Federico Fellini 1920.1.20-1993.10.31 October this year marks the twenty-third anniversary of Federico Fellini's death. For more than half a century, Fellini has been an insurmountable peak for art cinema. Fellini, with his strong personal mark, the "Fellniesque", guided the spiritual process of post-war Italian cinema. His followers are not few: among them are Fellini's Italian compatriot Tonatore; jiang Wen, who is far away in the East; the new Hollywood art nouveau riches Woody Allen and Scorsese have all admired him; Kusturica, Grenadine and David Lynch have found themselves in Fellini's carnivals, women and dreams; Bob Foss borrowed Fellini's self-deprecation; Hollywood reinterpreted "Eight and a Half" in the most gorgeous way.
1 "Underground": The saddest tribute
In Kusturica's pinnacle, Underground, he depicts the tortuous history of Yugoslavia from the Nazi occupation in 1941 to the end of the civil war in 1995 with an incredible absurd comedy, revealing in black humor the pain of tearing apart the motherland. The climax of this absurd comedy, the collective carnival ending, is a wonderful reference to the end of "Eight and a Half Parts".
Near the end of "Eight and a Half Parts", the protagonist Guido is facing various crises - his wife, mistress, friends and other people around him, together with his career and inner pressure, have caused his psychology to be on the verge of collapse, and he is suddenly enlightened after communicating with film critics, and all his troubles are his inspiration, so he understands life. Fellini gives the film a fantastic ending, with Guido directing all the characters descending from the huge launch pad set, all the actors holding hands and dancing in circles, laughter intertwined with hilarious orchestral music, and Guido returning to life from a self-fantasy director.
Part I: "Underground" uses an incredible absurd way to interpret the tortuous history of Yugoslavia from the Nazi occupation period to the end of the civil war. Bottom: Unlike the microscopic theme of "Eight and a Half Parts", "Underground" expresses the heavy theme of the destruction of the country and the death of the family.
Unlike the micro-theme "Eight and a Half Parts", "Underground" expresses the heavy theme of the destruction of the country and the death of the family, and even if the reality is so sad, Kusturica dilutes the original unforgettable pain with a celebration. All the dead were resurrected, all those who had been hiding underground for many years were able to breathe in the sun, people sang and danced and walked into the distance, war and death were buried, and what was left for the children was hope and carefree. It is a great reference from peninsular form to music, and Kusturica is worthy of being the "Fellini of the Balkans".
"My films blend the elegance of French cinema, the passion of Russian cinema and the philosophy of self-sacrifice, with the melodic, melancholy and powerful satire of Fellini's films." Kusturica said. In an interview in 1999, Kusturica confessed what Fellini had taught him: "I discovered how Fellini made movies, and I used the same technique to make my films, which made me very proud." So in Song of the Wanderer, from weddings to banquets to the hypnosis of a turkey, Kusturica reproduces the comedic elements of Fellini's Armacord; in addition, the roman ruins and the scene of a group of children chasing a car are as similar to Fellini's Roman Style Paintings; the elephant that breaks into the window in "Underground" is haunted by Fellini's Interview... Of course, the most direct is that Kusturica also named his film company "Kabylia", which is from Fellini's famous "Kabylia Night".
2 "Stardust Once Upon a Time": The most fanlike tribute
Woody Allen claimed that Fellini was his idol in southern Europe. He expressed his respect for Fellini in Both Stardust Past and The Sound of the Years. Including his film "Love in Rome" in Rome last year, the main reason he chose Rome was to pay tribute to his idol.
As a director, Woody empathizes with the anxiety of his idols in his creation, and he loves to shoot repetitive themes such as fear, existentialism, religion, fame, and the tension between men and women, and of course he shoots it for audiences who share his own taste and similar feelings. His love and sexual anxieties, troubles, and fears are encountered and tasted by countless men. It's just woody Allen who filmed it all and came forward to speak for himself. This is in line with Fellini's famous quote " My purpose is very simple , and I hope that my films will inspire everyone, so as to bury the endless distractions in my heart." "It's the same thing. In the history of world cinema, this style of autobiographical nature, expressive personal experience, and narration of personal experiences has been called the "Fellini style", and critics regard this film narrative method as a great innovation, as a major contribution to modernist cinema, and "Eight and a Half" is a model for interpreting these remarks.
Woody Allen is deeply touched by the director's creative anxiety reflected in "Eight and a Half Parts", "Stardust Past" is his "Eight and a Half Parts".
"Stardust Past" is Woody Allen's "Eight and a Half Parts", the same black and white images, the same autobiographical nature, and even in "Stardust Past", Woody Allen also imitates the formal content of "Eight and a Half Parts", from the character setting to the character's heart, it has a strong Fellini color, and the storyline also describes the troubled fantasies of an accomplished director, the handling of interpersonal relationships, and childhood memories.
Woody uses the classic opening scene of "Eight and a Half": Woody sits on a train that seems to be after death, full of sad-faced people who know the misfortune of life at first glance; and he suddenly sees that the car opposite is full of celebrity beauties, gorgeously dressed, holding golden trophies. In addition to inheriting Fellini's imagination, he has his own humor.
