8-22-06
Welcome to class, Ben has a beard.
I’m the record keeper; fear my power. Danny is my backup.
Went around class and introduced ourselves
Q showed up
Then GGGB showed up
Have to grow a beard to be on Faculty here
This class:
Film studies is a business oriented major. We prepare for the real world. Hall of Music
gets us technically prepared and BL gets us prepared to discuss and write.
Read the syllabus
This course starts easily and ramps up quickly.
BL doesn’t need a class summary from everyone since I’m doing notes. Do additions,
corrections, questions to what I’ve written and your film work.
Variety Lights:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042692/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fellini
Fellini concepts:
Circus
Allegory of Love
Downward Spiral
Designated clapper to start the audience
Cut from pretty girl to ugly girl
“this is magic..love is in the air”….it’s all a staged show
Pretty girls. Fellini loves his pretty girls
“Holy Saints!” mocking religion, faking enthusiasm
Cityscape shots reminiscent of Rome Open City
women is a bitch back-stage with water on her, very sweet on stage
eat like pigs
not as much chaos in this film
gets the girl and applause
wears a fedora like Fellini
black trumpet player, white gunslinger
definitely a downward spiral
certain assumptions in American cinema that aren’t here
how would the film be different?
Happy ending or learn a lesson
Assumes you identify with the protagonist
IMR-institutional mode of representation
8-24-06
everyone has a syllabus and everyone knows Web CT
Don’t use electronics for personal crap
Get the course pack ASAP
Shoot BL an e-mail at his PU account (Lawton@Purdue.edu) with basic information
Name, telephone number, e-mail addresses
Subject: Name, Fellini
Why do a Fellini course?
People have been bugging him and Fellini is considered by many to be the greatest
filmmaker ever
Fellini’s Casanova, the master print was kidnapped and held for ransom
Are there films that aren’t worth tearing apart? Films that you can just sit, eat popcorn,
and watch?
The smart spectator could comment on anything
Interested in watching a film:
Characters, dialogue, cinematography, editing.
How do we determine a film’s worth?
Has to have an equal greatness in a combination of things, not just a great plot
Entertainment vs. Art
A bad film foregrounds the things that are wrong. A good IMR film, you don’t notice the
ripples.
Ripples: the little things in a film that point back to the conceptual nucleus of the film.
Dropping an idea in to the pond (film) creates ripples.
Happens in all films, masterpieces, junk, etc
In IMR, nucleus is making money
Corrigan’s Short Guide to Writing about film:
10 questions you should ask yourself before writing about a film? (pg 25 in course pack)
Do I understand the film(s)?
Variants (pg 23 in course packet)
These are the ripples.
Information about Theories can be found on Pg 9 of the CP
A theory of science, by definition, is not the final answer. You accept new evidence and
change your theory based on this evidence, it’s quantifiable
Asymptote: it’s the point where something looks as absolutely close as you can be, but
the more you move forward, the further that points moves
Theory of Humanities:
Rhetoric, something we talk about and discuss, but are not quantifiable. People basically
argue until 1 perspective prevails. Thesis-antithesis-synthesis; repeat.
Theories in Social Sciences:
Not quantifiable, variables are so big, usually end up quantifying what is self-evident
(and frequently not true)
We discuss from the Humanities perspective
Things needed to understand a film (pg 13)
Physiological (good saccadic patterns)
Ability to be human, empathize
Ethnographic: understanding a culture, what’s going on at the time
Technical Information Pg 7 in the CP
Things you need to know
Theoretical Component: Pg 13 in CP
Aesthetic Component: Pg 23 in CP
Do films mean anything?
It’s impossible for you to make something that people will interpret and control their
reaction to it.
Cultural construction: from the moment you acquire language, you know longer have an
unmediated perception of reality, everything is affected by culture.
Meaning in film, page 22 in CP
Levels according to Dante:
Literal: Plot
Allegorical: Stories that stands for what you’re trying to say
Moral: drawn from Allegory
Anagogical: drawn from the religious side
Factual: all the stuff from IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042692/
in 476 AD, Italy is overrun and until 1860, it’s split up and is ruled by all kinds of
foreigners. Think of contemporary Iraq, SE Asia, tribes hating each other and co-existing,
etc
1860, most of Italy is unified, except for Vatican state
1870, Italians take over Vatican, Pope goes into exile
Italy wants to be a world power so it jumps into WW1 on Allie side
Italy doesn’t get what they want from WW1, so they gather around Mussolini and start
fascist movement.
This week’s film was Fellini’s directorial debut of Variety Lights. This was the first film
Fellini directed himself after several years of writing and working on other films. While it
may be his first, what amazed me was how distinctly Fellini it was.
Several of Fellini’s directorial/writing characteristics were present in this film. Some of
these include:
Variety Lights’ use of performing actors, musicians, comedians, etc. This all ties into
Fellini’s love and use of the circus or performance-theme in his films. One of the truly
distinct Fellini characteristics is his placement on the value of performance. This idea of
showing a dedication to a character’s art in a film becomes a staple in later films such as
Coppola’s The Cotton Club.
The characters of Variety Lights go on a downward spiral. The main focus of this is
Checco Dal Monte. In the beginning of the film, we see him as a traveling performer.
He’s not rich and famous, but he has a good life. He’s the star of the show and has a longterm relationship with Melina, who has some savings in the hopes of getting a deli. His
spiral begins when he meets Liliana. Throughout the film, Checco chases after Liliana
making whatever sacrifices he needs to on his way. Along the way he leaves the Melina,
his troupe, and loses all his money in an attempt to start a show starring Liliana. At the
end of the film, we see him back with the troupe almost literally in the same place he
started. Melina goes off to get him coffee and he begins to flirt with a nearby young lady.
This ending ripples with questions throughout a would-be epilogue of the film. If Checco
is starting over, does that mean Liliana will spiral in a similar fashion and find herself a
flirtatious and ambitious tease? I guess only Fellini knows.
The other huge Fellini trait in Variety Lights were all the beautiful women. Fellini loves
to cast gorgeous women in his films, and who can blame him? If he’s going t o spend
months shooting and more months editing a film, he might as well have an attractive
female cast to look at. Although, in an interesting twist, one of the female leads in this
film, Melina, was played by Giulietta Masina, Fellini’s wife. The film’s second director
Alberto Lattuada’s wife Carla Del Poggio played the other female-lead, Liliana.
Overall Variety Lights is a very interesting film. I enjoyed it because it is very clear how
this film is early-Fellini. The film incorporates his style and many of his directortrademarks, but it’s easy to see how he holds back. In his first directorial debut, Fellini
doesn’t come out swinging for the fences as he does in some of his later work, like Fellini
Satyricon, but rather creates a calmer story that serves to hint at films-to-come.
8-29-06
Forget 500 word limit, take what you need, but don’t blabber
Also: Integrate our readings into our posts
Look at current posts on WebCT, see what he likes and what he doesn’t
Tuesdays: BL is going to talk rapidly, Thursday is our day to talk
What makes a good film analysis/paper?
Other facts to back it up, research evidence, all builds up into a theory and results in a
moment of literary pleasure, a mental-orgasm if you will
Read from Fellini and the Literary Tradition (pg 38 in the course packet)
Variety Lights:
Original sin: materialism (Liliana and Checco’s problem
According to Dante, a sin is not loving God
3 categories of sin:
lust (least worse, misdirected love),
anger (middle-worst, losing the gift of reason)
greed (worst, using the gift of reason to hurt other people)
Downward Spiral: Checco’s spiral
Desperate search for external help: Checco’s constantly looking for money
Ambiguous open-ended conclusion: most of the time it’s a negative note, but here it’s
open ended. The film projects to the future (Checco’s love life)
Fellini’s characters are all caricatures of himself
Fellini will attack all sacred institutions time and time again, in Variety Light he attack
aristocracy
Fellinian Universe based on:
Rejection of the allegory of love
Perception of film qua film and thus as art
And Pirandellian life/form dualism
Allegory of love:
Impossibility of humans to achieve a perpetual state of bliss
Inevitably relationships between men and women fail
Fellini is working you his own emotional problems in his films, with his wife, other
women, etc
Classic narrative: man and a woman, they get separated, protagonist spends whole story
killing people to get back to counterpart. Get married and live happily ever after.
Therefore marriage=death. No permanent bliss if you’re alive, so if you’re permanently
in bliss you’re dead. Also the story is over and the life of the character has ended.
Modern artists start this story after the couple is together, Fellini basically picks up where
the classical narrative leaves off
Variety Lights:
Studios tried to tank the film.
It’s a dog’s life:
A film that’s plot is nearly identical to Variety Lights.
This film has Fabrizi, who was supposed to be in Variety Lights. (also has Mastroianni)
It’s a dog’s life knocks Variety Lights out of the spotlight and sales.
Variety Lights is NOT neo-realist. No real people, no real locations, no facts.
In Neo-realism, protagonist represented something, usually a social-class.
In Variety Lights, Fellini’s characters don’t represent any social-class. Fellini was dealing
with individual problems, not social problems.
Classic Neo-Realism films deal with more external problems, i.e. Rome Open City deals
with the state of Rome (think of a modern Baghdad right now)
Bicycle thieves deals with unemployment and criticism of socialist regime
Around 1950, started rejection of the form of neo-realism, i.e. Miracle in Milan is a
political film told as a fairy tale
Many critics wrongly said Fellini used the form of neo-realism to deal with individual
issues
Supposed to look for hegemony
In Variety Lights:
Does film reflect Cold War conflict?
Russian Pianist and an American Jazz player can’t communicate, just start playing their
own music.
Nothing is in a film by accident
Class of protagonist is irrelevant.
Other nationalities:
Several different nationalities of the performers
Other races:
Black trumpet player
Other genders:
Men ogling over the female dancers in the troupe, men are mostly jerks
Women are sex objects, egotistical, manipulative
Objectifying women:
Brazilian woman dancing in her underwear, Liliana starts her road to film when her dress
falls off, they have repeat performances of her dancing. When Liliana auditions, she does
the can-can, a hideous dance, but all you see are her legs and underwear
Ideologies:
Capitalism:
Checco’s always trying to get more money, all of them are trying to move up, get more.
Feminism:
Liliana uses her body to get ahead, Melina uses her head
Fellini scholars come up with the theory of Hyper-film: treat all Fellini’s films as 1 giant
film. Full of intratextual reference, if you don’t consider them all one film, full of
intertextual reference. Extra textual is reference to something happening outside the
world of art.
Racism:
Racial stereotypes definitely. American blacks were all considered great artists, athletes,
sex objects, etc.
Sexism:
(don’t confuse character’s POV with director’s POV)
characters are sexist
Ageism:
An awareness of difference in age, e.g. Melina’s father falls down, she has to help him
Aristocracy:
There’s a duke who’s an ass
Plutocracy:
Power to the rich
Kleptocracy: (BL just invented this word)
Power to the thieves
Fascism:
Fellini thinks it’s an adolescent male attitude. Uses glorification of death and sex to
motivate people
1950: Italy has lost the war and Mussolini and co are dead, but same families who
controlled Italy are still in power.
Kerry and Bush:
Rich, white, Yale, Skull and Bones members, etc
Film as Film:
Pg 13:
Story: what happened in order
Plot: artful rearrangement of what happened
5 channels of Info (Metz)
1. visual image
2. print and other graphics (Showing tomorrow: Bikini)
3. speech (Trumpet player speaks English, and the human duck, compares Checco to the
penguin)
4. music (non-diegetic music, non-synchronous music. Fellini draws attention to this by
switching from non-diegetic to diegetic. Scene where Checco yells with trumpet in the
background and then it turns out the trumpet player is behind him)
5. noise (sound effects) (Applause at Liliana’s house, applause or trolley?)
Qualifiers:
Profilmic = mise en scene
There’s BL and there’s a dance, it’s not a performance until he starts the dance
Filmic = shots (close-up, medium shot, long shot, high angle, low angle, subjective,
moving show, zoom, freeze frame
Fellini uses camera angles to represent people
Postfilmic = editing, montage
Extrafilmic = pre and post-production
Communication:
Transmitter; message/medium; receiver; this model can work, or fail to work, within the
film, or between the director and the spectator
Four more ways to think about a film (Monaco)
Table on pg 14 for a CP
Political:
Cold war, capitalism, etc
Alienation:
Marxist alienation: alienation from the product of labor (Vaudeville being a dying art due
to movies and capitalism)
Existential alienation: alienation from God
Intratextual references: real ducks and human ducks, Checco and the Valeria, crotch
shots,
Intertextual references: Fellini mocking high-class art
Extratextual: Cold war, sharpshooter
Self-referntiality: foregrounds the media
Hypertext- references to his future films
Meaning: can’t totally define what a film is, we can get close.
Literal: Plot
Allegorical: soul cannot find permanent bliss in life, soul’s search must fail
Moral: what is the world if you’ve lost your soul?
Anagogical: Checco and Liliana are condemned to hell. Melina is content when he’s with
Checco and he’s not fooling around on her
The White Sheik
Black priest in Hotel
Scene where he reads the letter and stares right into the camera
Bucket, plays with audience’s expectation
Random little boy
White Sheik on this ridiculous swing
“something sweet to eat” assumes she’s a woman and cooks
after you, then he leaves
music from car, non-diegetic to diegetic
screaming director foregrounds medium
fedora-Fellini
musician in restaurant sings to Ivan about the sea, sand, sky, etc. Cut to Wanda there
waves crashing on the beach during “ocean” shots
“Disgusted?”
talks about how getting married ruined his life
loved another named “Milena”
Fellini talking about his marital problems through the Sheik?
Cut from Sheik getting smacked to applauding audience
Seeing Don Giovanni
Typewriter sounds like gunfire
River-can’t trust appearances, jumps in, ankle deep
Going to see pope (still trusting appearances?)
Spends the night with a hooker, says he’s pure, she cal him her white shiek
Last year’s notes:
Topic: DISCUSSION Date: February 17, 2006 6:19 PM
Subject: UF-Film Notes-White Sheik-John Cessna Author:
Cessna, John D
This week’s film was Fellini’s White Sheik. The film was an
interesting one, which is incredibly impressive for a director’s
first film. It’s easy to see the Fellini style in this film and how it
echoes in his further work. The film’s opening is reminiscent of
Ginger and Fred, and while not a Fellini film, the moving
landscape shots and chaotic train station reminded me of the
opening to Divorce Italian Style.
WHO IS PARODYING FELLINI AT LEAST IN PART.
Later in the film, when Wanda is thrown into the back of the
truck is also strikingly similar to the scene in Ginger and Fred
where Ginger is in the back of the bus to the hotel.
INTERESTING.
What most amazed me about the film was a topic we’d spoken
about in class earlier; the idea of self-Referentiality in a film. It’s
impossible to miss in White Sheik.
;) WHY DO YOU THINK I SHOWED THIS FILM??? ;);)
As the audience sits and watches the film, we’re also watching a
film being made. This itself is a marked variant forcing the viewer
to wonder about White Sheik’s production. Was Fellini the
screaming director? As if that’s not referential enough, the
narrative leads the Sheik and Wanda from the film set, a boat
half in water, half on land out to sea. How was this shot? Fellini
shot this with the boat half in the water and half on the beach. I
think this all combines into Fellini’s point behind White Sheik; you
can’t trust what you see. Fellini is really assaulting the idea of the
typical IMR film by showing you a character that mindlessly took
in what she saw, and then was struck with a hefty dose of reality
when she met the real thing.
