Federico Fellini: Contemporary Perspectives

272 Pages·2002·14.2 MB·English

by  Francis Burke

FEDERICO FELLINI:
CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES
Edited by Frank Burke and Marguerite R. Waller
Federico Fellini remains the best known of the postwar Italian direc-
tors. This collection of essays brings Fellini scholarship up to date,
employing a range of recent critical approaches, including semiotic,
psychoanalytical, feminist, and deconstructionist. Accordingly, a num-
ber of important themes arise - the reception of fascism, the crisis of
the subject, the question of agency, homoeroticism, feminism, and con-
structions of gender.
Since the early 1970s, there has been a decline in critical and theoret-
ical attention to Fellini's work, accompanied by an assumption that his
films are self-indulgent and lacking in political value. This volume
moves the discussion forward towards a politics of signification, con-
tending that Fellini's evolving self-reflexivity is not mere solipsism but
rather a critique of both aesthetics and signification. The essays pre-
sented here are almost all new, and were chosen to illustrate the self-
critical, analytical dimension of Fellini's work, particularly apparent in
some of his earlier and lesser-known films.
This lively and ambitious collection brings a new critical language
to bear on Fellini's films, offering fresh insights into their underlying
issues and meaning. It will have a significant impact on film studies,
reclaiming this important director for a contemporary audience.
(Toronto Italian Studies)
FRANK BURKE is Professor of Film Studies, Queen's University.
MARGUERITE R. WALLER is Professor of English and Women's Studies,
University of California, Riverside.
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EDITED BY
FRANK BURKE AND MARGUERITE R. WALLER
Federico Fellini
Contemporary Perspectives
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
www.utppublishing.com
© University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2002
Toronto Buffalo London
Printed in Canada
ISBN 0-8020-0696-5 (cloth)
ISBN 0-8020-7647-5 (paper)
Printed on acid-free paper
Toronto Italian Studies
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Federico Fellini: contemporary perspectives
(Toronto Italian studies)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-8020-0696-5 (bound). ISBN 0-8020-7647-5 (pbk.)
I. Fellini, Federico - Criticism and interpretation. I. Burke, Frank
II. Waller, Marguerite R., 1948- III. Series.
PN1998.3.F45F453 2002 791.43'0233'092 C2001-903774-0
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its
publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario
Arts Council.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its
Publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book
Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).
This book has been published with the help of grants from Queen's
University and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Toronto.
Contents
Preface vii
FRANK BURKE
Acknowledgments xi
Chronology xiii
Illustrations xvii
Introduction 3
MARGUERITE R. WALLER
1 Federico Fellini: Realism/Representation/Signification 26
FRANK BURKE
2 Subtle Wasted Traces: Fellini and the Circus 47
HELEN STODDART
3 Fellini and Lacan: The Hollow Phallus, the Male Womb,
and the Retying of the Umbilical 65
WILLIAM VAN WATSON
4 When in Rome Do As the Romans Do? Federico Fellini's
Problematization of Femininity (The White Sheik) 92
VIRGINIA PICCHIETTI
5 Whose Dolce vita Is This, Anyway? The Language of
Fellini's Cinema 107
MARGUERITE R. WALLER
vi Contents
6 Toby Dammit/ Intertext, and the End of Humanism 121
CHRISTOPHER SHARRETT
7 Fellini's Amarcord: Variations on the Libidinal Limbo of
Adolescence 137
DOROTHEE BONNIGAL
8 Memory, Dialect, Politics: Linguistic Strategies in Fellini's
Amarcord 155
COSETTA GAUDENZI
9 Fellini's Ginger and Fred: Postmodern Simulation Meets
Hollywood Romance 169
MILLICENT MARCUS
10 Cinecitta and America: Fellini Interviews Kafka (Intervista) 188
CARLO TESTA
11 Interview with the Vamp: Deconstructing Femininity in
Fellini's Final Films (Intervista, La voce della luna) 209
AINE O'HEALY
Selected Bibliography 233
Filmography 235
Contributors 237
Preface
FRANK BURKE
Federico Fellini is probably the best known of the postwar Italian
directors, and he remains among the most noted filmmakers in the his-
tory of the medium. In 1980, while still at the peak of his fame (though
not necessarily his career), Fellini was described by CBS's Harry Rea-
soner as 'maybe the premier filmmaker of the age/ He was awarded
five Oscars, and though his reputation declined in the 1980s and early
1990s, his final Oscar was the 1993 Lifetime Achievement Award of the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Nineteen years earlier
he had received a similar award from Cannes; eight years earlier, from
the Film Society of Lincoln Center (New York City). Perhaps more
