You will be reading (or, rather, looking through: not everything you see on the Internet is worth your time and attention, of course) lots of stuff about Fellini’s 100th anniversary today, mostly featuring the same generic words of admiration of “one of the greatest filmmakers of all times,” “the brightest star of Italian Neo-Realism who managed to capture the messiness of life” etc. Not that it’s false—he was all those things, for sure—it’s just too basic and shallow to capture his genius.
For me, the main thing that Fellini did to cinema was bravery: he was one of the first people who used the cinematographic language for transforming the life of an average person—or as we, Russians, call it, ‘a little man’—into ancient tragedy (and comedy for that matter). One could argue that many of his predecessors and contemporaries (especially ones from the Neo-Realistic movement itself) did pretty much the same, and I would say: true that, but Fellini was the one whose stories, whilst simple, became eternal.
A destitute tart with the most beautiful and delicate soul, who sacrificed her future for the sake of love to a man who didn’t deserve the tiniest bit of her feelings, and who became a wandering angel at the end; two Roman pals and lovers, whose life was a joyous and sad mixture of carnival and misery, and who became forever caught in the borderline moment between life and death, like a golden beetle in amber; a burnt-out film director, whose talent was a curse and a blessing, when the only cure for him was to come back to his childhood where a giant woman with a beautiful gaze, Saraghina, would dance her divine rumba for him and his schoolmates. And many more.
A destitute tart with the most beautiful and delicate soul, who sacrificed her future for the sake of love to a man who didn’t deserve the tiniest bit of her feelings, and who became a wandering angel at the end; two Roman pals and lovers, whose life was a joyous and sad mixture of carnival and misery, and who became forever caught in the borderline moment between life and death, like a golden beetle in amber; a burnt-out film director, whose talent was a curse and a blessing, when the only cure for him was to come back to his childhood where a giant woman with a beautiful gaze, Saraghina, would dance her divine rumba for him and his schoolmates. And many more.
It’s an old thing to identify yourself with film characters: after all, they are only semi-real. But with Fellini, we can be all of them in one, and themselves at the same time, and this is his main miracle.
Happy Birthday, Maestro.
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