He would come in at 11:30 p.m., always with a different showgirl.

He represented a total fascination.

He was the king. The man you wanted to be.

One day, this man, who evidently didn't like me much,

told me, "It's raining. You need to write an article —

Write me an 80-line article

entitled Welcome, Sweet Rain."

My girlfriend was waiting outside.

The newsroom was near the Triton Fountain, and we were supposed to go to the movies,

to see Lost Horizon with Ronald Colman.

I'd already missed the film four times.

I tried to make up an excuse. I said, "I came in at 6:00 a.m.

Yesterday I went to the printing press."

"Welcome, Sweet Rain. Eighty lines!"

We were two bums. We had no money.

We used to eat in a latteria in Via Frattina,

and the cook had become fond of us.

We ordered spaghetti, and she would hide two steaks and two eggs under the pasta.

Me and Federico Fellini used to go for long walks in the evening.

We spoke of our dreams and ambitions.

I dreamt of becoming a great actor.

He would always say,

"Alberto, I can guarantee that one day I'll be a great director."

Sordi worked as a voice actor on the radio.

He was trying to become a comedian, with almost no success at all.

He claimed his strength were impressions.

He would ask the audience for silence

because his impressions were difficult to pull off.

And then he'd imitate an airplane, a chicken, "Chirp! Chirp!"

Exactly like that!

The audience didn't know what to do. They were indifferent and felt insulted.

When I requested Sordi again, for I vitelloni,

everyone tried to discourage me,

because of his failure as a comedian and the flop of The White Sheik.

They claimed that Sordi not only failed to attract an audience, but repelled it.

Indeed, the opening credits of the first twenty copies,

as well as the early posters, didn't include his name.

In the end, they allowed me to cast him,

as long as I collaborated in denying his presence.

Everything they'll tell you

is probably a lie if you didn't hear it from me.

Do you know why? Because probably it came from him.

You must know that, besides being a great director,

Federico Fellini is also a huge liar.

Perhaps the greatest liar in the world.

But Federico's head is this big!

We would chat, and I got the impression Amidei didn't trust Rossellini much.

"Why aren't you making a film, instead of two short ones?

We could do it, with the story of the priest, plus some kids."

So we worked for a week in my house,

in the kitchen because there was no heating,

me and Amidei wrote this script for Rome, Open City.

But we didn't really believe in what we were doing.

When we wrote Rome, Open City...

SCREENWRITER

...me and Federico didn't get along.

I used to go to his place in the evenings.

He lived with an aunt in a street off Viale Liegi.

It was an old house, with an old dog.

We'd work in the kitchen because it was cold.

We didn't get along.

Federico had lived...

the period of German occupation

in a different way than I and many others had.

He was very bitter. And that made me even more bitter.

Then we started shooting Rome, Open City and he never came on set.

He wasn't interested. I couldn't understand.

I don't know. I thought he was an unresponsive man

when dealing with certain issues.

We didn't spend much time together.

Almost none at all.

Then, suddenly, one day —

I was at a film distribution company, called Fincine,

I'd just finished working on Domenica d'agosto, with Emmer.

I met Federico on the stairs, and he asked if I wanted to watch The White Sheik.

I went to see this film about fumetti.

I was expecting a minor film,

directed with the level of experience of a rookie director.

I was wrong.

How did you discover your desire to direct?

"The desire to direct." I like that.

I didn't really discover it.

I thought I was not at all well suited to become a director.

I thought I wasn't right for the job.

I actually didn't feel any desire to become a director.

So did you find it easy or difficult to take the step to your major debut?

As I was saying,

it all happened because of the rashness of a producer.

His name was Rovere,

and he stumbled across a script I had written with Pinelli.

Antonioni was supposed to direct it.

Antonioni had refused to direct the film at the last minute, as he didn't like it.

I, on the other hand, had defended the script relentlessly,

to ensure that my final installment would be paid.

So the producer said, "Why don't you make it then?"

He asked me just as I was saying it was the best script in the world...

so I was caught off guard and didn't say, "I'm just a screenwriter."

So I basically found myself forced to become a director,

and something mysterious happened.

I'm never able to explain it in a satisfactory way,

so I tend to trace it back to the comforting concepts

of predestination or a calling,

of a green traffic light allowing me to access the main road.