Woody, while humbly expressing his apprenticeship style, considers it one of his finest works. This film is not only a love letter written by fans to idols, but also a director's introspective work on his own creation, reputation, and interpersonal relationships.
3 Jazz Spring: The most self-deprecating tribute
Bob Fox, the originator of stage drama films, directed the benchmark film of song and dance films, "Jazz Spring and Autumn", leaving aside its profound influence on later stage plays and contributing to jazz in the 70s, this self-written and self-directed semi-autobiographical film is very similar to "Eight and a Half Parts" in terms of content and themes.
The film's protagonist, Joe, is a veteran Broadway director with a successful career but a messy private life, the film describes his reflections on his life and death, and the film also creates a dream-like space where he talks to a beautiful woman in white about his teenage years, affair and marriage. Marriages have been ruined, and work is all that remains. Such a dream seems familiar in "Eight and a Half Parts".
Above: The relationship between Joe, the protagonist of "Jazz Spring and Autumn", and the woman is also a mess. Bottom: The semi-autobiographical Jazz Spring and Autumn are very similar in content and themes to eight and a half.
Joe, though talented, is helpless in the face of his emotions, and can even be said to be a mess in dealing with his relationship with women, and his current girlfriend comes to his apartment late at night and sees him sleeping in bed with his lover. The pressure of work made him indulge, thus forming a psychology of escape, lying in bed or indulging in alcohol, knowing that the operation had failed, he was not willing to accept this cruel reality, and even tried to escape, when all the dust settled, he said to his girlfriend: "If I die, I apologize for all the bad things you have done; if I survive, I will express regret for the bad things that I am about to do to you." ”
Bob Foss's performance style is unique, singing and dancing, talk shows, stages, and even images are intricate, some fragments are even completely devoid of context, and the eccentric imagination and surreal expression are creative uses of Fellini's techniques.
On screen, Bob schedules Joe's heart surgery to fail, and in real life, he himself collapsed on the streets of Washington in September 1987 due to a heart attack, ending his extraordinary artistic life. Smoking so much, drinking so much wine, and so many women, I knew there would be retribution. Labeled "predictive," the semi-autobiographical work became a reality a decade after the film's release.
4 "New Paradise Scout": the most emotional tribute
Of all the directors who pay tribute to Fellini, I am afraid that none is more emotional than Fellini's Italian compatriot Giuseppe Tornadore, whose works have always been full of love and warmth, depicting the beautiful island of Sicily and its memories over and over again.
As a representative of contemporary Italian realist cinema, Tornadore made a work that pays homage to Fellini's early neorealist film The Great Road, The New Paradise Scout. The film tells a poignant and moving story, the charlatan Joe Morelli used the movie as a gimmick, carrying an old movie camera and a bunch of expired negatives, to cheat money in a small town in Sicily, Italy, with the "rookie" audition event, among all kinds of men and women and children who came to audition, there was a beautiful Piaz, which made Jomorilli's heart come back to life, but he was unable to take Pia in the end. Such a plot will make people can't help but think of the almost same fate of the male and female protagonists in "The Road".
Tornatore pays homage to The Great Road with The New Paradise Scout.
Piaz in "New Paradise Scout" is like the heroine of "The Great Road" Jelsomina is the innocent personification of abandonment. Although he is an adult, he is still an unworldly child, looking at the mysteries of life with a frightened eye. She seeks joy with an untainted mind, maintaining her natural flawless youth and trust. She always expected good luck to come, and when misfortune came, she seemed to have an inner cushioning force to keep herself from harm. Her body may be hurt, but her mind will not. Much of the film's success is due to the vivid portrayal of the characters.
In Fellini's view, The Great Road is about loneliness and how loneliness can be liberated—when one person forms a deep bond with another. The man and woman who find this fit may seem extremely incompatible on the surface; Fit is forged deep within. In fact, what Dalu expresses is very simple, and this simple classical feeling is now rare, and "New Paradise Scout" is a revival of this feeling by Tornadore.
5 Sunny Days: The Most Youthful Tribute
Fellini was born on 20 January 1920 in a seaside town of Rimini in northern Italy. The town has beaches, schools, churches, harbors, wandering girls, the passing of youth, the smoke of fascism, and endless fantasies... Half a century later, Fellini wrote about his hometown in Armacord, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Twenty years later, Jiang Wen filmed "Sunny Days", which pays tribute to "Armacord", and was nominated for the Venice Golden Lion Award.
Memories, fantasies, dreams and reality are mixed together in the movie, which is Fellini's best play, Jiang Wen in "Sunny Days" through the young Ma Xiaojun's unbridled life in adolescence, memories and fantasies, intertwined with the turbulent background of the times, telling the memories of a generation's youth.
Some of the details in the film have a distinct Fellini style, when the teacher played by Feng Xiaogang tells everyone to stand up, the hat on the table suddenly flies to the ground, the whole class laughs, and the child takes the teacher's back to write on the blackboard when the hat is stuffed with garbage, reminiscent of the child's dislike of the school's boring curriculum and dogmatic stereotyped teacher in "Armacord", with a mischievous mind to tease the teacher.
