October 11, 2016 (XXXIII:7) Federico Fellini: LA DOLCE VITA (1960), 174 min. La Dolca Vita was nominated for three Oscars, Best Director, Best Writing, and Best Art Direction, and won one Oscar for Best Costume Design (Piero Gherardi) in 1962. Federico Fellini won the Palme d’Or at Cannes Film Festival in 1960. DIRECTOR Federico Fellini WRITERS Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, Brunello Rondiy PRODUCER Guiseppe Amago, Franco Magli, Angelo Rizzoli MUSIC Nino Rota CINEMATOGRAPHER Otellor Martelli EDITOR Leo Cattozzo La Voce della luna (1989), Ginger e Fred (1986), Casanova COSTUME DESIGN Piero Gherardi (1976), Amarcord (1974), Roma 1972, I clowns (1971), Satyricon 1969, Giulietta degli spiriti 1965, 8 ½ (1963)], Marcello Mastroianni…Marcello Rubini Notti di Cabiria 1957, and Vitelloni (1953). He was Anita Ekberg…Sylvia nominated for 11 writing and directing Oscars (including Anouk Aimée…Maddalena both for La Dolce Vita) but won none of them. Four of his Yvonne Furneaux…Emma films received the Best Foreign Language Film award: La Magali Noël…Fanny Strada, Notti di Cabiria, 8 and Amarcord. After Federico Alain Cuny…Steiner Fellini rejected the idea of Paul Newman for the lead role, Annibale Ninchi…Marcello's father Dino De Laurentiis suggested Gérard Philipe. He thought Walter Santesso…Paparazzo Marcello Mastroianni was "too soft and goody-goody; a Valeria Ciangottini…Paola family man rather than the type who flings women onto the Audrey McDonald…Sonia bed." His death could have been a scene from one of his Polidor…Clown movies: While recovering from difficult heart surgery he Lex Barker…Robert Count choked on half a mozzarella ball. Enza Da Castro, his Ivenda Dobrzensky…Giovanni (uncredited) production secretary, and Roberto Mannoni, his production Desmond O'Grady…Steiner's Guest (uncredited) director, were with him. Da Castro called a doctor and two Prince Eugenio Ruspoli di Poggio Suasa…Don Eugenio nurses into the room and told them Fellini was choking. The Mascalchi (uncredited) doctor yelled “Heart attack! Heart attack” and began giving him heart massage. When Da Castro and Mannoni again told FEDERICO FELLINI (b. January 20, 1920 in Rimini, her he was choking, she ordered them out of the room. Italy—d. October 31, 1993 in Rome, Italy) is best-known as a Mannoni called Fellini’s doctor, Professor Turchetti, and told director of films he wrote, and deservedly so, but before he him to come immediately. After 15 minutes, according to started directing he co-scripted some of the great films of the Mannoni, another doctor arrived with a resuscitator and other Italian neo-realist era, among them Roberto Rossellini’s instruments, and a few minutes later Turchetti got there. But Roma, città aperta (Rome, Open City 1946) and Paisà by then Fellini was dead. (Paisan, 1946). Fellini directed 24 films, some of which are Fellini—LA DOLCE VITA—2 during the next ten years. She Was considered for the role of Honey Rider in the first James Bond film Dr. No (1962), which went to Ursula Andress. Ekberg later co-starred with Andress in the Western comedy 4 for Texas (1963). ANOUK AIMÉE (b. Françoise Sorya Dreyfus on April 27, 1932 in Paris, France) appeared in about 70 films, but only one brought her international attention—A Man and a Woman (1966). She also appeared in Prêt-à-Porter (1994) and Justine (1969). LEX BARKER (b. May 8, 1919 in Rye, New York—d. May 11, 1973 in New York, New York) was a direct descendant of the founder of Rhode Island, Roger Williams, attended the Fessenden School and Phillips-Exeter Academy, then went to Princeton but left to become an actor, for which his high society family disowned him. Barker played Tarzan five times, then became something of an international actor, playing in 50 films made in Brazil, Germany, Spain, Yugoslavia, Italy, Lebanon, and France, helped no doubt by MARCELLO MASTROIANNI (b. September 28, 1924 in his linguistic ability–he was said to speak French, Spanish, Fontana Liri, Italy—d. December 19, 1996 in Paris, France) Italian and German. He enlisted in WWII as a private and first appeared in film in Marionette (1938) and his final film mustered out as a major. about himself, Marcello Mastroianni: mi ricordo, sì, io mi ricordo (Mastroianni: I Remember, Yes I Remember 1997). DESMOND O’GRADY 1935-2014) was an Irish poet There were about 150 roles in between, 6 with Fellini and 15 perhaps most famous for the night he dove out of his Harvard with his longtime friend Sophia Loren. Some of his films window stark naked, his room afire, claiming to police that were Prêt-à-Porter (1994), A Fine Romance (1992), Ginger e the IRA was clearly responsible; the police suggested Fred (1986), Una Giornata particolare (1977), Roma smoking in bed as the more probable culprit; we have no idea (1972), Casanova '70 (1965), Matrimonio all'italiana (1964), how Desmond got into this movie. 