YES!!! ;);) AND THEREFORE . . . ;);)
But, knowing Fellini, this goes beyond film. He wants the viewer
to apply this idea of questioning realty to all aspects of their life,
not just film.
PRECISELY
Overall, White Sheik was a great film and incredibly impressive
for Fellini’s first.
I AM DELIGHTED THAT YOU GOT IT! IT TOOK CRITICS ABOUT 50
YEARS TO CATCH ON!!! ;)
8-31-06
We belong to Ben now.
Read the readings for the Thursday morning session so we can discuss them on Thursday
Read the Fellini article in the course packet pg 60-66, this is Variety Lights and White
Sheik, also read page 77
Read BL’s autobiography which can be found from his profile on the Film and Video
website
When looking at criticism, look at what you like and what you don’t like
Bondanella makes some mistakes, but it’s written pre-DVD
One of our readings is a feminist, an interesting take on the White Sheik
Make sure you’re reading Fellini on Fellini
White Sheik:
IMDB:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044000/
Antonioni came from documentary film
In the original treatment, young girl kills herself
Treatment ended up totally different from the final script
First solo-directed film form Fellini
Writing credits (in alphabetical order)
Michelangelo Antonioni
Federico Fellini
Ennio Flaiano
Tullio Pinelli
The first two days of a marriage. Ivan, a punctilious clerk brings his virginal bride to
Rome for a honeymoon, an audience with the Pope, and to present her to his uncle. They
arrive early in the morning, and he has time for a nap. She sneaks off to find the offices
of a romance magazine she reads religiously: she wants to meet "The White Sheik," the
hero of a soap-opera photo strip. Star-struck, she ends up 20 miles from Rome, alone on a
boat with the sheik. A distraught Ivan covers for her, claiming she's ill. That night, each
wanders the streets, she tempted by suicide, he by prostitutes. The next day, at 11, is their
papal audience. Can things still right themselves?
Alberto Sordi stars
Earlier directors wouldn’t cast Sordi
Toto most famous neo-politan comic actors
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toto_(actor)
In the editing house, there are posters of movies from actors who weren’t cast
Fellini puts up his own movie posters, movies competing against this one, etc
Masina thought she’d get the Wanda role, she got talked out if it
It’s gonna be awkward to put your wife in roles where Fellini himself echoes in the
characters, i.e. filmmaker who cheats on his wife (8 ½)
Trieste (Ivan) was a serious playwright, interested in film for money and women
Marchio plays editor, she was the star in Variety Lights
Mascetti (Sheik’s Wife) was the buxom slut in Variety Lights
Fellini is a crazy director, adding in dialogue wherever he wants
Nino Rota did music for Fellini until he died
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000065/
Fellini would tell Rota an idea, and Rota would just start playing the piano until they
found something they liked
They produced this cheerful/melancholy music
Rota steals music from himself, some other people, and public domain and works it in
Improvisation:
Fellini’s improvisation starts on White Sheik, he comes on set and knows exactly what he
wants, he’ll throw out other plans, never gives actors scripts in advance
Fellini would just yell “More” and “different”
Most critics hated White Sheik
Critics panned Fellini
In the last 10 years or so, the film has been rediscovered
Ivan’s Uncle starts talking about the holiday, it’s May 24th 1950
Jubilee-celebration the Catholic church has every 50 years, you get to buy indulgences
(paying for forgiveness of sins)
May-24 is the day Italy declared war on Austria and began WW1 in 1914. Officially it’s
the first event Italians participate in all together, but it was a miserable fight
Soldiers were betrayed by the government after the war
Led to unhappiness, led to Mussolini’s rise to power
The White Sheik is a movie about blind faith and what can result from throwing yourself
into a cause or idea. The entire film is a marked variant, specifically pointing to selfreferntiality. As the audience watched White Sheik, we’re watching a film being made.
Fellini makes this the dominant theme for a specific reason. He wants the audience to
apply the lessons learned by Wanda and Ivan to their own lives.
Wanda is in love with the notion of the White Sheik, and thus represents the typical IMR
viewer. She follows this narrative of the White Sheik to the editing house in an attempt to
actually meet him. She finds out he’s a horrible, sleazy, idiot of a man who does nothing
but steal a boat in an attempt to get into Wanda’s pants. When he admits he’s married, he
goes on to weave an intricate tale involving poison and deceit by a witch who tricks him
into marrying her. As if this isn’t enough of a moral lesson on not trusting what you see,
Fellini even shows a visual clue to the same lesson. He films the “at sea” ship half on
land so the viewer can see waves crashing on the beach, all while Wanda and the Sheik
are supposed to be miles off shore. Towards the end of the film, Fellini shows that Wanda
still hasn’t learned her lesson. As she gazes into a river, she puts her faith in the apparent
depth of the river, hoping she will be able to drown herself in it. As she jumps in, much
like the Sheik himself, she finds it very shallow. In Picchietti’s article on feminism in the
film, she talks about Wanda’s inability to be the Sheik’s harem girl and Ivan’s wife. We
see here as she stands in the water, she’s realized this. All that remains is whether or not
Ivan is willing to take her back now that she has this realization.
Ivan himself is also completely devoted to appearances, whether it’s keeping his relatives
in the dark about Wanda’s absence or insisting they appear perfect for the Pope. In this
respect, he and Wanda are bookends. Ivan bases his blind devotion to appearance as the
foundation for furthering his career, (He wants his uncle to help him get a seat on the
town council.) Fellini is using Ivan to show how foolish it is to put self-motivation above
the pursuit of understanding. Instead of expanding his knowledge and learning the issues
facing his town, Ivan simply wants to create the illusion of an honorable image as a
means to get him elected. He is turning himself into his own version of the White Sheik.
It’s no coincidence that Wanda calls him this at the film’s end.
As the Bondanella article states, Fellini is trying to evolve cinema out of neo-realism.
What he wants the viewer to keep in mind is that while fiction is being added back to
films and their meanings are not as obvious, i.e. The White Sheik’s story compared to
Bicycle Thieves’, the viewer still needs to take the film’s message as truth. Fellini is
taking a story and backing it with a moral meaning. In an age in Italy where people were
blindly devoting themselves to capitalism, the church, and remnants of fascism, he’s
attempting to wake them all up. He uses Wanda and Ivan as examples of what happens
to mindless devotees. Wanda falls in love with the idea of being with the White Sheik
and she ends up trying to kill herself. Ivan tries to create the perfect and honorable life for
himself, but ends up spending all his energy trying to hide its flaws from everyone.
Fellini attacks images and shows the viewers that if they blindly believe what they see,
they often end up receiving the exact opposite.
9-5-06
Vitelloni, I
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046521/
Inspired Mean Streets
Breakout role for Sordi
Continued fictionalized autobiography for Fellini
Major difference between IMR and films with more depth is the IMR’s motivation to
make money. IMR tries to get you into a fantasy world and help you identify with the
protagonist. Good films aren’t necessarily made to entertain; they’re entertaining for their
intellectual-challenge.
In IMR, they present you with a problem, and the protagonist follows the clues to the
answer.
In Independent films, the problem isn’t always clear and the answer isn’t always clear.
In Fellini films, the problem usually is something with original sin and they leave you to
figure out the answer by yourself.
Get your stuff to BL by midnight on Friday! If you have a legitimate excuse, provide
documentation.
Problems in some of our writings:
No thesis statement.
No development
No conclusion
Bad Grammar
No proofreading
Not reading the assigned material
Cite your sources at the end of the post.
BL won’t mark us down for just not agreeing with him, if we back up our thoughts, we’re
golden.
Don’t make generalization without several examples to back it up.
White Sheik:
Army band represents Ivan’s feelings, among other things.
Fellini playing with diegetic sound:
We hear the band before you see it.
We hear the romantic music…and then the car pulls up and it’s coming from their radio.
Analogies from the marching band and Ivan and co marching off to see the pope. This is
a contrast from the scene where the circus troupe goes down the steps and we hear
“March of the Gladiators”
This film as a transition from neo-realism:
In Neo-Realist, survival is primary motivator of characters
People helping only themselves fail, if they help the community they succeed.
In White Sheik, people are concerned about getting more, e.g. Ivan wants to accelerate
his career.
Only soldiers we see marching in Neo-Realist films are Nazis. Italians and Americans
look just as scruffy.
In White Sheik, the people have totally forgotten the war.
Don Giovanni’s poster at the opera:
Intertextual: the performers are singing, the female is confused about love and the man is
very aggressive. This is cut-to from the scene where Wanda and the Sheik are doing the
same thing.
The Sheik gets knocked in the head by the mast, sudden cut to the audience in the opera
applauding.
2 great lovers of literature:
Casanova and Don Giovanni
Difference:
Casanova liked women, pleased them
Don Giovanni didn’t like women, went out to seduce virgins, etc
Fellini is saying the Sheik is this want to-be Giovanni
Dualism in Wanda:
One hand: she’s the straight-laced wife
Other hand: she’s the Sheik’s harem girl.
Foregrounding the medium:
Shows the film being made within the film. White Sheik shows how films are made, with
random extras; leading actors are jerks, civilians gumming up the works, etc
Profilmic qualifiers: How we set up the world of the film before filming, e.g. the director
adding more makeup to Wanda to make her “more oriental”
Communication:
Everyone is on a different channel. Only time people actually communicate is when Ivan
and Wanda are in the crazy-bin and they just cry to each other
Mise-en-scene
When Wanda jumps in the water, all the angel statues have their backs to her
Is the end a happy-one? Is this a euphoric ending for Wanda?
Class says no
BL thinks she’s trying to back into her life of dreams. She’s trying to ignore the life she’s
going to have (kids, cooking, etc). Fellini sees it ironically. The last shot is an Angel
blessing them, but the statue is crumbling.
Vitelloni, I
Lilia Landi: Felga from WS
References Ginger Rogers
Definitely see the friend with the sister theme from mean streets
“bring a spoon to celebrate”?
big fish in a little pond
a jesus store. Owner says amen and puts money in his pocket
going to the movies (self referentiality)
man cheats on his wife
circus themed party
drunk, room spinning, out of tune musicons…hells
“you see Faust? He’s settled and happy” don’t believe appearances
the actor is fellini
Moraldo should just punch Faust
Nobody communicates, “what’d I do?” crying “I’m sure she’ll be at the nanny’s..did
you eat?”
If you whole life is trying to get more for yourself, you’re unable to communicate with
others
Moraldo gay?
Woman is temptation
Workers=capitalist?
The father’s buid up to the ass-whoopin, escort the people out, lock the door, take off
your coat, belt…whoopin
Faust gets beat and she says, “did he hurt you?” and he snipes back, “no, how are you”
Train pulling away from his friends in their beds
Invented autobiography
At what point does selfishness become justifiable
9-7-06
Fellini may have invented the title of the film, it means an overgrown calf. Usually called
mama’s boys. They’re not calves, but they’re not bulls, they refuse to grow up.
When Charlie is leaning out of his cousin bedroom window in Mean Streets, this film
inspires this
Constant focus on women’s breasts and stomachs like in Variety Lights.
Fellini seemingly has a movie in his head, and he’s just trying it out in different situations
trying to get the pieces to fit, hence the hyper-film.
Now we can start making references back to his other films
Music had more of a clear foreshadowing and more comentative nature with less diegetic.
Fellini deflates what’s been elevated
Moraldo is interested in this young boy because he’s more adult then him and all his
friends. Boy is reminiscent of Bicycle Thieves
Who is the main protagonist?
Most say Moraldo
Who is the narrator?
We don’t know
Characteristics of the Fellinian universe:
Rejection of the allegory of love
A downward spiral
Circus themes
Original sin or sorts
Outward search for help
Communication is not assumed
Fantasy vs. reality
Big-breasted women
Demystification of a lot of things
Open-ended ending
Objectifying of women
Life-form dualism
Children’s’ first experiences with sexuality
Reflexivity of the media
Caricatures
Autobiographical
Alberto: trying to bum a cigarette
Leopardo: smoking a cigarette with a holder
Ricardo: singing
Fausto: hitting on a women
Sandra wins, there’s a big storm so everyone runs inside and continues to party
The movie Sandra and Fausto see, when Fausto comes back from chasing the other girl,
he asks Sandra how it ends, “did she die?” and she says, “no, they got married.” In the
beginning of the film, Sandra talks about wanting to die because she’s pregnant, but she
ends up marrying Fausto
Fausto is a slime ball. He doesn’t know what he wants, he acts like a kid, and he’s forced
into the marriage and doesn’t want to take responsibility for his kid.
When Sandra says she’ll beat him if he tries it again, he naturally says, “Oh I like this”
because she’s shift from a wife-figure to a maternal one in his eyes.
Each character stays within their type.
According to theory, men have billions of sperm so they try to get busy all over, but
women have a finite number of eggs, so they try to pick and choose mates based on who
will stay with them and such.
Most males can identify to a certain extent with Fausto, but BL says he’s horrendously
disgusting.
Most societies try to legislate behavior of people for the good of society. In primitive
society, you don’t want to feed a kid who isn’t your own. Hence a lot of women who
have elicit relationships, or raped, they’re killed.
Story about the son of a kind raping this young lady, to protect her honor she kills herself
and starts a revolution to start the republic. These stories were taught to BL in childhood,
similar to our Washington cherry-tree story.
We go through phases in childhood, anal phase, oral phase, phallic phase (Oedipal
response), genital phase, and integrated individual
Talking about Jungian psychology:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Jung#Jungian_psychology
Jung says people don’t have the courage to analyze their own shadows, so we project our
problems on other people.
This relates to the film:
Fausto blames everyone else for his problems, e.g. he blames his boss’ wife for him being
fired
Fausto hasn’t reached any level of maturity; he just grabs it or runs away from it. He’s
scared of his father, some castration fear?
Alberto still lives with his mother and sister and for carnival he dresses up as a woman.
All he does is cry.
Leopardo blames the small town for failure as a playwright
How successful allegory of love end?
Marriage.
Like in Fellini films, you start with people getting together, and then instead of happily
ever after, we see what really happens. Failure of the allegory of love.
Original sin:
Fausto: lust, stuck in Oedipal stage because he always goes after older women
In Divine Comedy, the lustful were stuck in a storm.
Circus:
Carnival Celebration, Beauty Pageant, Variety show.
What connects the Carnival and the Pageant?
Supposed to quit the party, but the Vitelloni don’t
Film Notes:
I Vitelloni is a very hard film to write about. As you said, this is where Fellini gets
difficult. I also believe this is where Fellini’s hyperfilm truly begins and is where Fellini
begins to tell the tale of his life through Moraldo.
While Fellini has made autobiographical references in his first two films, Variety Lights
and The White Sheik, I think I Vitelloni is where he falls into the rhythm of his
autobiographical hyperfilm. I Vitelloni focuses on the lives of a group of friends in a
small Italian town. Fellini throws us into the story right, as all their lives are about to get
complicated in their own individual ways. As Bondanella puts it, “each of the Vitelloni
experiences a crisis as his illusions collide with realty.” All of Fellini’s gang of rag-tag
youth are forced to grow up in the film. This is where the character-study aspect of the
film is introduced. Fellini shows how different people react to situations where maturity
is forced upon them. The crux of this example is Fausto.
Fausto is a guy who can’t hold down a job and has no ambition or goals. He’s perfectly
fine living at home with his father and chasing women in his spare time. As I said in
class, he’s basically a pubescent boy. This idea ties into the Fellini-trait of showing boys’
first experiences with sexuality. It seems that Fausto never left this stage of his life. But
all this is pushed aside when he finds out Sandra is pregnant. In his immature fashion, he
tries to pack up and get out of town. His father has to literally beat him to get him to
marry Sandra. Unfortunately, marriage doesn’t help Fausto. He still continues to chase
women, lead a party-lifestyle, and like the rest of the Vitelloni, blame all his problems on
other people. It’s amazing that Moraldo, Sandra’s own brother, doesn’t beat Fausto to a
pulp.