important, Fellini's work strongly influenced international filmmaking
well into the 1990s. In a 1992 Sight and Sound survey he ranked first in a
poll in which world-renowned directors were asked to name their
favourite filmmaker.
This collection of essays has been motivated by a desire to 'update'
Fellini's importance by bringing his work into relation with recent
critical methodologies: semiotic/poststructuralist, psychoanalytical,
feminist, and deconstructionist. (I use the last term broadly to encom-
pass the intertextual thrust of several of the essays below.) Conse-
quently, almost all of the essays in this collection were solicited
especially for the project. The two exceptions are my own 'Federico
Fellini: From Representation to Signification,' Romance Languages
Annual I (1989), and Marguerite R. Waller's 'Whose Dolce vita Is This
Anyhow?: The Language of Fellini's Cinema,' Quaderni d'italianistica
9.1 (1990), the appearance of which a little over ten years ago helped
establish new directions in Fellini criticism.1
In bringing contemporary theoretical approaches to bear on Fellini's
viii Preface
work, we hope to reverse what has been an unfortunate slide in critical
attention to Fellini in the English-speaking world since the early 1970s.
Waller addresses this slide in her Introduction, while also suggesting
that Fellini's work to a large extent belies the apparent reasoning
behind this critical neglect (i.e., an assumption that Fellini's films are
self-indulgent and thoroughly lacking in political value). In partic-
ular, we have sought to move discussion toward what we might call a
politics of signification. We contend that Fellini's engagement with
modernism and postmodernism, and in particular his evolving self-
reflexivity - which has been read by politicized critics only as self-
indulgence - are not mere solipsism but rather a critique and an
opening out of both aesthetics and signification at a moment in which
politics and the social have themselves become aestheticized or Virtu-
alized' as simulation. We believe that many of the essays that follow
strongly illuminate this self-critical, analytical dimension of Fellini's
work.
Because our emphasis is on critical methodology, we have not pro-
vided uniform coverage of the Fellini canon. We have included reread-
ings of some early work (e.g., The White Sheik) from new perspectives.
But we have emphasized readings of those films constructed on the
verge of or within postmodernity, precisely because those are the films
that demonstrate best Fellini's continuing relevance as an arbiter of
social value. All of this explains why some of the staples of conven-
tional Fellini criticism - La Strada, Nights of Cabiria, 8l/i - are largely
missing, their place taken by films such as Toby Dammit, Amarcord,
Ginger and Fred, Intervista, and The Voice of the Moon.
We have chosen not to include interview material, because so much
is in print nowadays and thus easily accessible (see the Bibliography).
It may seem strange that in a collection of essays on an Italian film
director, there is no native Italian contributor. We did seek to involve
Italian writers in our project, but were unsuccessful. Although there is
much solid academic work in Italy, it tends to consist of either general
critical/biographical introductions to his career or aesthetic analy-
sis focusing on the design and look of his films - often linked to his
sketches. We were unable to identify scholars writing, or inclined to
write, on Fellini from the critical and theoretical perspectives privi-
leged in this volume. The other recent writing on Fellini in Italy has
been non-academic, comprising three types: traditional plot and theme
summaries of his films; 'behind the scenes' reportage on his filmmak-
ing; and celebrations of 'Fellini the great auteur' in the wake of his
Preface ix
death - coffee table books that bring together images from his films as
well as sketches and other memorabilia. This type of writing is more
commercial than critical in approach.
Our decision to organize the volume according to theoretical issues
within postmodernity meant locating Fellini less within the context of
Italian culture and more within a broader context of postwar signify-
ing strategies. We would welcome a volume that addressed the former,
especially one that viewed Fellini's work in relation to Italian cultural
studies, a field that has emerged and grown rapidly in the past decade.
Note
1 Waller's essay has been somewhat revised for this volume. Two other essays
occupy roughly the same historical terrain: Waller's 'Neither an "I" nor an
"Eye": The Gaze in Fellini's Giulietta degli spiriti,' Romance Languages Annual
1 (1989): 75-80 and my own 'Fellini: Changing the Subject/ Film Quarterly
43.1 (Fall 1989): 36-48. However, both have been reprinted in Perspectives on
Federico Fellini, ed. Peter Bondanella and Cristina Degli-Esposti (New York:
G.K. Hall, 1993), and it did not seem sensible to reprint them again here.