Fellini and Crafting a World

Charlotte and Bob watching La Dolce Vita: 
Lost in Translation (2003, dir. Sofia Coppola)

Federico Fellini was a master of filmmaking; his pieces left impressions on such influential directors of today as Quentin Tarantino, Sofia Coppola, and Martin Scorsese. Beyond his use of Magical Realism there are quite a few techniques that bind his films together in approach.

A common action of his is to create long winding and chaotic scenes. This is exemplified most clearly in the wonderful, Nights of Cabiria (1957), which follows a prostitute who has been stomped on in life, searching for love but always in vain. Cabiria is a puzzle to the audience until one scene where light is shed. She stumbles upon a magic show at night and is summoned to the stage. There, the magician hypnotizes her and in a moving long take she is guided in revealing her longing for connection while the magician leads her to believe she is speaking to a new love. The scene shows the character in a manner that she never has been seen in before, soft, and because of that it is very impactful. When she snaps out of her trance the audience laughs at her as the world often has and she stomps out, furious. A man from the audience follows her out and later tells her that his name is also Oscar and he feels that fate has brought them together. Fellini's weaving of elements of reality and illusion combined with his large ensembles and grand settings not only add to the backdrop of Magical Realism in his movies but also help to create a world that is full of dimension and filled with chaos in the same way that ours is. This is littered throughout his career and can also be recognized in an earlier scene where Cabiria wonders if she is in the 'grace of God'.

Although I am limited to five minutes for this project and won't be able to assemble an ensemble, I believe that only using one setting or even showing a character's or plot's progression through a short period of time can help to emulate this feeling that Fellini crafts.

As a side note, I mentioned in my last post the important roles that dreams played on director, Ingmar Bergman's, work. Incidentally, I found that in my research on Fellini dreams also had an enormous influence on his creative process, coming as no surprise when evaluating the many dream sequences of 8 1/2 (1963) or the general dreamy quality of his films.

Talk soon,
Cassie.