Even the casual viewer can see Fellini in the character of Moraldo. He is the emotional
center of the group, and I would say the film’s protagonist. It’s easy to see in the party
and wedding scenes in the beginning of the film that he’s growing tired of this lifestyle.
As opposed to his friends, he’s ready to leave the metaphorical party. I think this is why
he’s one of the most passive characters in the film. Moraldo never gets ridiculously
drunk, chases after women, or goes on long rants about the beauty of his writings.
Moraldo’s role in the film is the observer. He watches his friends and internally reflects
on his life, one could argue in this sense he’s one of the most active characters in the film.
I think Fellini does an excellent job of showing Moraldo’s internal feelings. Fellini has
him constantly questioning if this is the life he wants to continue to lead. Not only does
Fellini accomplish this through Moraldo’s silent observations, but through his actions as
well.
Upon first seeing the film I thought Moraldo was gay, even further, a pedophile. Neither
is true. I originally thought Moraldo was gay because throughout the film he turns down
the chance to sleep with women. This is specifically said after Fausto comes out of the
actress’ apartment and asks Moraldo how his girl was. Moraldo shrugs and said she
wasn’t for him. This is just another further example of his growing maturity. What is life
if it’s just filled with countless parties and nameless women? It’s fun for a while, but
eventually, one must move on. This is where Moraldo is. As Bondanella says, “Moraldo
has put aside childish things and is the first Fellinian character to have experienced a
conversion, an epiphany.”
Moraldo’s relationship with Guido, the young working-boy, is also not a sexual one.
Moraldo admires Guido simply because the child is more mature than all of his friends.
He gets u early every morning and works because he has to. Guido has a responsibility to
himself and his family that none of the Vitelloni possess. It is this quality that warms
Moraldo’s heart. If one examines the film as an emotional journey for Moraldo, Guido is
the light at the end of the tunnel and what he desires to become. Moraldo hopes to grow
up to be what this small child already is.
In the end of the film, Moraldo finally leaves town. He doesn’t tell anyone, he just does it
because it’s what he knows he must do. Like Fellini leaving his hometown and his own
personal Vitelloni, he’s growing up and taking the next step in his life. To quote
Bondanella again, “The nature of this conversion is a philosophical change, a conscious
decision to accept the adult world and abandon the puerile illusions of the past as the
basis for life in the world.” I Vitelloni is the first stepping-stone in Fellini’s hyperfilm.
Through Moraldo, Fellini shows us where he came from and how he began his life. I
Vitelloni begins the Fellinian life story that is echoed in his films to come like La Dolce
Vita and 8 ½.
Sources:
Early Fellini: Variety Lights, The White Sheik, The Vitelloni- Peter Bondanella (Course
Pack-pg 60-70)
9-12-06
We discussed cast and crew for Vitelloni:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046521/fullcredits
the idea of Moraldo growing up, escaping:
we all seem to agree on this idea
Mirrors important:
Angie says there were a few scenes where mirrors were important.
BL says mirrors are important with Fellini, so keep looking for them
Mirrors allow mask to drop and us to see through them
Why do these guys stick together:
It’s a small town, no work, they just kind of clump together
No real connections, when Fausto leaves they just kind of ignore it, and then he’s back
The film is fairly straightforward except for the voice over, who is it?
Some argue its Fellini, not his actual voice, but his perspective.
Some say all these characters are facets of Fellini’s personality
Facial hair:
A sign of growing up?
BL says it’s a sign of having nothing in their lives besides superficial things
In Hollywood, people are concerned with appearances, but the big t time directors dress
plainly like BL
Sandra:
She is an airhead, but when she says she’ll beat him if he cheats on her, she’s shifting
from a wife to a mother, and this is what Fausto is looking for
Madonna Whore complex. Fausto marries Sandra and makes her an honorary Madonna,
so he needs to go out and find a new whore
We see that marriage does not provide happiness
At beginning of the movie they see, the woman says, “I want to die” but when Fausto
comes back after chasing that woman, he says, “did she die” and Sandra says, “no, she
got married” just like Sandra
At the wedding, Alberto stands in front of Sandra next to Fausto
Alberto wants to be a woman, he’s never with women, he wears a dress, and he tries to
take the bride’s place in the picture
When there’s an idea in the film, we can just follow the ripples and use them to prove our
point
Moraldo at work:
He acts snotty, he doesn’t want to be there, and he acts too cool for it
Used to be a rigid class structure in Italy, i.e. if you were a student you didn’t work
Alberto insulting the workers comments on the stupidity of their attitudes, but it made
Sordi a star
In Fellini’s films, the men are usually jerks and women are usually victimized
To some extent these women allow themselves to be with these jerks
BL: “Men are jerks, but sometimes women help.”
There’s this idea of refusing to leave the party, refusing to say, “ok, time to go home”
Jung’s shadow, we’re afraid to look inside ourselves. Alberto is dressed as a women
dragging a big man’s head calling people nobodies
Fausto tries to seduce his boss’ wife, he gets fired, blames the woman
Leopardo wants to be a writer instead of actually writing
Leopardo is scared of the homosexual actor, he flees from him
When Fausto looks for Sandra, the first place he goes is his boss’ house, which makes
sense because Fausto wanted his boss’ wife, and his oedipal nature makes his boss into
his father
Moraldo is never seen with a woman, always sides with men, only really appears to be
interested in his relationship with Guido.
Moraldo looks at his shadow, and because of this he doesn’t have to attack other people,
but he sees the homosexuality inside and decides to leave
La Strada
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047528/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Strada_%281954_film%29
opens with news that Rosa is dead
“I can even teach dogs”
posing like tree (25 min in)
What holiday are the parading for?
Playing the world’s smallest violin
Stuns her art, even though she becomes very talented
Mussollini tries to homogonize Italians
9-14-6
Chris is the mom
Deviations from Neo Realism in Variety Lights, White Sheik, I Vitelloni, and La Strada:
VL/LS deal with an irrelevant socio-political class
You can’t really define Neo Realism, but you know it when you see it (Rome Open City,
Paisa, Bicycle Thieves, Umberto D, and Miracle in Milan
WS: Ivan and Wanda only concerned with their own status
Vit: The Vitelloni are not trying to get ahead at all
VL: extra-diegetic sound from the trolley, shooter who shoots gun and never hurts
anyone
“Don’t shoot a bazooka in an airplane”- Benjamin Lawton, PhD
WS: The Sheik’s swing is totally ridiculous
Fellinian Universe:
Original Sin:
VL: Lust, Greed
WS: Lust, Greed
Vit: Lust
LS: Bestial Rage (Zampano)
Downward Spiral:
VL: for Checco
WS: for Ivan and Wanda
Vit: Fausto, but all really have problems
Open-ending:
VL: where it began on the train
WS: running to the church
Vit: Moraldo leaving, the others stay. There’s a cyclical nature for the other Vitelloni
lives
LS: Gelsomina is supposed to remind us of Charley Chaplin
Why does Moraldo leave?
Possibly gay or looking to move on, or some combination of both
Rejection of Allegory of Love:
VL: Checco and Marina are a couple, but this does not resolve their problems.
WS: Married and the story starts, no happily every after
Vit: Same idea, Fausto marries Sandra and receives no bliss
LS: We know there’s not going to be a happy, loving ending. Zampano buys Gelsomina
after her sister mysteriously dies
Gelsomina has a somewhat Stockholm disorder with Zampano
Life form Dualism:
VS: Life is the artists he stumbles upon at night. Form is the big show.
WS: Ivan is form, Wanda is life in the beginning and she moves into form
Vit: Life is the beauty pageant and the carnival, all the Vitelloni have morphed into form
LS: Gelsomina is life.
Film Notes:
La Strada is a new high in Fellini’s journey of self-expression. We established in class
that the film’s conceptual nucleus is predicated upon life form dualism, or the struggle
between form and life. But La Strada goes beyond this. In this film, Fellini establishes his
main characters as nothing but pure incarnations of their respective ideologies, and then
harkens it back to his own personal struggles.
Simply put, Gelsomina is a pure representation of life and Zampano is form. The film
itself is a character-comparison of these two ideals. Throughout the film we Gelsomina
derive happiness from her work, her art. She finds joy in the smallest details, whether it’s
blowing a horn or trying on a hat. Her street-act is the same way. Save for the parts
Zampano makes her work into her routine, she adapts her act and it’s easy for the viewer
to see she experiences pure joy from performing. The contrast to this is Zampano. He
wants everything done in a militaristic type fashion; the drum must be beaten one-way,
he needs to be introduced another, etc. It’s all very systematic. Even at the film’s end, we
see him repeating his same mantra as he bends his same chain as part of the same act he’s
been doing of several decades. Fellini puts these two ideologies together to serve as a
clash. Fellini is even blatant in foregrounding this conflict. He doesn’t develop the
characters at all through the film; they are just constant reinforcements of their respective
traits. In the course pack, Bazin goes so far as to say, “…nothing is ever revealed to us
from the interior of the characters.” Yet it is through this comparison that Fellini makes
the narrative autobiographical and personal.
Fellini poses this clash of ideologies to the audience for a specific reason. It’s well
documented that Fellini’s films are autobiographical and La Strada is nothing more than
an exterior-narrative built upon an interior problem. Within all forms of art, film
especially, the artist walks the fine line between art and business, life and form. La Strada
is Fellini’s expression of this struggle in his own life. When looking at the Fellinian
hyperfilm, we see his evolution as an artist and a person. He deals with his passion for
performing in Variety Lights, his distrust of appearances in The White Sheik, his need to
mature in I Vitelloni, and now Fellini struggles with the dual-life of the
artist/businessman. As Aristarco says in his article, “Fellini, too, tries to find
justifications, struggles in his own way...(Fellini) seeks out his own emotions along the
treacherous paths of suggestivism and autobiographism…” This conflict is part of the
foundation for one of the themes seen later in Fellini’s 8 ½.
So while we established in class that La Strada is a character study of Fellini’s life-form
dualism; this constant clash of form and art, it’s easy to see where it comes from. All of
Fellini’s films relate back to the man himself, and his personal-confliction comes through
loud and clear in La Strada. It’s even easier to take Zampano out of the picture and see
Fellini crying on the beach, wondering if he’s spent too much of his life making the
wrong choices for his art.
Sources:
La Strada-Andre Bazin
Italian Cinema-Guido Aristarco
Questions:
Do you think Zampano crying on the beach would qualify as him, to put it mildly,
learning his lesson? Or does this fall into the realm of the Fellini open-ended film?
Were there any examples of fore-grounding the media in this film?
Also, sorry this is about 1.5 hours late. GGGB dragged me limb-by-limb from my
computer to see the new De Palma movie that opened. Even though it’s completely his
fault, I will take responsibility and beg your mighty forgiveness.
9-19-06
Adding points for people who read Vista posts.
10 is the max on film notes, you can do class notes for another 5
La Strada:
Did Zampano learn his lesson?
There’s no evidence to make an argument either way.
Roma Della Rose:
Big poem that goes on for thousands of verses. It’s all allegorical. This is the same for La
Strada The main characters are allegorical figures
Allegory of Love:
Starting in Middle Ages, describing men as material and women as spiritual
Tried to say the way a man loves a woman becomes a metaphor for how man loves god
Cannot achieve permanent bliss in life, could not have fruition because this implies you
have permanent bliss, which can’t happen in life
Lots of people have read La Strada as 1. An indictment of capitalism (metaphorically)
and 2. A metaphor for marriage (traditional marriage)
Number of possible allegorical readings:
Dualism: Gelsomina (life) vs Zampano (form)
Life is passion, instinct, passion, fantasy and is mobile, chaotic, imperpetual and joyous
becoming
Form is reason, common morality, social conventions, and is immobility, determinism,
mortal rigor
Life wants consistency and becomes form
All kind of characters in Fellini films are trying to accomplish this
Only love can temporarily save you from this insanity
Pirandello says we hide ourselves from each other and ourselves except for brief flashes
of insight
Fellini is saying the material and the spiritual are not going to go together. Zampano will
not be able to beat Gelsomina into form.
Several instances of pulling the masks back up, Zampano saying, “oh I don’t need you”
etc
Marxist critics didn’t like the film because the church thought it was a metaphor for
repentance, but this was stupid reading because Fellini calls the church dumb. In the
convent scene, the nuns were talking about being married to God. This serves as a
comparison to Gelsomina and Zampano’s relationship.
Fellini basically said religion is showbiz.
Marxists were pissed because they thought this film focused on individuals instead of
society. They said Fellini was using neo-realism style to convey non-neo-realist ideas.
We don’t really know where these 2 are performing, don’t know about passage of time
Neither on the filmic, pro-filmic, or the editing levels are you really connected to the
traditions of neo-realism
Musical instruments:
Zampano plays drum, fool plays violin, Gelsomina plays the soulful trumpet
Communication:
Occurs on a pre-rational level. Conversations are almost always on different channels
Zampano’s crying is an exaggeration to imply he’s suddenly gained a conscious. He’s
now aware that something is missing
Fellini is modifying allegory of love by saying it doesn’t work and if someone is missing
form or life, they’re reduced to this beast crying in the sand
Cabiria:
Church as spectacle
Don’t look at the camera
In love, dancing, kissing…throws her in the river
“you dirty vitellone”
walking around thus huge arty
“1000 masses at 3,000 each:
spectacle:
the actor and his house
the prostitutes
the church
“approach the alter of the virgin”
“Nobody’s changed”
magician is the devil, also putting on a show
9-21-06
Quiz:
Gelsomina is life, Zampano is form, and the Fool is a hybrid of both
Chris said the three are mind, body, and soul
BL says the Fool is a mind who’s become rigid form
Poetics of Childhood: poet can still feel the inner child; children can imbue nature with
meaning. Gelsomina is this in the film.
Why Catholics liked the film: thought Zampano discovered his conscious. They were
wrong: shows Church as spectacle.
Life/Form dualism: Zampano forces form into Gelsomina, who is life.
Masks: there are moments when we drop our masks and really see ourselves
Final Scene: Zampano is crying because he realizes something has been missing from his
life
Zampano: ID, Fool: ego, Gelsomina: super-ego
Allegory of love: Doesn’t work. Material and intellect do not come together to form a
perfect synthesis
Film is a metaphor for capitalism
Plusbeloren: try to bring in other people who won’t fight capitalism, i.e. Hispanic
workers
Film is also a metaphor for marriage
Anthony Quinn shot this and another movie at the same time. Some of his ragged look is
from the stress of doing 2 movies at the same time
Analogy to French poem Le Roman de La Rose because this poem supposedly spawned
the allegory of love
Meanings of the film:
Allegorical: bestial rage causes a person to destroy his mind and soul
Moral: don’t be dumb and angry
Nights of Cabiria:
Does the Fellinian universe work in Cabiria?
Definitely a downward spiral
Ending: all her possessions and “love” doesn’t matter
Allegory of Love: she gets together with all these guys, but there is no bliss, no joining of
ideas to create harmony.
Cabiria being a prostitute alone rejects the allegory of love.
Similar structure to Variety Lights, it all fails and we’re back where we started
A filmmaker who has a protagonist, Oscar, with such a non-Italian name sends off some
weird signals
Reel magic in Cabiria: the magic show, which is totally non-explainable.
