This year coincided with the Italian film master Federico. Federico Fellini's centennial anniversary is different from the general focus on Fellini's early films, and this article talks about Fellini's own response to the TV frenzy for interested fans to understand the creative context of his mid- and late-life career.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > film works are biological flesh and blood, and television works are children and daughters</h1>
In Fellini's Intervista (1987), a classic scene in The Studios is a group of Indians swooping down a hillside on horseback, but what is "dramatic" is that they are holding neither bows nor arrows, nor shotguns, but the antenna of the television. This is not the first time Fellini has teased the existence of television.
Television was first introduced to Italy in 1939, and the following year the development of television came to a complete standstill due to its participation in the war, and it was not revived until 1954. However, in the early days, Italy was still largely dominated by public television stations, until 1976, when the court ruled that private television stations were established, and within four years, Italian television stations expanded to 600 families. The explosive growth of television stations has led to more entertainment options for the people, but it has made Fellini, who is obsessed with creating on the big screen, feel overwhelmed.
The Clowns (1970).
However, Fellini did not initially reject the rise of television, but cherished the willingness of television to provide funds to allow him to shoot some ideas that did not make it to the big screen. In the late 1900s, he was invited by NBC to shoot Fellini: A Director's Notebook (1969) and later The Clowns (1970) with funding from RAI (Italian Radio and Television).
Taking "Joker" as an example, although it was released as a film at the Venice Film Festival that year, Fellini admitted that he did not use the thinking and pattern of making movies to produce these works that were relatively "small" for him:
I still can't say, "My television work, like my film work, is an extension of the self." Film works are my own flesh and blood, and television works are more like my sister-in-law. 1
When "Joker" premiered on the RAI at about the end of 1970, due to technical limitations, it was a black-and-white version that was broadcast at that time, and it is not difficult to imagine Fellini's helplessness, he once complained that "the picture was all mushed" when "Director's Notes" and "Joker" were broadcast on television.2 At a time when italian television stations were competing, he again accepted funding from RAI and German companies to direct Orchestra Rehearsal (1978).
The Clowns (1970)
But this shooting experience was obviously a nightmare for Fellini. He complained that television stations restricted him from arranging nudity or exceeding 80 minutes of film length, and that he had to use more close-ups, which made him feel deprived of his creative autonomy. Perhaps most frustrating to him was that he once heard an audience member in the toilet misinterpreting his ending, mistakenly believing that Fellini was implying that Italy needed a man like Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler's dictator came out to rule the political situation.
In addition, he could not refuse the invitation of then-President Sandro Pertini and held a private premiere at the presidential palace. It is not known that the work itself is not a musical film, but Fellini uses the dispute between the orchestra's musicians as a metaphor for the chaotic political situation in Italy, which makes the politicians furious after watching it and take a seat. The RAI even postponed the film's television premiere for this reason, and Fellini has since stayed away from "TV movies". Fellini said:
Television unconsciously blinds us to all our discernment, and tries to confuse us into loving the newly created world, a world we must re-adapt to. Worse, we want to adapt to that world.
Interview with Fellini's Intervista (1987)
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > tv commercial is a slap in the face of the author's personality</h1>
In the 1980s, Italy's kitsch television culture had apparently invaded every household in the country, and because public television stations had declined, commercial television stations that relied on advertising to make profits prevailed, and movies were broadcasting at a critical juncture when advertisements were suddenly inserted. Fellini protested with a number of Italian directors to demand that television stations should ban advertising broadcasts, but their demands clearly did not receive the attention they deserved.
Fellini may not be entirely opposed to the advertising itself, but what he is really opposed to is that the narrative structure of the film is destroyed by the advertisement. His number one enemy was undoubtedly Silvio Berlusconi, a media tycoon who would later become Italy's prime minister, and Canale 5, which he founded, had repeatedly inserted Fellini's films into advertisements. Fellini himself has no copyright to the film and is powerless to stop it, but he also apologizes to the audience for it.
Orchestra Rehearsal (1978)
Faced with such a phenomenon, Fellini once sharply criticized:
Television advertising can create a constraint that causes viewers who have been exposed to them for a long time to lose the ability to know things precisely, and have difficulty concentrating on things and are easily distracted. Television advertising is therefore the ultimate expression of vulgar taste, a slap on the culture, hitting the author's personality, hitting the emotion of the work, and making the message that the work wants to convey, lingchi and humiliated.
Fellini, who has always been uneasy about television culture, directed Ginger and Fred (1986), his harshest indictment of television, but at the same time see a compromise that has to be subordinated to trends. In the play, Marcello Mastroianni and Giulietta Masina play an aging pair of tap dancers who, when they were young, were known for imitating Hollywood's 30s song and dance partner Fred & Ginger, and now they have the opportunity to show themselves on television again.