8 ½ (1963). Told interviewers that Federico Fellini hired him for La Dolce Vita because he had a "terribly ordinary face". from World Film Directors, Vol. II. Ed. John Wakeman. Along with Dean Stockwell and Jack Lemmon, he's one of a The H.W. Wilson Company NY, 1988, entry by Derek few actors who had won twice the Best Actor prize at the Prouse Cannes Film Festival. His three Oscar nominations for Italian director and scenarist, born in Rimini, a small town on Divorce Italian Style (1961), A Special Day (1977), and Dark Italy’s Adriatic coast, son of Urbano Fellini, a traveling Eyes (1987) are the record for a performer in a foreign salesman, and the former Ida Barbiani. The four or five years language film. he spent as a boarder at a school run by priests in nearby Fano were rigorously formative. A regular punishment was to ANITA EKBERG (b. Kerstin Anita Marianne Ekberg on make the culprit kneel for half an hour on grains of maize, September 29, 1931 in Malmö, Skåne, Sweden—d. January and a wintry Sunday treat was to be marched to the beach, 11, 2015 in Rocca di Papa, Lazio, Italy) was the 1950 Miss there to kneel and gaze at the sea wile reciting a prayer. Sweden, appeared in about 60 mostly-forgettable films, some Priests were to find their ritual place in many of Fellini’s of which were Suor Omicidi (Killer Nun, 1978), Malenka films, as was the circus that he encountered for the first time (1968), (a.k.a. Bloody Girl, Fangs of the Living Dead, on a stolen day off and where he remained, entranced, until Malenka the Vampire, and Niece of the Vampire), Woman his truancy was discovered and he was returned to the school. Times Seven (1967), Boccaccio '70 (1962), Hollywood or The only aptitude Fellini showed at school was for drawing. Bust (1956), War and Peace (1956), and Abbott and Costello In his final year, he and some of his friends were frequent Go to Mars (1953). She quickly got a film contract with truants, leading the idle, aimless street life he was to recall in Howard Hughes's RKO that did not lead anywhere (but Anita I Vitelloni. herself has said that Hughes wanted to marry her). Instead, This, at any rate, is an approximate account of she started making movies with Universal, small roles that Fellini’s childhood. He enjoys obfuscation, and his own more often than not only required her to look beautiful. After recollections vary according to whim. At some point in his five years in Hollywood, she found herself in Rome, where late teens—in 1937 or 1938—like Moraldo in I Vitelloni, Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) meant her Fellini escaped from the hopeless limbo of Rimini. He made breakthrough. She stayed in Italy and made around 20 movies his way first to Florence, where he worked as an illustrator Fellini—LA DOLCE VITA—3 for a comic-strip story magazine. After six months he moved short film based on Cocteau’s “La Voix Humaine: and on again to Rome, joining a Bohemian set of would-be actors needed a companion piece to make up a feature-length and writers. He began to sell stories and cartoons to the picture, Fellini wrote and acted in “Il Miracolo” (The humorous weekly Marc‘ Aurelio, and before long was hired MIracle). He played the part of a mute vagabond whom Anna as one of the writers of a radio serial based on the magazine’d Magnani, as a deluded shepherdess, takes to be St. Joseph and most popular feature, which retailed the marital by whom she becomes pregnant. The film was a succès de misadventures of Cico and scandale, outraging Catholic Pallina—Italy’s answer to opinion everywhere. Blondie and Dagwood. During the same period In 1939, tiring of this Fellini started to work with chore, Fellini joined his friend, another director, Alberto the comedian Aldo Fabrizi, on Lattuada. He collaborated with an odyssey across Italy with a Lattuada on the screenplays of vaudeville troupe. Fellini himself two notable successes: Senza earned his keep as a sketch pietà (Without Pity, 1948) and writer, scenery painter, bit Il mulino del Po (The Mill on player, and “company poet.” the Po, 1949), and then with Years later he told an interviewer Pietro Germi on In nome della that this was “perhaps the most Legge (In the Name of the Law, important year of my life….I 1949). Back with Rossellini, he was overwhelmed by the variety worked as scriptwriter and of the country’s physical assistant director on Francesco, landscape and, too, by the giullare di Dio. After that his variety of its human landscape.