People in high places, the swing in White Sheik, the high wire in La Strada
Original source for her name is Cabiria from the silent film
Cabiria Film note
The Nights of Cabiria is the next film in our journey through the works of Fellini.
It’s the story of a roman prostitute as she attempts to navigate the pitfalls of her career
and falling in love. The Nights of Cabiria is a film about spectacle. In this film, Fellini
attacks several institutions, the church, money/love, and even the medium of film itself.
It’s nearly impossible to ignore the spectacle of the church in Nights of Cabiria.
From he clergy, which strangely seem to be everywhere asking for money, to the constant
festivals and parades, the unenlightened viewer might think Fellini is trying to make an
advertisement for the Catholic church. But when looking at all the references to the
church together, it’s easy to see what motivates them all…money. One example of this is
the monk who approaches Cabiria outside her house. When he finds out she has no
money to donate, he immediately starts walking away wile giving her a half-hearted
speech about how he’s there if she needs him. He says all this while his back is turned on
her. But the most blatant example of the church as spectacle is the festival of the holy
virgin. The chaotic images of all the crowded people throwing their money at the
Madonna statue hold immense power. Fellini shows these prostitutes throwing their
money at the virgin. The viewer can’t help but draw comparisons between the way men
throw money at the prostitutes who throw it at the Madonna. The money literally goes
from man, to whore, to virgin. It puts a whole new spin on the Madonna/Whore complex.
Fellini also attacks the idea of money and love. As previously stated, he shows
how something supposedly holy and pure like the church can be corrupted by money. He
also shows what men can do for money. Cabiria thinks she has found love in Oscar. With
this love and her savings, she feels security. This is where the true genius of Fellini
comes into play. He strips the security away to make a statement. In the final sequence of
the film, Fellini shows Cabiria at her worst, without a home, money, or love. Bazin calls
this sequence, “the boldest and the most powerful shot in the whole of Fellini’s work.”
Cabiria is seen crying, and why shouldn’t she? She is completely alone and penniless.
But even after everything she’s been through, she sees the joy around her and musters a
smile. Fellini is coming out and saying that life is full of spectacle, and it’s easy to get
caught up in these spectacles and become hypnotized into thinking things like money,
religion, and love are what define us, but even if you have none of these things, you can
still find happiness in y our independent self. Cabiria has no career and no money. She’s
alone and homeless, yet Fellini shows how she’s able to find joy in her own personal
identity.
But Fellini isn’t done there. He makes one last bold attack to drive the message
home to his audience. He attacks the rules of the medium themselves and goes after his
audience. When Cabiria begins to smile, she looks directly into the camera, breaking that
fourth wall of security with the audience. It’s as is Fellini himself is addressing the
viewer and saying, “you can learn from this too.” Of this look, Bazin says, “when she
looked us in the eye Cabiria seemed to come bearing some ultimate truth.” It’s through
this look that Fellini imparts his overall message of the film: it’s easy to get caught in the
spectacles of the modern world, but when we strip away all the layers, it’s our own
identity that defines us, and ultimately the only source of happiness we have that can’t be
taken away.
Sources:
Cabiria: The Voyage to the End of Neorealism: Andre Bazin
9-26-06
If BL hasn’t responded to something new we put up, send him an e-mail and let him now.
From now on BL will just make 1 massive post per week with all his replies to our stuff
in it
Come see him if you need more help
The Exponent is very dumb.
Cage Rage Documentary:
Local version of extreme fighting. Local promoter is looking for people to help make
documentary or something.
Jung and Individuation on WebCT, read this. Jung begins to be a massive influence in
Fellini’s work
Nights of Cabiria:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050783/
Most producers were demanding Final Cut of the movie, Fellini refuses
Rumor is Fellini heard about a prostitute from the archeological promenade that was
decapitated, started following prostitutes around with Pasolini
Prostitution was legal, but a hot topic at the time this is made
Film is being made during battle to make prostitution illegal
Closing of prostitute houses: prostitutes in the street, STDs skyrocket
Fellini’s father dies during the making of the film, this later referenced in 8 ½
Cabiria’s shack has no roof so they could use natural light to film
Priests protested shooting at the Shrine of Divine Love
Filming gets suspended at last second because Giulietta gets hurt, Fellini was very hard
on her
Perier played Oscar, big French actor
Fellini didn’t typically like big-name, trained actors, they were harder to change
Nazzari played Lazzari, made fun of himself
Fellini never spoke to him again
Costumes based on real prostitutes
Replaced cinematographers towards the end of the film
Rota did music, composed as he watched the movie
Problems:
Ministry of Education and Interior were against the film, didn’t get money from the state
Had to pass censorship board to go to Cannes
Called Siri (a cardinal) to see it, said “something needed to be done” and left
Somehow got passed
Created special prizes for it to win at Cannes
Massive success critically and commercially
Inspired a Neil Simon/Bob Fosse play
Allegory of Love:
Fellini shows that this perfect ideal of love is an illusion and Cabiria will never find it,
which is why she ends up looking inward
Result of the failure of the allegory of love:
Alienation, there is no merging between the two people
The characters in La Strada represent ideas, that’s why Gelsomina dies, she represents the
idea of love and Fellini is saying it just doesn’t work
Original sins: lust, rage, and greed
Lust is least serious, then rage, and greed is worst
Greed is original sin in Cabiria, manifested by Georgo and Oscar
Dante says Raab is in heaven and she’s a prostitute
Cabiria is a very emotionally loving person
Malice/Fraud/Greed have subcategories:
Seducers (Georgo, Oscar)
Agitators / Flatterers
Merchants of Sacred Objects
Magicians/Fortunetellers
Hypocrites
Thieves (Georgo/Oscar(
Fraudulent Counselors
Sewers of Discord (big fat prostitute)
Counterfeiters (Oscar)
Traitors: (from worst to most-worst)
Of relative:
Of country
Against friends
Of Benefactors
Dante makes all these categories in the 1300s when he wrote
Downward spiral of Cabiria
Cabiria searches for help in the priest, other men, etc
The film has an ambiguous ending
Fellini’s film challenges:
the notion of the family, Cabiria talking about all her mother cared about was bringing
the money back
9-28-06
BL thinks that we don’t know what the allegory of love is
Women are spirituality, men are form, and they need to achieve fruition
Allegory is an extended metaphor
Represents men (as material) and god (as spiritual) having this desire for the spiritual. As
men, we want women. So we want God in the way we want women, but we’ll never get
together in fruition.
Dante shows failure of allegory of love
King Arthur, Gwynevere, and Lancelot show how it fails
Dante finds the perfect woman because she’s dead, she leads him towards god, but on the
last step to God, she steps aside
Women can help you get to God, but they’re not the ultimate beauty
Fellini has woman-the material. Challenges the idea of man-the material
Individuation:
Get and print it out. We’ll talk about it next time in conjunction with La Dolce Vita
Traditional Art vs. Modern Art
Notes from Understanding Film:
Kinds of art: traditional, modern, and postmodern
Traditional: theocentric, geocentric, artist is spokesperson for someone, content, not
medium, past present and future, assume can communicate, happy ending, suspension of
disbelief
Galileo tried to assault geocentric claims, got shut up
Michelangelo’s David:
Realistic, grandiose art forms
Dante’s Divine Comedy has the same massive art quality to it.
But people don’t normally see these things. Our focus is on content rather than form
Typically we identify with the protagonist
Don’t want viewer to be aware of film process
Single diegesis: don’t get pushed out of narrative
Pleasure: happy ending
Fiction
Modern: heliocentric, anthropocentric, more enlightenment, Marx, historical materialism,
Darwin, Freud, Doyle, scientific method, grand narratives, stress on matter vs story, artist
is spokesperson for self, past is a memory, future is a maybe, communication is not
assumed, no closer, makes viewer aware of the medium, questions what is art
1492: discovered this whole new world and it seemingly didn’t compute (didn’t match up
with Bible)
Encyclopedias: taking down artisanship, spreading knowledge
Historical materialism: history is just made up of thesis and antithesis, they form in a
cycle. History’s purpose is to finally have this conflict between the workingman and the
upper class.
Evolution challenged the timeline of the bible, theocentric
Doyle-developed scientific method in fiction
Story changes to how the work of art is constructed
Rather than changing their art for the viewer to understand, the artist just expresses
himself.
John Cage: 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence.
Skyscrapers: steel, exploit and foregrounds materials that they’re built of, steel and glass.
De-humanizing.
Communication is nor occurring:
Taxi Driver is a perfect example, the characters talk, but nobody listens
Past is subjective
David: originally setup facing towards Rome. Rome is huge and Florence is smaller, so
Florence had statue made to warn Rome not to try anything funny
Modern art: these stories don’t exist, focus is on line, form
Critics decide what sells
Closure in White Sheik:
Statue blessing with poo and such on it:
It’s kind of like a so-so blessing for some so-so closure
Modern art is self-referential:
References how its made
Beach scene in white sheik
Fellini on different kinds of art:
Nights of Cabiria:
Time: goes in chronological order
Belonging vs Alienation: Cabiria wants to belong, goes through Existential
Alienation
-marxist alienation: alienation from the product of your labor
-existential alienation: God is dead
Fellini does not deny God or Fate, he challenges temporal institution of the church, says
the church is a circus
In Cabiria, no dislocations of time.
There are unmarked transitions of time in La Dolce Vita
Everybody’s alienated in LDV
Marcello’s original sin: Lust evolves into Greed
He definitely has a downward spiral and searches for external help (Steiner, the women),
ambiguous ending
Communication:
Cabiria- no real communication, but there are moments of communication between her
and the man with the sack
LDV:
Nobody communicates, i.e. the beach scene at the end, the helicopters in the beginning
The church is ambiguous and crazy
Simile (my love is like a rose) vs Metaphor (my love is a rose)
Art is more simile like, a symbolic progression, a points to b points to c
Some art is more metaphor, these intertextual references point to the meaning
There’s a cut from Jesus’ face to the crazy oriental dancer-church as spectacle
Comparisons to Vampires: in the church scene, Steiner plays Toccata and Fugue and
Marcello turns around and strikes a post very similar to Nosferatu
Traditional to IMR, identify to protagonist, but in LDV you don’t identify with Marcello
Foregrounding the medium:
Cabiria stares at the camera
Shooting pictures of Robert through the mirror to make it “artistic”
If you’re watching this film, you can’t ignore the fact that you’re watching a film. Fellini
keeps throwing you out of the narrative
La Dolce Vita
Fellini’s La Dolce Vita is a gauntlet to watch. For the ignorant viewer, i.e. me the
first time I saw this, the film is easily written off as a string of intense, nonsensical
sequences that blindly murmur their way around an idea. But to the enlightened viewer,
La Dolce Vita is a film so full of intellectual bravo and Fellinian ideology, that a viewing
can even become physically exhausting. In La Dolce Vita, Fellini attacks the notion of
“the sweet life”. He spends 180 minutes showing how a life devoted to personal pursuits
can only result in a an inability to express one’s self in a physical and artistic way.
One of Fellini’s main themes is the ability to communicate, or lack there of. This
idea runs rampant in La Dolce Vita. The entire film is full of people who spend their
whole lives talking, but never communicating. Marcello seduces countless women with
his powerful rhetoric, but realistically, never says anything. What causes this imaginary
wall between Fellini’s caricatures? Simply put, they’re too concerned with their own
lives to bother with the emotions of others. As Pasolini says in his article entitled, “The
Mature Auteur: La Dolce Vita and Beyond”, “There is not a sad character who moves us
to compassion. For everyone, everything is going fine, even if it is going terribly.
Everyone is full of energy in managing to survive, even if burdened by death and
insensitivity.” Pasolini does an amazing job summing up the players in La Dolce Vita.
They are all so busy trying to attain what they think is the sweet life, tat they can’t even
communicate with each other. Examples of this idea serve as the film’s bookends, with a
sequence at the beginning and the end. The first of these is Marcello and company in the
helicopter. They’re shouting to the girls below, but nobody can understand each other.
One can go further and look at what the characters’ motivations are in this scene.
Marcello is trying to get the girls’ phone numbers and the girls are trying to satisfy their
own curiosities about the statue’s transport. If both parties weren’t only attempting to
fulfill their own desires, perhaps communication would be possible. The final example of
this in the film is the beach scene. The girl Marcello had met earlier is shouting to him,
but of course, Marcello cannot hear her. He’s so wrapped up in his own world he gives
up and goes back to the party. In this sense, Marcello can be seen as an elderly Vitelloni.
Fellini also attacks the idea of self-expression in La Dolce Vita, specifically how
society is willing to sacrifice it for “the sweet life.” The classic example of this is
Marcello. In the beginning of the film, he’s a writer. His peers confirm that he’s both and
intellectual and an artist. Yet, through the Fellini-required downward spiral, Marcello
gives up his art. When he’s shown at the end of the film, not only is he a physical and
emotional wreck, but also he announces he’s given up writing and is now a talent agent.
It’s interesting to note this profession in conjunction with the pursuit of a materialistic
life. Marcello transitions from an artist, who lives to create, into a talent agent who makes
his living sucking off the talent of others. This plays into the theme of vampires in La
Dolce Vita. Not only do the drunken aristocrats claim their hunting for vampires when
they go into the old house, but Marcello’s transition into a monstrous creature that feeds
off of others is foreshadowed in the church scene. When Steiner sits and plays Toccata
and Fugue, a song from the Nosferatu soundtrack, Marcello turns around and strikes a
pose that’s far too similar to Nosferatu to be insignificant. Fellini incorporates this idea of
vampires to show how far people are willing to go to live “the sweet life” and how easily
they’re willing to sell out themselves and their talents.
Fellini is a master of demythologization and is an expert craftsman at posing
questions to his audience. In La Dolce Vita he asks, “how far are you willing to go for
what you consider a good life? And does a good life need to be motivated by material
goods?” Of course, Fellini debunks this idea and creates these caricatures that the
audience can not identify with, but are still able to apply to their own lives. As was said
in class, he’s constantly forcing the viewer outside the film in order to make them realize
the lessons of the film apply to them as wells. As Pasolini says, “For Fellini, [social
institutions] are myths. Against the shortcomings of such myths, which in our society are
visible to the most myopic and indifferent eye, he has a recourse to the force of myth.”
And while it’s easy for the uninformed to shove La Dolce Vita off, for the enlightened, it
harbors new life lessons to unfold and apply in each subsequent viewing time and time
again.
Sources: The Mature Auteur: La Dolce Vita and Beyond- Pier Paolo Pasolini
10-3-06
Chris is buying us all pizza. It is written in the class record, it is law.
Ben Irving’s post has a genius interp of the Toccata and Fugue scene:
Another scene that struck me as important was when Steiner and Marcello are in the
church and the priest lets them come up to play on the organ. Steiner chooses to play
Bach’s Toccata and Fugue. Once Steiner starts to play Marcello looks on in almost a
daze, and nobody speaks for the duration of the song. Marcello simply leaves about a
minute or two into the song. I thought about why this song was chosen and I looked into
the meaning of it. Toccata means: a composition in the style of an improvisation, for the
piano, organ, or other keyboard instrument, intended to exhibit the player's technique.