《舞国》（Ginger and Fred, 1986）。
After the two entered the TV station, they found that the show had gathered all the kitsch strange things, and one of the scenes was when the host invited a woman to the stage to appear on stage, because she agreed to be confiscated for a month for a huge bonus. The woman came on stage and cried that it was "inhumane" not to watch TV, saying that "it is especially painful for the elderly and children". And the whole film is also interspersed with some gimmicky kitsch advertisements from time to time.
In Fellini's final film, The Voice of the Moon (1990), the accusations are even more naked. The moon hanging high in the air actually appeared in the advertising screen, which is undoubtedly Fellini's satire of the TV station's rude insertion of advertisements. What's even more interesting, though, is that one of the main investors in this work is Berluskoney's affiliates.
The same technique appears at the end of The Ship Sails On (1983), when the protagonist suddenly and headlessly recommends rhino milk. Because "The Ship Continues to Move Forward" has the intention of combing the history of film development in an image style, the film begins with a black-and-white silent film, but draws a story period with an advertising film, and its intention is naturally self-evident, but for the unreasonable future audiences, this abrupt insertion effect has formed an obstacle to understanding.
The Ship Sails On (1983).
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > Thriller Adventure and Star Wars: Fellini's Movie Prophecy</h1>
Cinema has lost its authority, its mystery and its magic. The big screen that once gathered loyal audiences and dominated their emotions can no longer captivate us. The screen has made us ordinary people crazy, feel like the real, he controls our reality and dreams.
But now that we've learned to control him, we're bigger than him, and we've talked about it as the size of a chair cushion between the study and the vase. Sometimes it's just a small room cushion next to the refrigerator in the kitchen. The screen is now nothing more than an electronic maid, we sit in armchairs, holding the remote control, the small images in the screen are and killed, so unfamiliar and uninteresting can disappear from sight at the snap of a finger.
Fellini probably did not expect the future popularization of computer networks and online streaming, but his sigh at the time may now seem familiar. It has to be said that Fellini's observations on the development of the film are extremely far-sighted, pointing out that the future of cinema may only depend on "spectacular scenes, thrilling adventures, star wars"6. According to him, it's a return to the beginning of cinema, the worldview of Georges Méliès, the godfather of science fiction in the early 20th century. Fellini at least accurately predicted the current state of the film industry, which he had been accustomed to 30 years later, and the television that he was accustomed to at that time had gradually been replaced by computers and mobile phones.
However, although many interviews were left by Fellini insulting television culture, Fellini's dissatisfaction with television was mostly a personal vendetta against Berlusconi. It is easy for the outside world to misunderstand that he is a man of ancient food, but this is not true, and he even directed commercials twice in 1984 and 1985. I believe that if Fellini lived today, he would probably accept the invitation to stream online like Martin Scorsese.
"Television erases every distinction between the real and the visual world, replacing it with a contrasting, monotonous, hollow reflection that replicates each other's illusions — but we'd better get used to it!" 」 Fellini said.
《月吟》（The Voice of the Moon, 1990）。
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > Venice: Fellini's Unfinished Business</h1>
Fellini, even though he agreed to be invincible to the torrent of the television era, never gave up on Fighting Bellusconi. In 2001, the Italian scholar Maurizio Fellini studied film. morality. In an unpublished notebook, Maurizio De Benedictis discovered Fellini's unfinished film project, titled Venice.
The story describes that the "King of Commercial Television" (alluding to Belusconi) bought half of Venice and named the canal after his TV channel Canal 5. Fellini even conceived a scene depicting Bellusconi gathering managers, advertising agencies and other people and his newly discovered beautiful female stars to arrive in Venice in a helicopter. This shot is reminiscent of the opening scene of La doice Vita (1960).
However, Fellini failed to complete this plan and passed away, leaving regrets. The year after Fellini's death, Bellusconi handed over his business empire to his son, threw himself into politics, successfully expanded his influence, and has so far been the prime minister of Italy three times, the longest prime minister in Italy during the post-war government. Although he is plagued by lawsuits and scandals, he has always maintained the power to call the wind and rain, and he also enjoys a high reputation in the international community.
Fellini was unpaid and failed to make a film to satirize him. Instead, Paolo Sorrentino, who is considered by many to be Fellini's successor, filmed Loro (2018), in which he boldly ridiculed Berlusconi's later decline and broke his emptiness and sadness under the drunken fan. I believe fellini will definitely like this work.