I did nothing, except claim that was a great script,

thus causing Rovere to invite me to take care of it myself.

I must say that the day —

I have no memory of the preparation for that film.

I entered a sort of trance, a limbo.

I can't remember a thing. I don't even know who prepared it for me.

I was unable —

Yes, another thing that led me to think I could never be a director

was the need to make

a hundred decisions every hour.

Directors must be able to say, "Keep this. Get rid of that.

I don't like that green, use turquoise. Give him a mustache. Make him bald. Cut."

He's constantly solicited by people

who go to him with fabrics, pieces of wood, extras, pages,

and ask him to make a series of choices.

"Three days or two days?"

"Are we shooting in Piazza del Popolo or in Piazza Flaminio?"

It's a continuous series of decisions.

My nature tends towards a serene panoramic balance,

where nothing is thrown out, but nothing is chosen definitively.

So it was the opposite of my nature.

Instead, I discovered that I can make many continuous decisions.

I found out I had a talent for what would become my life.

It must have been a talent, because I had no technical knowledge,

I was unaware of the language of camera lenses.

The cinematographers even made fun of me.

Aldo Tonti, who was a funny guy,

would force me to look through a spot where I couldn't see a thing,

a knob, low down on the camera.

I wasn't brave enough to say I couldn't see a thing,

so I pretended to give orders.

It was a button. The lens was above it.

That should tell you how well prepared I was.

You said directors need to constantly make decisions.

Isn't this ultimately a great game as well?

A great game? I consider myself very lucky...

because I was allowed to do

exactly what I subconsciously wanted to.

There must be a certain inclination, temperament.

You can interpret it in many ways,

such as identifying with an archetype,

but clearly, the day the motorboat took me

to the large raft

where the whole troupe was already at work,

waiting for the director,

well, from the moment I was helped off the motorboat by the main operator,

I was already yelling orders at people.

I sat down and waiting for me on that raft was the perennial image of the director,

an indefinable figure that falls somewhere between the boss and the jester.

If I must admit a debt of gratitude towards Rossellini,

this would be it: He showed me that cinema can be made

with the same lightheartedness, the same...

deeply personal participation...

with which a painter prepares a picture.

He'll try out various hues on the canvas, until he finds the right one.

Or like a writer prepares a book:

with the same embarrassed and restless confidence

one has with his own neuroses, with his own self.

The whole organizational, logistic,

almost military aspect of cinema was left aside.

Even the technical side,

which can often be paralyzing for a rookie director,

didn't exist in Rossellini.

Or at least, it wasn't highlighted.

This way of making cinema was extremely private,

extremely individual,

as if he was telling his friends...

the stories of specific characters.

You even acted in Il miracolo, starring Anna Magnani.

I did it as a favor to Roberto.

He was scared of being left alone with Anna Magnani!

You chose Federico Fellini as Saint Joseph.

Was it a joke, or were you seeking to exploit his histrionic qualities?

No, it was — The idea for the script was his.

We're friends, and we thought it would be fun to make it that way.

I made him dye his hair blonde.

We went to a ladies' hairdresser in Naples, so he could go blonde.

He could no longer walk on the street. People called him Rita Hayworth!

He was such a typically dark guy. He looked awful as a blonde.

A few years ago, I met Chaplin in Paris,

with Roberto Rossellini, who insisted on introducing us.

I felt shy, I'd prefer —

It's better not to meet your heroes.

I felt terribly embarrassed.

La strada had been successful in Paris,

so I was hoping to meet him in a situation involving my film,

but in any case I ended up in front of him.

We were in a nightclub.

It was dark, Rossellini was pushing me from behind,

and I caught sight of a rosy face with silver hair

and that look.

Chaplin had a curious gaze, the same as many professional clowns

and certain soothsayers:

I think they call it "strabismus of Venus."

It's a divergent strabismus.

One of his eyes looked into an unknown direction,

making his interlocutor feel slightly awkward.

It's a typical physiological feature,

a personality trait of certain artists, and even some soothsayers.

You're trying to see if I have it too. I had a really bad case,

but an operation realigned it.

I remember he gave me his little hand.

It was tiny. He was a very petit man.

He gave me his childlike hand, and I held it like the hand of a pope.

I even exaggerated in my devotion.