Fugue means: An imitative polyphonic composition in which a theme or themes are
stated successively in all of the voices of the contrapuntal structure. What I found to be
interesting though was that Fugue also means: 1: dissociative disorder in which a person
forgets who they are and leaves home to creates a new life; during the fugue there is no
memory of the former life; after recovering there is no memory for events during the
dissociative state 2: a dreamlike state of altered consciousness that may last for hours or
days. (dictionary.com)
When you analyze exactly what Marcello seems to be doing during this movie, you
almost have to think that there is a connection between Steiner playing the music and the
definition of the Song title. Marcello is constantly living his life in an improvisational
manner, going to parties as they happen, meeting girls on the fly, and just living without
any sense of structure (improvisation/toccata). Then you have the fugue side of things
and you can see that Marcello is living in a dreamlike state that has seeming lasted for
quite some time (fugue). Marcello has no intention of waking up though, and that is why
I think he left the church in the middle of the song that Steiner was playing. Marcello
realized for a second how he was living his life, but he didn’t want to change, so he ran
away from the realization. I think that Fellini is giving us a great commentary of how he
sees the character of Marcello by having Steiner play this song. And I only fell on this
line of reasoning by accident…I was listening to Bach as I was preparing to write this
film analysis and I heard this song on the c.d. I remembered hearing it in the movie so I
looked into what the song meant and viola. If someone has already made this analogy
then, I won’t feel as special, but I didn’t see anything on this song while doing some
research for the movie.
BL wants students to track the Fellini hyperfilm, tracking names, ideas, etc. throughout
all his films and make a big chart
Fellinian universe:
Original sin
Downward spiral
Search for external help
Fellinian Universe works in LDV
Marcello’s original sin is lust that evolves into greed
Search for external help, Marcello goes to:
Maddalena (as Mary Magdalene)
Emma (Emma Bovary)
Sylvia (nature)
Father
Steiner
Lady Jane
Paola (girl on beach)
All attempts fail.
With Paola at the end, he’s material and she’s spiritual, there’s the possibility of the
allegory of love, but there’s a lack of communication
There’s no “The End” at the end of LDV
Interesting thought: several of the past films have begun like the end
When in the car and Marcello says, “Are you Liliana?” could that be an Intratextual
reference?
Fellini challenges the myths related to what:
Traditional vision of the family: instead of a normal family, in LDV Emma (mother) is
crying all the time and Marcello (father) is always out screwing around
Steiner’s Family: Perfect family, but Steiner kills them because he has to fail so Marcello
can’t find an external answer for his problems
Emma has problems: demanding because she’s not a complete person, i.e. their apartment
is totally unfinished.
Steiner is afraid of nuclear war, we see spotlights, or rumbling sounds like cannon fire
Family at castle: all speak different languages and dialects
Nothing in this film is real, all sets
Debunks the church: church=spectacle
The kids who see the Madonna
Jesus flying cut-to Siamese dancer
Jesus flies over Roman Aqueducts to construction (Past to present)
The Shadow ascends
People are impressed by the helicopters, no spiritual epiphany
No communication in the beginning (Helicopters) or at the end (beach scene)
Dead Fish:
Fellini creates fictitious or distorted animals
Jesus-Fish: Greek word for fish was an acronym for “Jesus Christ God our Savior”
They say fish has been dead for 3 days and doesn’t come back to life
Miracle-Field: they’re making a film, there’s a director choreographer the people who are
there for the performance
Paparazzo inspired the term paparazzi
Favorite images:
Fellini’s background
Women
There’s really nobody portrayed in the film in a positive light, everyone is degraded
Slippages between film and real-life:
They refer to Sylvia as American, but one guy goes, “God Bless Sweden!”
No communication in film, allegory of love fails
After the search for external help, search for internal meaning
Meaning:
Literal is literal
Allegorical: failed struggle of a soul trying to find meaning somehow, (lust-greed, writerPR person)
Moral: doesn’t tell you what’s right, but what’s wrong
Communication that occurs on a pre-rational level
Constant foregrounding of the medium (photographers, Field of Miracles)
Forces viewer to question what is shown
8½
Flight of the Valkerie, everyone stares into the camera
Fellini has a god-complex
Old loving couple painted on the wall as he walks off with his mistress
Barber of Sevillie
A lovestruck young Count tries to woo the beautiful Rosina from her guardian, Dr.
Bartolo, a curmudgeon of the first order. He enlists the help of Seville’s most notorious
barber, matchmaker, messenger, valet, wigmaker, surgeon, pharmacist, masseur,
veterinarian, and general factotum—Figaro, Figaro, Figaro. Brilliantly crafted, musically
imaginative, and uproariously funny, Barber is a tour de force for the human voice.
Mistress is his whore, directs her what to do
Dead parents
Maddalena is his wife
“Could you tell me something about your love life”
Ugly woman sings in Germany
Continually makes himself look like Fellini
Laughing man in a tux, backlit
My friend says you can’t make a love story, “she’s right”
Whore-virgin
What is the past? Is the present and the future just as subjective?
Speeds up the film when the priests are chasing him on the beach
Goes and prays to the whore on the beach in a white veil
Cardinal speaks from behind a curtain
Is Guido a carcature of himself?
I love the irony of casting the part of the movie you’re watching
Filmmaking is almost painful for him
Reporters’ questions fade into his own, his own doubts
“right hand pocket” but he reaches into his left
He is dead, he’s dead and has total understanding and bliss with his wife
10-5-06
We got a problem:
Since Tuesday is a holiday, we’re gonna drop a film and just do Juliet of the Spirits on
10-17
8 1/2:
Non-Original Music:
BL will post the article he has on music that should help
Guido is walking though the spa, we hear Valkyrie and there are all these old people in
contrast, from beginning the medium is fore grounded
Difference between Modern and Postmodern: pg 21 in course pack
PM:
General
Period rather then style
Traditional conceals the medium, modern foregrounds the medium
Postmodern mixes the modern/traditional
Modern goes way too far with most of its themes and messages, charges over the firing
line, only people who are interested in that kind of art see it, criticism becomes more
important than the art
Traditional doesn’t challenge anything
Postmodern blends the two, expression with narrative, somehow engages the public and
straddles the firing line, it remembers the lessons of avante gard
Francophile, Nihilist, no grand narratives, everything is relative, depends on perception
of observer (if there is even an observer), TV is a flattened-emotional hybrid
TV is the perfect metaphor, a film on the holocaust is interrupted by deodorant
commercial, and your emotional response is flattened
TV remote lets you control your emotions
Small narratives to solve problems, there’s no grand solutions
A traditional film won’t change your mind in anyway, modern goes crashing across the
firing line of controversy and doesn’t reach the mainstream audience, only people who
like this kind of stuff
Liberated filmmaker starts with something that will grab the mass audience appeal, then
take them to firing line of controversy, then bounce back to traditional
Bounce on the firing line between modern and traditional
People hated Fellini after he made LDV and 8 ½
Sadomasochistic experience:
Marquee De Sade: wrote novels about torturing people
Masochistic: like being hurt
So the postmodern director enjoys making his audience uncomfortable and not letting
them lull into the movie, but at the same time the public hates you and won’t see your
films
Liberated spectator: people who enjoy seeing a liberated artist’s work
Fellinian Universe in 8 ½
Original sin: lust
Guido says he doesn’t believe a woman can save a many, rejection of the allegory of love
Search for External Help: film starts in a sanatorium looking for help
Danny says the first search for help is Guido trying to get out of the car
Guido looks to help from the intellectual
Carla arrives
Sees his mother and father
Luisa
The church
Cannot find help outside yourself
Guido is suffering from alienation: he’s locked in a car away from everyone
Several references to other texts, including Pinocchio (he even makes his nose grow in a
scene)
Film is totally reflexive film about filmmaking
The film is cyclical, it ends where it begins, and i.e. we watch the screen-tests for the
actors at the end of the film who will appear in the film we’ve just been watching
Flash-forward: one of the characters talk about the herum scene before it happens
This film just throws the medium in your face
Cardinal is introduced by a towel that moves like a curtain
Guido gives Carla eyebrows like Cabiria or like Wanda in the beach scene in White
Sheik
Slippage between fictional world of the film and reality
Louise speaks to Marcello the actor, tells him he looks funny
Playing with soundtrack/image track (train moves, and reframes the image without
moving the camera)
In bedroom scene, Fellini starts with close ups until the camera pulls back and we see
they’re in separate shots
8½
The word “mirror” is often thrown around with Fellini’s 8 ½. I’m sure you know
this because you’ll be reading it from around 50 students this semester alone. Simply put,
this is way best way to describe 8 ½. When Fellini is stricken with a lack of inspiration,
he follows his own example and looks in the mirror, finding a whole new story that
allows him to share a painfully emotional connection with his audience in the hopes of
reforming them.
One of Fellini’s major themes is an external search for help. He consistently
stresses how this search will always be fruitless and we must turn inward for our answers.
This idea is what spawns 8 ½. Fellini has consistently professed that he had director’s
block. GGGB uses and excellent quote in his post from the 8 1/2 Criterion Collection,
“something happened to me which I had feared could happen, but when it did, it was
more terrible than I could ever have imagined. I suffered director’s block, like writer’s
block. I had a producer, a contract. I was at Cinecittà, and everybody was ready and
waiting for me to make a film. What they didn’t know was that the film I was going to
make had fled from me.” It is in this instance that Fellini takes his own advice. He looks
inward. 8 ½ is a movie about Fellini making 8 ½. When faced with this block, Fellini
doesn’t seek external help in a new writer or cast to re-inspire him, he already knows that
he is the only one who can inspire himself. As Metz says in his article entitled Mirror
Construction in Fellini’s 8 ½, “It is not only a film about the cinema, it is a film about a
film that is presumably itself about the cinema; it is not only about a director, but a film
about a director who is reflecting himself onto his film.” This is one of the reasons why 8
½ is a work of complete genius. How often can unmotivated artists find their inspiration
by channeling their own lack of motivation? The fact that Fellini is able to accomplish
this and create such a clear emotional tone for his audience is astounding.
8 ½ definitely has an emotional-conceptual-nucleus that Fellini points towards his
audience. To put it briefly, 8 ½ is uncomfortable to watch. I’m sure our class had the
same reaction most audiences did 43 years ago after seeing the film for the first time.
Everyone is met with an uncomfortable-bafflement that engrosses the audience like a
thick fog. But Fellini does this for a reason. He uses awkward edits, diegetic changes in
image-composition, and jumps in time to show his audience how he feels. Fellini wants
the people who see this film to understand the emotionally exhausting and uncomfortable
process that is being a director. Coming off the success of La Dolce Vita with a society
clamoring for more, it seems 8 ½ was Fellini’s way of giving them what they want while
slapping them in the face at the same time. In this sense, Fellini is the definition of a
sadomasochistic-post modern director. Because of this, you can always tell who in the
audience is seeing the film for a second time. When the credits roll and the lights come
on, most 8 ½-virgins are sitting in silence, while the rest of us have large smiles across
our faces. This is what 8 ½ does so well, it almost a how-to book in turning the typical
audience member into a post-modern liberated viewer. We revel in Fellini’s use of the
medium and the way he dances on the firing line of controversy to fulfill the audience’s
desires while giving them a taste of his own world, hence the film’s original title, “the
beautiful confusion.”
At the end of 8 ½, Fellini doesn’t show Guido’s film. He doesn’t need to because
we’ve just seen it. As Metz says, “ Fellini’s film is composed of all that Guido would
have liked to have put into his film – and that is precisely why Guido's film is never
shown separately.” Fellini has tortured his audience for over two hours, occasionally
breaking the pressure by slipping into the fantasy realm, and then he lets them go with the
hope that they’ve learned something, or at least they’ll have a bit of patience while they
wait for his next film.
Sources:
IMDB
Metz Article from the Course Packet
GGGB’s post
My Original 8 ½ post from 2 years ago
10-17-06
Maura’s Handout on Jung’s Archetypes on the collective unconscious
Ideas of birth: coming out of the tunnel, falling down
Guido starts this process of rebirth and gets interrupted throughout the film, goes into the
wine (womb) and his mother pulls him out and puts him to bed
First woman you get to know if your mother, so you project that on to all other women
Luisa is the caring mother
Carla compares Guido to her husband, which is a comparison between Guido and his
father (whom he helps into his grave)
Keeps projecting of his anima onto all these people, but at the end he starts to accept
them for who they are and leads them
Relationship between driving and domination?
Things to think about when writing about film:
Story vs Plot
IMR:
Look at posted stuff on WebCT
1) Dominant films, i.e. those films thoroughly imbued with dominant ideology
2) Resistant films, which attack the dominant ideology on the level both of the signified and of the
signifier
3) Formally resistant films, those films which, while not explicitly political, practice formal
subversion
4) Content-oriented political films, explicitly political and critical films...whose critique of the
ideological system is undermined by the adoption of dominant language and imagery
5) Fissure films, i.e. films which superficially belong to dominant cinema but where an internal
criticism opens up a ‘rupture’
6) Live cinema I, i.e. films depicting social events critically but which fail to challenge the cinema’s
traditional ideologically conditioned method of depiction
7) Live cinema II, direct cinema films which simultaneously depict contemporary events critically
and question traditional representation (196)
Foregrounding one of the channels of information, you’re denaturalizing cinema
Foregrounding wakes the viewer up and makes them think about what they’re seeing in
political, socio-political, and literal levels
Pro-filmic, post-filmic, extra-filmic
Communication?
Alienation:
Marxist: from labor
Existential: from God
Oedipal: from Parents
Textual references:
Self-referential reflexivity: manifested by showing a film in a film
Divorce Italian Style shows the audience misunderstanding La Dolce Vita
Semiotics/Semiology:
Roland Barthes suggested a set of 5 codes that organize discourse. You may use these
codes to help locate the value and its ideology in your film
http://www.nwe.ufl.edu/~gulmer/diagrams/codes.html
Paradigmatic Axis


Props (objects, setting, costume...). Semic Code
Stereotypes organize the selection of props. Cultural code
Syntagmatic Axis


Actions (what the characters do).
Enigmas organize the actions into puzzles Hermeneutic Code
Symbolic Code


The stereotyped props are organized in turn by a set of binary oppositions in
which one side of the pair is favored over the other.
The mysterious actions are organized in turn by the breaking and restoring of the
contracts governing exchanges of language, money, and sex.
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jlesage/Juliafolder/RULESOFGAME.HTML
The five levels of coding that Barthes traces out in Sarrasine and which I shall
discuss in detail in their applicability to film function as follows:
1) The Enigmatic Code structures the plot proper by implanting certain key
questions or enigmas and then delaying the answers or giving false leads -- thus
giving us a story.
2) Action Codes establish what actions are conventionally prescribed in certain
situations and how much of each action is, must, or must not be shown. They let
us know which actions are important or appropriate to present in a narrative.
3) Referential Codes enter the text through explicit references to the established
knowledge of the time, such as science, medicine, history, literature, or the visual
arts; on a more vulgar level, the artist may also refer to popular assumptions and
common sense--"what everyone knows."
4) Semic Codes let us label persons and places in the narrative in an adjectival
way. They "characterize" the character as a person with certain attributes and
certain motives; these adjectival attributes (such as "undecided," "resolute," etc.)
are the "semes."
5) The Symbolic Code could also be called the psychoanalytic structuring of the
text. Barthes draws primarily on Sigmund Freud and Claude Lévi-Strauss to
describe the symbolic "economy" of a narrative and defines the major symbolic
rhetorical device in literature as antithesis.
Luisa is the contrast to Carla
Biggest code that’s most proper to film is editing
Juliet of the Spirits
Archetypes, allegory of love
Loving wife, cold husband, crazy friend
Stupid spectacle of spirits
Co\m[are tp shakeseapre’s Juliet
Colors are importwnt in this film
Intense reds
Bland clothes=trapped
Drinks sangria, bright red
Seats are red in the interior of his car
Plain clothes when she;s be dominated by him
Red flames to heaven?
