8 1/2 weaves fluidly through the visually intoxicating landscape of Federico Fellini’s subconscious, seemingly to seek inspiration and validation for his life and work. In an opening scene that symbolizes much of Fellini’s films, a suffocating man, trapped inside his car, inexplicably begins to float into the skies, only to be abruptly tugged back to […]
Category: Directors
La Dolce Vita, 1960
Few films have indelibly defined society as caustically and honestly as Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni), a frustrated writer, is reduced to tabloid journalism in order to make ends meet. He spends every evening in Via Veneto – the venerable hotspot for people who want to be seen – vicariously awaiting […]
Nights of Cabiria, 1957
Nights of Cabiria is a touching, humorous, and poignant film about hope and survival. As the first film of the trilogy of loneliness, Federico Fellini pares the story of an endearing prostitute searching for love and happiness down to its fundamental substance. The result is a social criticism that is honest, impartial, and searing. We […]
Il Bidone, 1955
A bishop and a priest are chauffeured to the rural home of two peasant sisters. They recount the story of an unnamed man who has made a deathbed confession of burying a treasure chest along with a murdered victim by a tree in the middle of their property. The confessor has bequeathed the hidden bounty […]
La Strada, 1954
La Strada is Federico Fellini’s moving masterpiece that explores the soul’s eternal conflict between the heart and mind. Zampano (Anthony Quinn) is a cruel, traveling carnival strongman who buys his assistant, a simple minded young woman named Gelsomina (Giulietta Masina), from her poverty-stricken family. Gelsomina is innocent and childlike (Masina’s exquisite performance is as comic […]
Berlin Alexanderplatz, 1980
How does anyone begin to encapsulate the audacious, manic, insightful, resonant, humane, and allegorically loaded tone of the epic work – the quintessential “anarchy of the imagination” – that is Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s adaptation of Alfred Döblin’s nine book/thirteen chapter, Weimer Republic-era German Expressionist novel Berlin Alexanderplatz? Told from the perspective of an unemployed, hard-drinking, […]