He gave me one of his ferocious, cruel smiles, displaying all his teeth,

and in the shrill, mechanical voice of an American banker,

he told me he'd seen La strada.

He asked me the cost of the film, and how much I thought it would earn.

This plunged me into a vertiginous bewilderment,

as I wasn't expecting it at all.

I didn't want to disappoint him,

and I wanted to prove I was as tough as a cinematic pioneer,

so I invented a series of very modest numbers,

both in terms of costs and of box office forecasts.

He seemed very interested.

He asked how much my wife and I had made.

He surprised me, but when I think back on it,

I think maybe he chose the most original,

funniest and least predictable way for our meeting to take place.

He did well to ask those questions:

it avoided that form of reverence,

of complacent adulation,

that people inevitably tend to express when meeting figures of his stature.

I never met him again.

The first film I ever saw? By now it's become legendary,

as I quote it in each of my films.

It was Maciste in Hell.

I saw it while sitting on my father's lap, at the Fulgor theater.

It was raining.

There was a smell of the fabric of wet coats.

The screen was rather yellowish...

and this gigantic man appeared,

with a bear skin around his waist and slightly intimidated

by the haughty gaze of a big-chested Proserpina.

By waving her hands in a circle, she lit a ring of flames

around the flabbergasted Maciste's feet.

Evidently, this image truly struck a chord in me,

as I try to remake it in each of my films,

without ever managing to recreate that original suggestion.

You take long periods of time to conceive your films.

During production, are you faithful to your plans,

or do you leave a wide margin for creativity?

Creativity is a sort of disease.

You can't plan on getting the flu. It just happens to you.

And it's the same with the calling, the desire to make a film,

to tell a character's story.

It's not a question of planning, but of receiving this inspiration

and allowing it to gradually invade your own being.

You're not thinking about inspiration, inspiration is thinking about you.

It's a fantasy, an intuition, a seduction.

I'm unable to say how it begins,

because it occurs differently for each film.

There's a film that's been appearing in my mind for fifteen years,

yet I never make it.

By now, it must be feeling insulted.

After 15 years, it came back, maybe asking if it was finally its turn.

I promise to make it, once I work through my backlog of commitments.

I ask it to wait. "I'll make it." But then I never do.

I hope one day it makes itself!

Federico Fellini, are you the director of your own existence?

I must be an awful director, in that case!

I'd really need an authentic auteur to guide me.

That's the kind of question where you either have a dazzling reply,

worthy of a fortune cookie,

or trying to construct one is too laborious.

Plus, I'm doing this interview for free.

It's not worth the effort!

I'm probably my own director when I'm working as a director.

That's what I was trying to say earlier.

It must've happened on the day when I was late to that raft on the sea.

I'd never been a director before.

If I may be allowed to end things on an image that is slightly ridiculous,

in its emblematic value,

I think a director was waiting for me on that raft,

who suddenly took possession of my body,

and directed me in all the films I've made,

and all the ones I hope to make,

because I'm currently also an unemployed director,

looking for an exceptionally wealthy producer.

No, the direction is right.

We should leave it.

There, of course.

Look, that film should be —

I don't want to give any ideas

to the restless Cavaliere Berlusconi.

He already has too many.

Yet, he should, and maybe will,

push a decree through parliament authorizing him

to also put advertisements in processions, military parades,

speeches by members of parliament themselves,

and even religious functions.

Mass? Three ads! If it's sung? Seven ads!

This may seem sacrilegious.

But isn't interrupting an artist's work just as much of a sacrilege?

I guess now is the right time to stop talking,

as they're signaling a commercial break.

Disappointments? Illusions?

Disappointments?

You ask unexpected questions. I didn't prepare properly.

My first disappointments?

My first disappointment was a fist fight.

I didn't expect to fight like Maciste, but at least like Gary Cooper

or one of the heroes I'd seen in American movies.

There was this Avanguardista,

he must have been older than me, as I was still part of the Balilla.

I considered him weaker than me, more frail.

I was extremely thin, but he seemed even thinner.

We were in competition...

for the affections of the same girl.

She was called Bianca and was attending the second year of middle school.

So, in a moment of megalomania, just like a bully,

I thought I could beat him.

I believed the clash would end in my favor.

That wasn't the case. He hit me unexpectedly,

and caused me to fall to the ground.