Charlston
Whore neighbor, mirror above bed
Chick who played Carla and is sleeping with Julie’s husband: autobiographicak
Comes in wearing pure red
Husband has sunglasses on all the time (8 ½)?
10-19-06
Thanks to all t he people who don’t show up and don’t turn in papers, it makes it easy for
BL to give the rest of us good grades and flunk them
Juliet of the Spirits:
Critically tanked when it came out, made about as much cash as 8 ½
Fellini had usual problems with production, everyone hating him, producers wanting
different casts, etc
Flaiano told Fellini to go to hell and ditched the film and left the film-world
Supposedly this film echoed Fellini’s family life a bit too closely for comfort
Masina hated the role, middle-class asexual woman
Sandra Milo was forced to lose and gain weight
Everything in the film was a set
Read the stuff in the Course Pack, we may have a quiz next time
Chris: Whatever you put in your mind, you’ll see
Fellinian Universe:
There is an original sin, we don’t know what it is yet, so just go with it
Definitely a downward spiral
Search for External Help:
starts with her Husband, film opens with her trying on wigs, until Hubby arrives, we
don’t see her face (no identity)
BL on thin ice:
Women tend to talk more than men according to recent studies
Women are talking to you sometimes to work out what’s in their minds, they don’t really
want an answer, they’re just working through their thoughts and verbalizing it as she goes
Next search for help: Genius the Magician
Here Juliet is doing the looking, subverting the allegory of love
Juliet is told to be a whore in the bedroom
A Private Investigator: dressed like a priest
Showing the movie: “sorry for the quality, don’t get upset by what you see, this is only
objective reality, the real truth may be something else” don’t trust the images
Jose: greenwood lover
Suppressed erotic component
Bull fighting: fascinating metaphor for the relations between men and women, men being
the bulls and women the matador
“A man chases a woman until she catches him”
Suzy: offers her random sex and fantasy, strange independence
In the bedroom scene, Juliet confronts her own shadow and sees her dead friend, she’s
unable to confront her fears
Guido’s anima comes from past experiences
Juliet is formed from similar things, catholic school, the play she was in, grandfather who
runs off with his mistress
In the play, she has a white lily between her legs, visual emblem of virginity
Goes to Dr. Miller, he tells her to leave husband
Circus: bodybuilders, African dancers
Colors are very significant, Fellini said colors were not natural
Juliet Post
Apologies for being a bit late, I’m swamped. Feel free to tsk.
Juliet of the Spirits is a very interesting movie and to be honest, most of it went
over my head until I read Carolyn Geduld’s article in the course pack entitled, “Juliet of
the Spirits: Guido’s Anima.” In the article Geduld says that the film is often viewed as
the female perspective on 8 ½. With that in mind, Fellini has Giulietta Masina essentially
playing herself and her resentment shows as she plays a role supposedly about her own
feelings written by her husband who only shows her in an unflattering light.
As Roger Ebert says in his review, “Fellini lore has it that the master made ‘Juliet
of the Spirits’ as a gift for his wife. Like many husbands, he gave her the gift he really
wanted for himself.” This is what makes Juliet such an interesting character. Most of the
time when one sees a film, the characters are played by actors who come on the set, and
play a part. Of course this is not the case with Juliet, and this is what adds to the
uncomfortable nature of the film. Watching Juliet of the Spirits is a lot like watching a
married couple shop for food in the supermarket after they’ve just had a fight in the car.
Fellini writes the character of Juliet based on Jungian archetype of how he thinks his wife
is feeling, and then asks her to play the part of herself, speaking his words. As Geduld
says, “Juliet is one of Jung’s ‘introverted’ types, oriented toward subjective or internal
reality.” This description obviously provides a stark comparison to Masina’s earlier work
in Fellini films, e.g. the boisterous and smiley Cabiria, and makes the viewer wonder how
true the character of Juliet is to the real Masina.
Part of this tense-vibe could come from the fact that Fellini essentially makes the
character of Juliet sexless. Geduld even refers to her character as “asexual” and says,
“For Juliet, sex is as dangerous as celibacy, and this is why images of both are
increasingly confused in her fantasies and hallucinations.” As a contrast to this, Fellini
casts Sandra Milo opposite his own wife after just having had Milo play his supposed
mistress in 8 1/2. If Juliet is meant to represent asexual nature, Milo’s characters
(Suzy/Iris/Fanny) are all meant to be the exact opposite. She goes on elaborate speeches
detailing her sexual conquests and escapades, even inviting Juliet to go with her on a
naked romp or two. All of this culminates to beg the question, how does Fellini feel about
his own wife and his sexual feelings towards her?
Juliet is an incredibly complex film and has been the first real challenge of the
semester for me personally. It’s Fellini’s first attempt at a biographical film about
emotions and experiences that are not his own. In short, he’s writing what he thinks is
someone else’s perspective and then asking them to read the lines. It’s awkward, it’s
tense, it’s everything 8 ½ was, only this time Fellini took down the little piece of paper on
the camera reminding him that the story is a comedic one. Juliet is a movie where his
wife is asexual and plagued with nightmares of large-cheasted women hitting on her
husband. It forces the viewer to wonder, how awkward was the car-ride home after the
premiere?
Other thoughts:
Color represents who is currently controlling Juliet and what is motivating her:
Red when she is contemplating sin (red dress at Suzy’s party, drinking the sangria)
Black/White when she is trying to sort her emotions into categories (my husband loves
me, my husband hates me)
Giorgio is always wearing sunglasses, which is what Guido would do in 8 ½ when he was
fantasizing, normally about someone or something besides his wife
Sources:
RogerEbert.com
IMDB
Course Packet
10-24-06
Mak is here
Mak loves LA, but it’s hard work
Mak wouldn’t let the DLC put his movie up
Mak was the youngest at the student-Oscars by far, said MFA students are much older
and schools are looking for life experience
Juliet:
Fellini on the film: Bond between two people is something deep and significant, but the
attempt to quantify these bonds in reality can only destroy it
Juliet is a victim of the church, family, allegory of love
Fellini said, at the simplest levels, wives shouldn’t bust each other’s chops, but men
shouldn’t treat his wife as property, neither Madonna or whore
Has to find herself
White can be a white of innocence of frigidity
As film ends, shows one of the first open shots of the film
She won’t be dependent on a man and won’t be the security blanket for him
Answers can’t be found outside ourselves, not in external fusing
8 ½ title comes from an age, Fellini thinks that’s when the Madonna/whore complex is
imprinted, and that’s when creativity is not stunted by society
so much Dante in 8 ½
Old women playing priest in 8 ½, young boys playing nuns in Juliet
Showing rejection of external answers regardless of what the source is
Fellini obsessed with magicians
Juliet’s original sin is anger with her husband
Fellini never has the guts to go to bed with anyone
Fellini was obsessed with dreams, drew his dreams
Satyricon
Title reference to satire? Or old Satyr plays
Weird fish
Hermaphrodite
10-26-06
Posts this week are due Sunday, but earlier posts will get better grades
Satyricon:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064940/
Chris said it was like a hellish nightmare
Called Fellini’s because there was another “Satyricon” coming out before
Original Satyricon written by Petronius
Petronius
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petronius
Worked during Nero’s time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero
Petronius:
Wrote adult satire Satyr plays.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyr_plays
Only pieces of Satyricon remains:
Biggest piece we have left is the diner
Encolpio and Ascilto come together and part several times throughout the play
There are several different versions of Fellini on Fellini
Fellini would post ads saying where he’d be when, and people would come to see him,
and he’d pick people out to be in his films
Max Born was a massive hippy
Fellini has actors just reciting numbers and then dub over them
Glass-eye guy was Steiner in LDV
Somewhere around 8 ½ or Juliet he comes up with the idea to shoot The Voyage of G.
Mastrone
Fear of impotence because he wanted to make this movie so badly
Several stories about where Fellini got Satyricon, some say as a kid, some say working in
Rome, etc
Satyricon is modern, lack of continuity narrative,
In medias res
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Medias_Res
Fellini liked that pieces were missing so he could film in the blanks
Oneiric nature of film: dreamlike nature of film
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oneiric
all of Satyricon is a dream-like experience, there’s no fading in and out of film
1969:
age of hippies, free love
Fellini amazed by free love, bi sexual multi sexual, world
Age of Nero was an age of transition between Roman Empire and Christianity
(polytheism to monotheism)
Fellini saw Age of Aquarius in the same light, didn’t know what the something else was
Finds similar protagonists in Satyricon in his world
Jesus never said anything about homosexuality being bad
Original Sin: lust, greed, envy, wrath, sloth, gluttony, pride
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_deadly_sins
All the sins are in the film, cut it down to 3 (lust, greed, wrath), synthesize into 1:
dissatisfaction or materialism
Definite downward spiral, search for external help, rejection of the allegory of love
(nobleman and his wife)
Petronius killed himself slowly during a banquet
Hermaphrodite has an important role
Something to think about:
Post-Christian view of a pre-Christian world
BL says complete demythologization of Christianity, but not replaced with anything
Eating the guy in the last scene is like eating Jesus, but this is totally materialistic and
people are rejecting this materialistic last supper, we don’t know where they’re going
Satyricon Post
Fellini’s Satyricon is an interesting beast. While Fellini finds a whole new way to
foreground the medium, he also ends up defying critics by giving them a whole new
Fellini-film.
It’s impossible to ignore the fact that you’re watching a film in Satyricon. Fellini himself
says, “The film should suggest the idea of something disinterested: the images should
evoke the texture of ashes, earth and dust. Thus the film will have to be made of unequal
segments, with long, luminous episodes joined by far-out, blurred sequences, fragmentary
to the point of never being reconstructed again-the potsheds, crumbs and dust of a
vanished world.” By telling a story that in certain places stops mid-sentence and jumps an
unknown number of years into the future, one can’t help but be shoved out of the film.
This is an amazing new Fellinian way of playing with the narrative to force the viewer to
compare the film to modern society.
In Satyricon, Fellini goes through an interesting change. All of Fellini’s earlier work dealt
with individual problems, e.g. materialism, a failing external search for help, etc. Because
of this, Fellini endured a harsh bashing from the critics. Most of these critics complained
that he was abandoning his neo-realist roots and claiming he no longer was taking on
society-wide issues. Once the critics and film community got used to Fellini’s personal
style, he had to of course change it in Satyricon by making a non-autobiographical film
that reflects upon the modern society in which is was made. In his preface to the film he
says, “In fact it seems we can find disconcerting analogies between Roman society before
the final arrival of Christianity—a cynical society, impassive, corrupt and frenzied—and
society today, more blurred in is external characteristics only because it is internally more
confused.” He goes so far as to call Satyricon, “a satire of the world we live in today.”
Fellini can never be straightforward. He develops a style of filmmaking that focuses on
the individual’s problems. He is critically hated for it. When the intellectual community
finally comes around and begins to accept him, he changes and does a complete 180
focusing on society’s problems, and in turn receives an even greater backlash. When
looking at the Fellinian hyperfilm, this transition in his focus clearly shows the
sadomasochism of the post-modern director.
Satyricon is an interesting film in which Fellini not only finds new ways to foreground
the medium and forces the viewer to compare the world of the film to their own, but he
also does a complete u-turn and begins to give birth to neo-realism in a post-modern,
Fellinian world. It is true insanity.
Questions:
Does the hermaphrodite have to do with the failure of the allegory of love? E.g., here is a
literal merging of the male and female, yet he/she cannot survive in this world.
Sources:
Course Pack
IMDB
Wikipedia
10-31-06
Secondary lit can be useful in interpreting films, but if it doesn’t make sense or doesn’t
help, don’t just cite it to cite it
Film criticism should be intellectual fun
External review of IDIS programs. What do we want?
More production, more production space, avoid overlapping of the few production
classes we have, more individual directors, a film festival run by film, film as a business,
easier access to equipment, do film festival in the fall as not to compete with DLC
We’re attempting to not be subordinate to IDIS
What we need is space, a decent budget, but under IDIS
Go see Death of a President at Eastside 9
Satyricon:
Post-modern, reflexive of a play within a play
In original play years ago, they’d kill slaves and such on stage
Process of undermining the great myths on which Rome is predicated
Reflect this upon our current governments
Ships look incredibly modern
Fake fish: Fellini recreates everything to match up with his inner vision, reality is boring
Art: the real poet vs the copy-cat
Presentation of art: Greeks reciting Homer in Turkish
World is so ancient it’s the ‘science-fiction of the past”
World of a dream
Nothing is what it appears, expected to question everything
These students are obsessed with property, sex, drugs, and rock and roll
Rejection of the allegory of love on several levels, since this is based on love and desire,
man on man could work just as well in theory
Trilmalcione got rich by selling his body and soul
Glorification of death
Wife of the dead husband could be a rejection of the allegory of love
This film start something new in Fellini films, shows man and woman in an allegory of
life, the process of continuation
Doesn’t matter how much you accumulate, you’re going into a hole in the ground
If you speak truth to power, you’re gonna end up dead or in jail
Subversion of the last supper
Subversion of marriage (scene on the boat, 2 men getting married by a woman on the
boat)
Villa of the suicides, people got out of power and killed themselves (your kids might live,
maybe keep some inheritance)
2 guys are bi at the very least, but not punished
Hermaphrodite supposedly had the secrets of both sexes
God figure, whom lots of people believe in, but they see it only as a profit, and the god
dies
City of Laughter:
Minotaur story
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minotaur
Baptism by fire converted into a sexual event, “flesh is risen”, and total parody of
sacraments
Young people reject the last supper
we see Fellini’s Satyricon and make our own
Roma
People watching a movie
Shows a camera crew filming
Traffic jam in front of coloseum: big cluster f uck of self—indulgence in front of a piece
of art?
“that’s what I’d like to film, a variety show 30 yeas ago befpre the war” variety lights?
Breaks up story into these weird sgemtns like tv
‘
interrupts the naval play with an air raid
patriotism/lust to fear
digging a tunnel through a 2000 year old painting
desicration of art via industrialization
weird industrial feel we see later in Ginger and Fred
show half naked people and cut to 2 lonely guys in an alley
brothel: industrialization of love making
“Babies, you afraid of mama?”
“Who nailed your feet to the floor” Jesus?
Hooker looks l ike all the hookers in Fellini movies
Catholic fashion show?
Feast of ourselves
Fellini just changes his film bsed on his mood, “I wanna talk about hookers, I wanna be
an intellectual, I wanna remember my past, I wanna make fun of the church”
Continuation of Vitelloni
11-2-06
Satyricon: BL thinks he went a little fast
Basic points: culminates in rejection of allegory of love
Allegory of life: starts in Cabiria, some element of hopefulness in it
Breaks down Heterosexual model in Satyricon
Group-grope?
Draws on analogy of materialism and death
Allegory of life: new rhetorical model where the story doesn’t end when man and woman
get together, the story keeps going, objective is life
Did Christ exist?
Age of Nero: paganism to Christianity, in the 1960s going from Christianity to something
else
Destruction of sacraments that become holy sacraments in the same way that sacraments
are being destroyed in the 1960s
Fellini takes off from here and does Clowns
When to Paris where there were still clowns
White clowns (fascists authority figures) vs Auguste clowns
With clowns, Fellini goes into a docudrama of sorts, features himself with a film crew
filming himself making a film about clowns
In Roma filming himself making a film about Rome that turns out to be an
autobiographical fiction about himself
Fellini’s first real autobiographical film is Vitelloni, but keep in mind the past is very
subjective
Films produced by a director who discusses per his life story, or something specific about
it. Often stylish and inventive, taking on the aspects of docu-drama.
