Federico Fellini

“There is something almost womblike about a Fellini film; Fellini does not so much sympathize with his characters … as envelop them … there is always the comfort, for the spectator, of knowing that they are watched over and in some way protected—perhaps because they are fragments of Fellini himself … so he cannot bear to see them totally lost. It is the consciousness, basically, in Fellini and in us, that by salvaging these fragments and embodying them in works of art that he has saved them, that temps perdu has become temps retrouvé.”

John Russell Taylor, Cinema Eye, Cinema Ear.

Ella Sharpe has observed that in the creative process the artist finds a means by which he can atone for crimes committed in his early fantasies. In the incipient stages of the artist's development, objects in the external world perceived as threatening were devoured. Later, he spits them out again, in an attempt at reparation. The art work serves to reassure the artist that his crimes were not irrevocable and that his victims will not suddenly turn against him.

In the work of Federico Fellini, we are afforded an exceptional opportunity to reappraise the idea of art as atonement. Fellini has directed nine and a half films to date, ranging from his earlier, more conventional narratives to his current baroque phantasmagorias. Each of these films is, to an unprecedented extent, the exclusive product of its director, so much so that Fellini himself seems to be somewhere on the screen, inhabiting his own ouevre. This self-contained environment will provide our matrix for testing the Sharpe hypothesis.

There are several reasons for the close association of Fellini with his films. In the first place, the films are, to a notable degree, autobiographical. Their themes of individual isolation and personal salvation are so integral a part of Fellini's cinematic journey as to have become a personal hallmark.