I think that event was very painful.

It was a disappointment with myself, and that's the worst kind.

Were there any more?

I don't think I'm generally the type who feels disappointment.

Not because I have a form of skepticism towards other people,

but I don't have a tendency to nurture false hopes.

So disappointment isn't generally a common thing for me.

- What was your first book? - The first book I read?

I'm not sure.

The first book I remember reading is Pinocchio.

I didn't just read it a first time,

but I read it many times, and still do now.

It's always a very fascinating read.

Not just because of personal memories,

but because it's a book that, over the course of time,

has acquired an almost oracular prerogative.

When you open it,

it can almost answer your doubts and perplexities.

Who's that with Maurizio?

Maurizio?

Fellini, I met this lady near the station. I thought we could test her for Brunelda.

- Morning. - Brunelda? That's an idea.

Excuse us, ma'am. Perhaps we're too brash.

It must have seemed like a kidnapping.

Take some photos of her.

Maurizio, Brunelda is blonde, you know.

- Are we shooting here, chief? - Yes, that's right.

- It's decided then? - Like there wasn't anyplace easier.

I invented some casting auditions

for Kafka's Amerika, as an excuse

to show what an operational casting studio is like,

what auditions are like,

what we mean by photogenic.

In other words, to have a chat with a series of convincing examples.

Why did you feel the need to invoke Kafka and his novel Amerika?

"Invoke" is a good way to define this relationship

with a protective and inspiring genius.

I was struck by the fact that Kafka wrote Amerika

without ever seeing America.

He may have seen some photos, some daguerreotypes

or maybe an early cinematic documentary.

One of those very early films.

And yet, he wrote a book in which America...

alienation, crowds, cities, cars,

and this sensation of losing oneself in a boundless planet

are expressed in a miraculous way.

I was often invited to make films in America

and, rather disgracefully, I always backed out at the last second.

So I always felt remorseful for being afraid of actually living there,

and trying to narrate the infinite and continuous seductions

of a country like America,

that looks like a set built specifically for me.

It's like something out of a circus, or science fiction.

Those cities, like New York,

seem to blend the ancient past, Nineveh or Babylon,

with a Martian city.

So it's a very seductive place, from a figurative point of view.

So, recently, I had told an American producer

that I could narrate some of my impressions of America,

maybe drawing initial inspiration from a book.

Maybe a story by Chandler or Hammett.

Under the condition that we would rebuild everything

in the comfortable environment of my "clinic." I mean Cinecittà.

We were very close to reaching an agreement,

even if the Americans couldn't understand

why I would want to rebuild New York in Rome,

given that the city exists,

and is well-known for being photogenic for cinema.

You only need a few scenic elements

to recreate the atmosphere of an American street.

It'll still cost a fortune.

Kafka's sense of humor, in all his works,

is an aspect that is never sufficiently highlighted.

People tend to forget a confession...

by Kafka himself, which was later repeated by his biographer, Max Brod.

When Kafka would read pages from The Trial,

or even The Metamorphosis, to his friends,

he would laugh so hard that he cried.

It was probably an unsettling laughter, like when we laugh in our dreams,

a silent, echoless laugh.

Often, when we dream of dreadful situations,

we catch ourselves laughing quietly.

Dreams

are the unspeakable and magical key to Kafka,

and he presents such bizarre and terrible situations,

that we can smile at them:

it denotes an awareness

that something irreparable is happening within us,

and our previous failure to notice

gives rise to comedy.

It's the same comedy we find in Chaplin's films.

We know what awaits him around the street corner:

two huge policemen.

But Charlot, walking like an English gentleman,

proceeds with certainty towards the lurking disaster.

Amerika often narrates...

this atmosphere of Pinocchio-like disasters.

That's it. It's a book that has a lot in common with Pinocchio.

Can I ask anything?

Then you must explain, once and for all,

why I'm here.

Why am I here?

Why did you make me come into the world?

Why did you make me come into the world?

There's no use in hiding it!

Here, we are all employed

in this farce that is life!

Well, if there's an employment, there must be a contract.

And contracts must be clear!

There you go! I want to know everything!

I want to know everything, you shit-face!

Turn the light off! Shoot!

They've shot the moon!