Favorite topics of Fellini:
growing up in a province, his love of Rome, his transition from province to Rome
Fellini’s films are subjective interpretations of his memories
Objective in war is to make money, Caesar gives the masses stuff, but goes way into
debt, made him consulate to Gall so he could pillage and plunder, brought his army back
to Rome so Pompeii wouldn’t kill him
Pictures of monuments and such show roman history, but the picture of the lady and the
girl with the guys outside the car show a sexual roman history
In Clowns, Fellini shows his first experience seeing the circus
Fellini going to Rome, says he’s going to become a reporter, reality is he goes with his
mother and lives with relatives
Boarding house, mom-ism
Dinner on the Piazza contrasts the image of foggy-northern Italy where everyone is
inside, but then drops you into modern Rome on the rainy, traffic-filled highway, and a
confusion of past and present (horse, traffic jam and the coliseum)
Reflexivity: shows the film crew with Fellini in it
Theatre scene: crazy audience peeing and such watching the Fascist show with naked
women
Moving away from film being an entertainment media
2 kinds of texts: newspapers read daily by masses and thrown out, but a poem that’s
barely read at first, but stands the test of time
Roma Post
Roma is supposedly a documentary by Fellini about the city of Rome, but as usual with
Fellini, nothing is as it appears. While the film itself is a documentary spotlighting
Fellini’s view of the city, it also ends up becoming a form of Fellinian rebellion where he
uses the medium to attack itself, while making a bold statement about the death of art in
he mid 19th century.
What I personally found interesting about Roma was its medium, specifically TV. Why
would a director who is so widely known as a proponent of the medium produce
something for it? Upon examination of the film, it’s clear to see. Fellini makes this
amazing, yet subtle, protest in Roma. His complaint, like several others, is that TV kills
art by breaking it into segments, inter-cut with materialist commercials, combined with
the viewer’s ability to change channels and self-regulate their own mood, stripping the
power from the artist. So how does Fellini combat this? He makes a film catered only to
him. Watching Roma is a lot like watching TV through Fellini’s eyes. In Roma, he
changes topics quickly and without warning (channels), all while splicing in small
segments of typical Roman life in an overdone, commercial fashion. At one point, the
students in the film even ask him to show real Roman life and tell him not to show the
typical travel-channel Rome. What does Fellini do? He immediately cuts to the exact
opposite. Walter C Foreman even makes reference to Fellini’s changing subject matter in
his article Fellini’s Cinematic City: Roma and Myths of Foundation by saying, “The airraid is clearly a threat from above, but we never see the plane (though we hear them) and
the scene ends strangely, as if ‘incomplete’.” But of course there is another level of
protest and message to the film, beyond the criticizing the medium in which it’s
presented.
In Roma, Fellini goes one step further than just criticizing the way TV butchers art, but
also attacks the way are is treated by the society of the time. Throughout Roma, Fellini
calls out his audience and basically shows them how their materialistic industrial nature
(partially fueled by TV) is destroying art. There are three pinnacle scenes where this is
displayed. First, Fellini shows powerful images of a smog filled traffic jam in front of the
coliseum. He is condemning society as over-industrialized with no respect for the works
of art from the past, and with this image in particular, is literally comparing them to
barbarians and gladiators. Second, Fellini goes on to show how one of the most natural
things humanity can do, make love, has become industrialized. This is shown in the
brothel scene, which could best be described as bureaucratic chaos. People are taking
numbers, standing in lines, shouting, and fighting, all to supposedly “make love”. The
final example of Fellini attacking society and condemning them for the destruction of art
comes from the subway scene. The scene actually serves as a warning to society. Fellini
shows the subway burrowing through the ground until it comes to a screeching halt,
narrowly avoiding destroying a 2000-year-old mosaic. It’s as if Fellini is warning his
audience to watch where they’re going, before they destroy something they can never
recover.
While Roma is an amazing documentary that gives life to a city, drawing from the past,
present, and speculating about its future, it’s also a new avenue for Fellini. He continues
to play cat-and-mouse with his audience, making them thoroughly uncomfortable by
seeing through his own eyes, then shoving a message down their throats. Fellini
reflexively attacks the medium by using it to present his message, and then also attempts
to wake up society to make them see what they’re doing to art in Roma, and it is
amazingly poignant.
Sources:
Course Pack Article
Question:
Are out posts due on Friday or Sunday now? I’m confused…and might be late (tsk).
11-7-06
BL thinks someone will kill Borat eventually
Did anyone read my class notes?
Nope
Fellini’s assumptions of what would happen…didn’t
Age of Christianity didn’t end; there was no new world
In the 1970s, there was a right-wing message created in order to counter-act this new
movement, a programmatic brainwashing
This led to Reagan revolution, the Bushes, Iraq, etc
New method for showing us Allegory of Love in this Roma?
It’s not his primary concern in this film, but he’ll return to it. His main concern here is
fascism
Parody of allegory of love:
The poor brothel scene, there’s a staircase to go upstairs to this glowing happy place; in
the nicer brothel there’s an elevator. The elevator is similar to the one in Juliet of the
Spirits.
Posts are now due Friday at Midnight
If Roma has an allegorical meaning it is sort of Rome as a fascist myth creation and a
parody/undermining of the myth. It creates it and destroys it at the same time, exactly like
the digging-machine destroys the 2000 year old picture
Literal meaning is what we see.
Mussolini is big on nationalism, manliness, etc. He turns to Roman Empire to build
nationalism.
Fellini shows contrary/ironic images to undermine myth, Caesar crossing this tiny river,
another person saying, “Look, there’s Caesar jacking off”
Fellini shows a flock of sheep walking by, we hear bangs and then see pictures of
Mussolini, suggesting that Italian society are sheep and Mussolini will kill them
Rome of today: highway scene blends past and present (horse/cars, traffic jam in front of
Coliseum)
Class warfare: junkyard dog barking at the rich dog in the limo
Students asking Fellini about the film. He says, “I’m going to make something that’s
congenial to me” shows how the past/present are subjective to how we see them
Roma is how Fellini sees Rome
Air Raid scene makes the idea of war real; do we want to stay the course?
After the raid, a woman comes and says her children were killed, her shadow is on this
tunnel thing, but it’s like in LDV with the Christ statue as it ascends
Fellini picks up the German lady, shows the allegory of life since her husband is on the
Russian front and probably dead
Some say this woman later becomes the dancer who’s going to be sent upstairs in 8 ½
Man’s passion of desire: hymen, which is destroyed in the process of getting it
In Fellini films: Violation of the 4th wall, not only with people, but statues too (are either
seeing more than the other? Neither are seeing us)
Fellini loves showing something that’s destroyed in the process
In Roma, contrast of free-love hippies with low-class pay-love brothel workers, but the
people in both places are the same, women are aggressive, and men are submissive
Subjective ness of the past:
As a young kid, Fellini would probably be nervous and scared by prostitutes, but as an
old man he sees these young free-love kids and he’s probably a bit envious, somewhat
demystifies these young kids, showing them as beasts
Princess: part of the black aristocracy (when a pope would be declared, he’d make all his
relatives nobles) in Roma, demystifies this class of people
The Pope fashion show with the skulls show the idea of materialism and death
Pope Benedict now wears designer labels, so the movie is not that far off
If you’re obsessed with the afterlife, everything in this life is transient. Skulls show that
everything is vanity, because no matter what, this is where you end up. Contrasts with all
the gold and such to the ultimate materialist/vanity
BL is not saying that Jesus did not exist, he’s saying from a historical perspective, they
can’t prove or disprove he existed
City of Illusions: Modern Rome
Cops beating up the hippies, beginning of right-wing terrorism in Rome
Making fun of intellectuals
Woman from Rome Open City says, “I don’t trust you Fellini”, but the ironic part is it’s
setup, it’s not just random
Motorcycles through Rome: motorcycles as a phallic machine penetrating Rome, all
working together in a fascist sort of way
Amacord
All his movies start with the wind
Guy who looks like fellini narrating to the camera
“Remember, perspective”
Frd Estaire and Ginger Rodges stand-up behind them
Fellini assigns diaogue to what he thingks people are saying
Exercise in story telling
Oversexed little boys
Interrupt confession to fix flowers
Heiling like Hitler
“The last fog like this was in 22”
characters are shallow, one-joke…memories?
“Where’s Titta?”
“Titta’s went away some time ago”
11-9-06
We’re blatantly trying to keep BL happy so he won’t give us a quiz
Talked about Leni Riefenstahl:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0726166/
Triumph of the Will:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025913/
I am astute
Leni shot propaganda stuff for Hitler, disappeared after the war, resurfaced later doing
still photography
In the class record for Satyricon, BL added quotes from the bible on homosexuality, all
are form Old Testament
Roma:
It’s both Fellini’s take on Rome and autobiographical.
1.Standard reproduced memory
2. Demystifying the Fascist image of Rome
Could Rome represent Fellini too?
BL not sure
Fellini does demystify himself with the scene where the actress says, “I don’t trust you
Fellini”
It’s the transition from the director to the schlemiel
BL says the narrator in Amacord doesn’t look like Fellini, I say he does. Now we must
fight.
Roma and Amacord are both presentation on fascism
Fellini on Fascism:
Read the course pack article, because apparently none of us have
Chad: house built on the sand is like Fascism; it’s a poor foundation that will wash away
eventually
BL says this is very New Testament, but Italians don’t read the Bible, when he was
young it was a sin to read the bible
For our posts:
Include examples of Fascism within us here on campus
Finish reading Fascism article before you write, and think about it and relate this to PU
campus
When Fellini made Amacord, he went back to 8 ½ mode, lying what it was about, didn’t
let anyone know anything
Claimed it wasn’t autobiographical when it was made, but then professed that it was
Rebuilt the town as Fellini remembered it as a studio
During ship scene, the water was plastic bags
Grand Hotel was real
Peacock was mechanical, Ox might be too
Fog happened in 1922, date is significant
Fellini found a few different women who claimed to be Gradisca
Wanted Sandra Milo to play Gradisca, but her husband wouldn’t let her
Ladders in film: guy stuck on top of the fire and then the brother in the tree, the fascists
run up the stairs, Hotel staircase, the guy going up the sheets to heaven (allegory of love)
When he’s in the lady’s boobs and can’t breathe there’s an outline of Dante’s head on the
wall behind t hem
All the little fascists, the guys have Rifles, and the girls have hoops
Ultimate lust object deflated with life going on: The Marriage of Gradisca marries the
dumb guy. The kids are still there playing.
Amacord Post
Before I start, I did do some research on the HBO show Rome and it is filmed at the
Cinecittà:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_%28TV_series%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinecittà
Which is where Fellini shot several movies, Scorsese shots GONY, and Wes Anderson
shot The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.
Amacord is a film about a small Italian town during the height of Fascism and one
young boy’s adolescence. Fellini spends the film using adolescent Titta as a warning to
Italians to mind their current lifestyles, while at the same time, creating a resounding
message that is applicable today.
Several people who see the film claim the young protagonist is Fellini, and while
there may be autobiographical elements, in his interview entitled, “Fascism Among Us”,
Fellini is quick to object to these claims, stating, “I’m always a bit offended when I hear
that one of my films is ‘autobiographical’: it seems like a reductionism definition to me,
especially if then, as it often happens, ‘autobiographical’ comes to be understood in the
sense of anecdotal, like someone who tells old school stories.” But while he may show
himself as a teenage boy in Amacord, this character does not represent Fellini. In defining
fascism, Fellini says, “I only wish to say that today what is still most interesting is the
psychological, emotional manner of being a fascist. What is this manner? It is a sort of
blockage, an arrested development during the phase of adolescence.” It’s clear from his
adolescent ways that Titta is the representation of fascism and any members of Italian
society who are still susceptible to its influence. Fellini even says, “I have the impression
that fascism and adolescence continue to be, in a certain measure, permanent historical
seasons of our lives: adolescence of our individual lives, fascism of our national life.”
Fellini is not only condemning fascism through the film, but those who take their
fascist-free lives for granted. The adolescent characters of Amacord do nothing but run
around playing and lusting after women, ignoring the world around them. Fellini says,
“You have this limited, time-wasting freedom which permits you only to cultivate absurd
dreams-the dream of the American cinema, or the Oriental dream concerning women; in
conclusion, the same old, monstrous, out-of-date myths that even today seem to me to
form the most important conditioning of the average Italian.” Fellini uses this delightful
story of a typical Italian town to condemn modern Italy for their growing apathy. He is
showing an Italy that is so engrossed in living their own lives that they’ve become
tolerant of Fascism and warns modern Italians that the same thing could happen to them.
Fellini goes on to set an ironic example for his audience by shooting this film
condemning fascism on a sound stage built by Mussolini. Yet this condemnation of
apathetic, party-loving adolescents stretches into our own world as well.
It’s impossible to watch and understand Amacord without drawing parallels to
society here at Purdue. The typical college student engages in the exact same activities
that the characters of Amacord do; party going and girl chasing. At the same time, some
would argue that our society has been so busy reveling in freedom, that they’ve allowed a
semi-Fascist government to establish itself. It’s as if Fellini is traveling forward in time
and attempting to smack the current generation awake at the same time. Fellini
unknowingly, yet aptly, describes current collegiate society when he says, “It is only
ritual which keeps them all together. Since no character has a real sense of individual
responsibility, or has only petty dreams, no one has the strength not to take part in the
ritual, to remain at home outside of it.”
Amacord is a film that attempts to warn a society of the pitfalls of apathy. It
shows them what happened in the past, and harkens their attention to the future. Yet it
seems society never truly learns from its mistakes because the film’s message is
incredibly poignant 33 years later in the present.
Sources:
Course Pack
IMDB
11-14-06
Class Record:
Everybody in this class sucks butt. (Unless they read/reply to this)
Song in Bell tower: The international, sort of the anthem of international communism
Fascism was anti-communist, corporatist movement
Fascism does not have an ideology; it can flip flop around politically
Male bonding is one of the elements of fascism
Zach talked about frats in his post and how they’re a form of fascism
Fascist application: the professor who spoke out against Eli-Lilly and then was fired
Marching Band is fascist, the integrity of the line and such
We don’t have class or a screening next Tuesday, so try and see a Fellini film over break
Characters are caricatures, not actual characters
Interesting to see how memory changes, from his earlier autobiographical characters to
his later ones
Mussolini is the major God in this film
Poster outside movie theatre never changed
Hieratic gestures: sacred gestures, things priests do
Debunking jet-set of aristocracy: the prince, slow-motion movements, parody of silent
film, how the people look, how the prince looks etc
How do we know prince is a pig: Gradisca says help yourself, then the prince pours
himself a drink and doesn’t offer her one
Fellini’s obsession with night people, people in high and dangerous places (on bon fire, in
tree), falling from heights with no danger (guy gets off bonfire like White Sheik gets off
swing)
Death and resurrection, (we see peacock and then the mother dies, peacocks mean
resurrection, and the puffs also mean resurrection, the bridal bouquet does the same
thing)
Allegory of Love/Life
Life/Form Dualism: (young people are life, church and other family are form, eventually
Gradisca surrenders to form and marries the guy)
Fellini transforms this living town into a historical document, making fun of the fascists
Fascism with machismo
Image of a bull as threat
Amacord means I Remember
Memory is subjective re-interpretative in the present
In classrooms: students of all ages with subjects ranging from pendulums to
algebra/Greek
Poster never changes outside theatre
7th car race: 1933, but it had people in it from other races
Original Sin:
Fellini is saying here it’s something you acquire with age, the kids’ sins are of ignorance,
but the sins get worse with age
In Amacord youth are more rebellious than the parents
Downward spiral: people cheering Fascism at the beginning and starting WW2 at the end
Rejection of the allegory of love: Gradisca has a horrible marriage and her weird fling
with the prince
Fellini points out the material drive to get to heaven: Titta with the tobacconist. He picks
her up, all the strength, power, and desire of youth, but doesn’t know what to do with it.