Why did I choose Cavazzoni's novel, Il poema dei lunatici?

It took me back to my land.

I'm from Romagna.

It immediately crowded my mind

with memories of films I would have liked to make,

even before Amarcord.

I had intended

to make a film entitled Il silenzio dei campi,

but I found the title was better suited for Bergman than for Fellini.

So I thought of another one,

which may sound irreverent, but I'll say it quickly:

Ostia della Madonna.

It's quite a rough phrase,

but if well pronounced, it sounds as nice as Rashomon.

It has the charm of syllables rolling off the tongue.

This was a typical peasants' swear word.

I had always wanted to make a film

about the countryside, about peasants,

on the countryside as an unknown dimension,

still inhabited by myths and legends.

It would have included some memories from school, involving Greek myths...

and above all a series of memories

that still inhabit my mind

about when I would spend a couple of months in the summer

at my paternal grandmother's house.

The somewhat fantastical life...

in that massive farmhouse, the stables, the animals, the storms,

daytime, nights, stones, clouds.

I thought that entire irrational and magical world

could act as incentive, as nourishment

for a film about the countryside and memories of grandma Francesca.

A film that would portray a part of Italy

that our cinema has always ignored: the Italy of peasants.

Angelo Rizzoli is one of those characters who appeared at the right time in my life,

just like Giulietta, Roberto Rossellini

and many others who I met at the perfect moment

to allow me to get to know my own self better,

to allow me to grow.

The economic means...

the sense of respect

and the freedom

that Rizzoli granted me when making my films

allowed me to gain greater knowledge...

of my craft, or my possibilities,

and to try to make films

with the same expressive freedom writers enjoy in literature.

He respected my work. Occasionally, he would suggest...

that I should make films...

more explicitly aimed at meeting the taste of the public

as he interpreted it.

He'd say, "With that sweet face of yours,

why do you always make such difficult stories?"

He wasn't happy with the character in La dolce vita

who kills his children and then commits suicide.

He would say, "Please admit you didn't come up with that!"

I said I had. Actually, I'd read it in the newspaper.

It was one of those many horrendous events that happened and still happen today.

"No! I can't believe it!"

He wanted to be reassured that his friend Federico

couldn't have conceived that kind of atrocity.

He was strongly inclined

towards what we could define as "good feelings."

Things such as innocence, virginity, the triumph of good,

the Bersaglieri, the Carabinieri, the Altar of the Fatherland, the flag

would generally move him in a sincere way.

Anything that tended to depict man as a deeply good creature...

would win his approval and total solidarity.

This was in contrast with his eyes:

they had yellowish flashes

and were sometimes as hard as a door knob.

He called you "the dear artist."

He called me 'the dear artist'?

Yes, but I don't think he meant it ironically.

Nor do I think he was referring...

to an elite vocation.

He said it in the same way a pope might have spoken of Michelangelo.

Please forgive my reductive comparisons.

Like a painter or a sculptor.

"Dear artist" means somebody who practices a craft.

He was a fairy tale character.

It was like meeting Mickey Mouse in flesh and blood.

TOPOLINO PRESENTS "LA STRADA" A TRIBUTE TO FEDERICO FELLINI

This issue of Topolino is a festive tribute to Federico Fellini,

who remembers his meeting with Walt Disney in 1956,

the year of his Oscar for La strada.

He met us at the entrance of his fantastic country, Disneyland,

while directing and leading a brass band.

They were playing marches by Nino Rota, maybe in our honor.

He led us into Captain Nemo's submarine,

and into a spaceship en route towards unknown galaxies.

He then bought us a drink in a saloon.

He insisted that we should carry two guns

with mother-of-pearl stocks and long barrels.

"You never know" is what he said.

A few minutes later, someone kicked the typical saloon doors open,

and four bandits came in.

It was an infernal fight.

Disney was shooting and telling Giulietta to shoot too.

He was laying on the ground, shielded behind a table.

In the end, everyone applauded,

while the four stuntmen, after a series of thrilling somersaults,

lay dead on the floor.

Disney then got up. He kissed Giulietta's hand, hugged me,

and said that he had seen La strada multiple times.

Fellini then recounts the story of the illustrated La strada as follows.

YES, AND I FIND IT GREAT!

QUIET! WE'RE SHOOTING!