He blows rather than sucks and then suffocated by the whole experience. Then he gets
kicked out.
Dante’s face behind Titta in the tobacconist scene
The poster is an ad, which is supposedly for shrooms
Allegory also debunked during fake wedding scene where the kids are holding rifles and
hoops
Fellini: discover yourself to love life, don’t rely on anything else (government, family,
school, etc)
Film embraces allegory of life (there are new puffs of rebirth)
Meaning:
Allegorical: remaining children for eternity and shucking off responsibility wastes life,
stems from Catholic Church. Basically grow up, become educated, think critically.
Casanova: Fellini showing form in its purest
Prova d’orchestra: Fellini’s most political film
City of Women: 8 ½ x 9. In Fellini’s head, his memories, his dream book, etc
Ship Sails On: BL doesn’t have it figured out
City of Women
Death speaks german
Picture scene: he can turn the women off and on as he pleases
Mosaic of the guy
“Drink of me. I am te wine that inebriates”
wife yelling at him (Elena)
sing the song from Carmen
a male Carmen?
Cinema is even his lover
Woman-baloon takes him up to heaven, shot down
11-16-06
If you owe BL, get it to him before dead week
BL needs someone to set up a model for the final compilation thing, Kevin is doing it,
extra points for him, get it to him by beginning of next class week
Final project:
Paper to show off everything we’ve learned
Tempted to show us Intervista on the 29th and use that as the final post, hopefully with
the knowledge form this course, we won’t find it baffling, and we’ll show off everything
we’ve learned
Gore Vidal:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gore_Vidal
City of Women:
Zueberkock’s wife’s trick with the pearls, does this relate back to the harem scene in 8
½?
Add pearls to the list of things to look for in Fellini
Wind is there also, in the beginning. In City of Women they say the wind tells secrets
Why apples under the bed?
“This is 8 ½ on crack” –Zach
References to snow white, perhaps the apples are poison apples
DUX on the road? It means leader, usually refers to Roman dictator or to Mussolini
Fellini was 61, Marcello was 55
Film was a realization of a dream he had in April 1st, 1975
Many of Fellini’s scripts are in the special collection at IU
Do we want a field trip to IU to see this stuff? During dead week?
Production was usual chaos, but guy who played Zuberkock was a hero of peplum
movies, Roman films, and notorious womanizer. He was an alcoholic during production
of City of Women. Supposedly died while “cleaning” a pistol, perhaps shot in groin/thigh
Critics didn’t like the movie
Ebert said about the movie, “Fellini can make a bad movie, but he can’t make a boring
one”
Allegory of Love:
Deflates the image of the ideal woman, says men do better with imaginary women
Read the Course Packet, very interesting things about doctor Zuberkock, he is possible
alter ego of Guido, Oedipal nature is pretty heavy handed
What is the meaning behind the “circle of death”? One scholar argues that the whole film
represents death.
Train represents entering the women’s world.
Railroad tracks were overgrown with grass
Slide: Snaporaz doesn’t actually movie
Snaporaz is what Guido calls himself in 8 ½
Did Fellini and Marcello had their own weird language? BL couldn’t get a straight
answer from anyone, but it appears so.
“Smick smack” crazy cartoon language is apparent here and in 8 ½
Camera on the front of the train turns the viewer into the man, and Fellini takes a male
POV in this film
City of Women post
This week’s film was Fellini’s City of Women. Vividly described as 8 ½ on crack, the
film is a nightmarish take on male perspective of females. Through the use of the classic
Fellinian downward spiral, Fellini demystifies the idea of the perfect woman, creating a
film that is typically mislabeled as anti-feminist.
City of Women is a downward spiral from start to end. When the viewer first meets
Snaporaz, he’s at the top of his game, seducing an attractive young woman in the
bathroom of a train. In her article “Memory in Fellini’s City of Women”, Gaetana
Marrone refers to this version of Snaporaz as the hunter. Unfortunately for him, the
downward spiral begins the minute he steps off the train. He moves on to a feminist
convention where he becomes the hunted. Later he becomes the unwilling prey of a
large-blacksmithing, German-speaking woman who intends to sexually devour him.
When he later escapes to Zueberkock’s castle, he’s recast from the prey to the student, as
he sits in awe and envy of everything Zuberkock has accomplished. Finally Fellini makes
his downward spiral take on a literal form as Snaporaz rides down a massive, spiraling
slide, reliving the women of his past, only to wind up in a parallel-world courtroom run
entirely by women. As he is judged, Snaporaz tries to escape desperately, but as he runs,
it’s impossible for the viewer to ignore how far Snaporaz has fallen in contract to the
beginning of his journey.
Along the way, Fellini also goes to great lengths to debunk the idea of the perfect women.
In Marrone’s article she writes, “Fellini himself has clarified his concept of ‘woman’ as
‘a series of projections invented by man,’ therefore man’s own ‘dream-image’.” In his
quest to debunk this conception of the ideal woman, Fellini destroys it several times
throughout the film. He starts by showing men of all ages pleasuring themselves in a
giant bed to a film of a beautiful woman, implying both that men are only in love with the
fake women and foregrounding the medium by showing how easy it is for the passive
audience to fall in “love” with the images they are shown on the screen. Fellini’s final
assault on the ideal woman comes in a literal form. When Snaporaz climbs his way to the
top of the tower and gets into the basket, his balloon is a perfect rendition of a sexual
woman. Since he’s found his perfect woman, he floats towards the heavens, only to be
physically shot down, bursting the bubble of the ideal woman and showing the failure of
the allegory of love at the same time.
City of Women is often called Fellini’s most anti-feminine work. This is simply not the
case. If anything, one could argue that City of Women is the most positive argument for
women within the Fellinian hyperfilm. Not only does he make direct assaults on the
allegory of love, showing how no woman will ever merge with a man, but also the film is
a definite message to Fellini’s male audience to stop expecting perfection from their
women because it does not exist. Fellini does offer his male audience members hope
though. In the final scene he shows them where they can find their ideal women: in their
dreams. As Marrone puts it, “salvation is fond for Fellini-Marcello-Snaporaz in memory
and in dream-fantasy.” City of Women is a Fellini film typically overlooked, but upon
viewing, it’s impossible to ignore its strong themes of a downward spiral, the
demystification of the ideal women, and the pro-feminist themes that often cause the
movie to be mislabeled as anti-feminine.
Questions:
Why does Zuberkock have two names? Does this have something to do with the fact that
Fellini might have based the character off someone he idolized as a child? The real
Katzone inspired the dream Zuberkock?
Marrone mentions that the film had a light sepia tone to it, but I don’t remember this
anywhere. Could you point out a specific?
Sources:
IMDB
Course Pack
11-28-06
Kevin is doing great compilation for this class, has until end of the week to get it done
No questions over my class notes
Gore Vidal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gore_Vidal
Apples in City of Women:
References to Adam and Eve
Beauty Contest:
Venus, Juno, and Minerva. Paris was supposed to choose prettiest. Paris chose the one
offering prettiest woman on earth, who was married, this led to Trojan War.
If you’re interested in making a pilgrimage to IU to see the Fellini collection, let BL
know.
From out WebCT posts, most of us didn’t read the part in Fellini and the literary
tradition.
Train entering the tunnel represents sex as well as entering the dream world
BL doesn’t buy the death-idea
Donnatella (girl on skates):
Is she a sex object or a fantasy girl?
Burke says she’s death; BL says she’s Fellini’s fantasy
When Marcello’s name comes up on the screen, there is a woman’s voice saying, “oh no,
not you again Marcello”
Woman and the boiler: just Fascism or more?
Depictions of Germans:
Both of these are just playing with stereotypes of people and nations.
No glorification of the Latin lover in the Fellini films
Marcello in the car with the crazy 80s music and the teenyboppers:
Slippage into reality, Fellini is being confronted with a society he completely doesn’t
understand.
When BL came back from war, Age of Aquarius had taken over and he completely didn’t
understand. Fellini is going through a similar experience.
Supposedly Mastrone and Fellini had a normal home life, even though he had gazillion
mistresses, but they never broke up.
Teenager shooting the plane:
The plane might be an escape from the dream. It could be a phallic symbol. Danny says it
had a weird UFO. BL says it’s them completely rejecting the patriarchal society, with the
plane as a symbol.
Zuberkock has 2 names because Katzone is the translation of Zuberkock
City of Women is 8 ½ without the creative-impotence, focusing rather on the conflict
between the sexes.
Shows man’s constant need to dominant sexually and measure their manliness by their
number of conquests
Laura Mulvey
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Mulvey
BL says her work is a bit too dogmatic and restrictive
Donnatella is the perfect caricature of Fellini’s perfect woman, she’s virgin and whore
Fellini has the feminist shoot down the “ideal woman” balloon, showing that women
have the right to deflate this image
Is the film anti-feminist?
I say it’s anti-feminist but pro-female, demystifying the idea of a fake woman
Some say the film shows how women threaten Fellini
BL says some aspects of the film are in a documentary style, stemming from Fellini’s
research into feminism
BL says this is a truthful confessional of the fears inside most of us
It’s a statement of freedom, you can forbid actions, but you can’t forbid thoughts or
dreams
Fantasies are also a way of dealing with our fears
Can women and men ever see eye-to-eye?
We’re not all PC in our dreams, and we’re not always PC in society all the time
We behave because we’re afraid of consequences, but inside our head, that’s now what’s
going on.
BL thinks this is what Fellini is showing us in City of Women
Intervista
Just intertwines within itself, shows Fellini casting an actor to play himself and then
telling the story of the movie he’s in
AD talking about remaining an assistant forever, adolescent
Couple getting together is interrupted by lunch
Everything besides fellini’s work is a commercial
Smack! (signs on marcello’s commercial)
Jerking off-pleasuring yourself, this film? Is Intervists Fellini jacking off
cinemagraphically?
Cut the lights before they blow up (LDV)
11-30-06
John thinks Intervista is Fellini jerking off
Intervista is due next Friday
Kevin’s example is due 12/1, BL will have to us by 12/2
Our compendiums are due 12/3
Late Stuff: 12/1
Intervista: doesn’t have to be in compendium, 12/5 (Tuesday), content more than quality,
if you’ve been averaging VGs, keep up the pace, but if you’ve been stumbling, this is the
chance to show BL you’ve got something, VG/Excellents seem to average 700-1000
words, so be smart
Things to look for in the film:
Magic, dogs, pearls, women….along with all other Fellinian traits
Work, get it done…BL doesn’t know what else to say
If by the time we get Intervista/compendiums back and you still want some grade-help,
BL will post a final and you can take it
Post Intervista as a WebCT mail (as text, not an attachment), and WebCT mail him our
compendiums as well
Compilation
12 total:
TSK-0, G-1, G/VG-3, VG-3, VG+-2, VG++-1, VG/Excellent-1, Excellent!-1
Average: VG+
Aug 24: Variety Lights
G
Sep 1: The White Sheik
VG
Sep 10: I Vitelloni
VG
Sep 15: La Strada
VG (12)
Sep 22: La Notti di Cabiria
VG++
Sep 30: La Dolce Vita
EXCELLENT!
Oct 6: 8 1/2
VG/Excellent
Oct 20: Juliet of the Spirits
G/VG
Oct 27: Fellini’s Satyricon
G?VG?? (assuming this is a G/VG)
Nov 3: Roma
VG+
Nov 10: Amacord
G/VG
Nov 17: City of Women
Nov 28: Intervista
VG+
NOT UP YET
16 week of Fellini is a gauntlet. All of us who asked for this class really are
sadomasochists. This has been the most difficult class I’ve ever taken, and we’ve gone
deeper into analysis and theory than ever before. I’m very proud of the fact that I’ve
averaged a VG+ over the time period. It’s true, I’ve had my off weeks, but what I really
enjoyed from this class was the chance to revisit films I didn’t fully grasp before. I
remember last year when I first saw La Dolce Vita, I think I got an ok/g, but to be able to
come back to it now and know specifically what to look for really helped me understand
the film. For future reference, I really believe in spending multiple weeks ok Fellini’s
harder films. Some of Fellini’s films, as you know, are amazingly complex. Only
spending one week breaking them down and trying to absorb your years of knowledge
seems a bit criminal. Overall, I think I’ve done good work for the class and am looking
forward to showing you my Fellini-photo-series and I’m even more pumped to move on
to a teaching-role in Scorsese.
Extra Credit:
I did the class record.
11-5-06
Follow Kevin’s model for the compilation
By Thursday, let BL when/if you can be at Boiler Market on Friday
If you’re turning a paper in a month late, there’s no excuse to have not read the class
record and other posts. It’s thoroughly different from posting when it’s on time and
we’ve had little discussion.
Britni’s graph is utterly amazing. I feel like less of a man after seeing it.
Class today was filling squares of Britni’s graph.
“Puppets don’t mind being puppets when the puppeteer is a good puppeteer.”
Intervista Post
Our final film of the semester was Fellini’s Intervista. The film itself isn’t so much a
Fellini film in the same way that 8 ½ is, but nonetheless Intervista provides a direct
insight into Fellini’s world and completes his autobiographical hyperfilm and finishes the
timeline of his life.
While Intervista isn’t Fellini’s typical movie, he weaves and intricate tale nonetheless.
Intervista has 2 stories within it. In the first, a young Fellini stumbles upon his love for
cinema. In the overall Fellinian hyperfilm, the audience has seen him grow up. He starts
as a child in Amacord, moves into his teen years in Amacord, and his first trip to Rome in
Roma. These are all pivotal stages in Fellini’s evolution into the maestro known
worldwide. In Intervista, he shows the last step in his personal evolution. A young Fellini
naively steps into a half-lit Studio 5 and the rest is history. As he says in the Angelucci
article, “An Interview Completely for Watching”, “My experience, my journeys, my
friendships and my relations begin and end in the studios of Cinecittà.”
The other story in Intervista unfolds at the other end of the spectrum. Fellini is shown in
his office, working on various projects with the pictures and stories of a lifetime spent in
the studio to keep him company. He reconnects with old friends Marcello and Anita
Ekberg, and together they magically relive their past. Throughout this adventure Fellini
tows a young actor intended to play himself, as if guiding the young-Fellini and showing
him the vast future that lies ahead. It is here that the young and old Fellini come together
and the viewer is made to understand that they are the same. This is not the same Fellini
who threw snowballs in Amacord or who fled from town in the early hours of the
morning in I Vitelloni. The scenes between the young and old are confirmation that
Fellini’s audience, who have come to revel in his autobiographical work, has finally
caught up with the man he is today.
In Intervista, Fellini tells his own story. His primary concern is not the jet-set culture or
the spectacle of the church, but rather concluding his own story. This was the perfect film
to end the semester with and as Angelucci says, “all you need to do it see it.” After the
audience sees it, they have a rich sense of history and nostalgia and can easily reflect
back upon their time growing and learning with Fellini, in the same way we have over the
past 16 weeks.
11-7-06
2:00pm tomorrow at Boiler Market
If you got BL stuff by 10pm yesterday, he responded
We watched the Fellini documentary.