I would never have imagined

that I would be rewarded with such a total form of satisfaction.

I find it as flattering and prestigious as an honorary degree.

Here's what he has to say on Cavazzano.

I feel an almost psychic identification

with the great magician and maestro's pencils.

And finally, a wish.

I imagine a Mickey Mouse Mastroianni and a Minnie Anita Ekberg,

in a Disney Dolce Vita.

Yes, Sylvia. I'm coming too.

Go ahead, Federico.

Dear Marcello!

I'm your alter ego! How are you?

I am sincerely very happy

that I was invited to give you this award,

that rewards an enjoyable career, that everyone...

He's not my alter ego. I'm his!

For La dolce vita,

I found Marcello to be better suited for the role than Paul Newman,

who De Laurentiis wanted at all costs.

I thought that the role of this reporter,

lazy, apathetic, skeptic,

scared, neurotic, childish,

was perfect for Marcello's face.

I hope we'll have a chance to work together again.

This is the wish that I have for us both!

Let's hope so!

I think back to our first meeting, when he called me for La dolce vita.

I went to visit him in Fregene. He was on the beach, under an umbrella.

He immediately said,

"The producer, De Laurentiis, wants Paul Newman for the film.

But Paul Newman's too important, he's too exceptional.

What I need is an ordinary face."

Who knows? Maybe he also felt some joy in trying to hurt me.

The thing is, he didn't succeed at all.

I'd never thought of my face or myself as being exceptional.

So it all went well.

What does being directed by Fellini mean for an actor?

- Look out, I'm sitting right here! - Yes.

Working with Fellini is fun.

It makes me happy.

Without being rhetorical, that's the truth.

Between the first take on La dolce vita and the last for Ginger and Fred,

has Fellini changed, or is he still the same?

No, every time —

He has more hair now!

Every time I return to working with Fellini,

I swear it feels like just a few months since the last film,

while often many years have actually gone by.

Marcello just summarized a sensation

that may be the best proof of a collaboration.

Our work also has its difficult moments,

instances of discomfort, as in any job.

I'm not saying work should have dramatic moments,

as some of my colleagues would happily state,

but there should be moments of tension.

The fact that Marcello doesn't remember long intervals between our films,

and that when he started working on Ginger and Fred,

he felt he'd finished City of Women just the day before,

are the best proof of a collaboration

that takes place under the sign of friendship, congeniality, respect

and mutual trust.

I never worked to create the foundation of a gratified wait,

expecting an award.

Each time, I made the film I wanted to make,

in the way I knew best,

or even better, in the way I thought the film wanted to be made.

I don't have a recipe or a system.

I don't set goals for myself.

Films come to me as if they were already made.

I feel like a train running a long a railway track.

The stations, the films in this case, are ready.

All I need to do is get off, be a little curious,

and discover what lies beyond the station.

If there's a Piazza.

I feel that, by following this path and making the film,

that everything was prearranged.

Some RAI journalists asked some of the main American personalities

to give their opinion about you.

The response was incredible.

The greatest figures in American cinema expressed such admiration

and such joy about you being here and receiving this award.

We somehow had the impression that you are unaware

of the extent of the world's admiration

and respect for you.

It may seem that I am unaware, because I'm a skillful deceiver.

It actually makes me a bit uncomfortable.

I'll try to blush. Is this color TV?

- Yes, of course. - I haven't been able to blush for ages.

I was saying that it makes me happy.

It also makes me slightly uncomfortable.

I don't think it's easy to identify yourself in the character

other people have projected on you or wish you to be.

Stay back!

Why did you accept this Oscar?

I accepted it because I did everything I could to achieve it today.

It was certainly a great satisfaction.

Of course.

And now, I'm forced to make some good films!

He is also asked what has changed since his first Oscar in 1956.

Fellini replies that something has certainly changed.

First of all, his hair.

Does it upset you that "Felliniesque" has become an adjective?

"From a narcissistic point of view, I like it," he replies.

"I have to confess. My dad wanted me to be an engineer.

My mother wanted me to be an archbishop. But I did my best to become an adjective."

"Do you want to know what my films are?

At the risk of sounding grandiose, I can say

that there is no difference between my films and my life.

They're the same thing."

FELLINI'S STORY 3 STROLLS DOWN MEMORY LANE