Claudisca is the popular lover of all the men in Amarcord, and Milan is the popular lover in Sunny Days.
If Cladisca is the popular lover of all the men in "Amacord", Milan is the popular lover of "Sunny Day", becoming Ma Xiaojun's sexual enlightenment and the guide of youth from youth to maturity. Claudisca married someone else, which made Fellini infinitely sad and ended his boyhood. Ma Xiaojun bid farewell to his mournful youth in an even more awkward posture - the attempted rape of Milan, this faint bitterness mixed with a little black humor.
Banquets, wedding performances and carnival scenes are the soul of Fellini's films, and Fellini is very good at scheduling people in such large scenes, and the sadness, loneliness, helplessness and inner world of the characters under this noisy, chaotic form are the magic of Fellini's films. Jiang Wen's films also often have carnival scenes, and Lao Mo's birthday party in "Sunny Day" hides conflict in the collective carnival.
Jiang Wen has repeatedly shown that Fellini is his idol, whether it is the language of the film, the artistic style, or the unpretentious irony and sense of humor, they are deeply affected. In his later works, "Here Comes the Devil" and "The Sun Also Rises", it is not difficult to see Fellini's shadow.
6 Blue Velvet: The Most Fantastic Tribute
David Lynch was born on the same day of the same month as Fellini, whose works are mostly direct records of his dreams, as Fellini himself said, "Dreams are my only reality". Many elements of his work come from the dreaming of childhood memories, or simply childhood dreams.
In the early 1960s, under the influence of a Jungian analytical psychologist, Fellini began the long-term habit of recording dreams. His films also quickly adopted a dream approach, always full of grotesque imagination. He wrote about five hundred cartoons, doodles, and notes depicting dreams, in which the main image was of a large, large woman in a nude or excited state, and the film characters and collaborators also appeared repeatedly.
Lynch inherited Fellini's creative tradition, went deep into the depths of human consciousness, and brought into full play the artistic ability of film dreams and simulating the human subconscious.
David Lynch asserted that he had nothing to do with Freud, saying that he had only seen one thing and made it into a movie in the way the dream developed. Despite their different attitudes toward dreams, the two have the same approach to creating dreams, and in "Blue Velvet", Lynch inherits Fellini's creative tradition and penetrates deep into the depths of human consciousness. It brings into full play the artistic ability of cinema to create dreams and simulate the human subconscious.
The opening scene of "Blue Velvet" features a severed ear crawling with ants, thus establishing a gorgeous, gloomy, eerie style with black humor, Lynch inherits the style of Fellini's recording of dreams that he respects, and reconstructs the elements of genre film into a typical representative of postmodern cinema.
A few days before Fellini's death, Lynch sat in Rome and talked with the elder Fellini for half an hour, listening "intently." David Lynch has great admiration for the old man, once saying: "The worst thing I have seen with my own eyes is the booing of a Fellini film by the audience at the Cannes Film Festival." It was the night before the release of "My Heart Is Wild" (1990), and they actually booed Fellini's film. ”
7 "Nine": The most gorgeous tribute
Fellini's Eight and a Half inspired Mauri Yeston, who became obsessed with the film after enjoying Eight and a Half as a teenager. In the 1970s, she taught music at Yale University, composing her own music and lyrics, adapting the rich film into a musical. In 1982, he took the musical "Nine" to Broadway, and later performed in Rome, receiving Fellini's instruction and blessing. Rob Marshall, the famous director of the song and dance film who shot "Chicago" in 2009, adapted the musical based on "Eight and a Half" and brought it to the big screen.
There is no doubt that "Nine" brought together a large number of Hollywood first-line actors and actresses at that time, whether it is beauty or acting skills or popularity, it can be said that the participants are stars among stars. The stage design and costume styling are also extremely gorgeous, "Eight and a Half" itself is a super fashionable film that defined the European fashion trend of the sixties, winning the Oscar for Best Costume Design that year. The plump women of "Eight and a Half" wear shiny straight-leg dresses; wear gloves, full of dignity and virtuousness; under the wide hat with a veil, flawless eyes look out, dazed. "Eight and a Half" is a cold-colored, deliberately blurred black and white image, which is the film that makes the actresses in the play the sexiest stars of the time, including Anouk Aime and Claude Kardina. In this sense, "Nine" perfectly recreates the noble and fashionable women's fashion of the sixties.
"Nine" brought together a large number of A-list stars in Hollywood at that time, and they were extremely gorgeous in stage design and costume styling.
Marshall made no secret of his respect for Fellini, the most typical of which was Guido's recollection of his childhood with a wandering woman, who ran to an abandoned bunker with a group of friends and laid down the money in front of the wandering woman, who picked up the money and twisted her hips at the children like estrus animals, pulled her skirt up to her waist, and the children were caught by the church superintendent when they could see God.
In addition, Daniel-Day Lewis draws eyebrows for Penelope Cruz, visits a sick Cruz in a hotel, and other clips are all remakes of the gourd. "Nine" is in this way, on the basis of ensuring that it does not deviate from the original classic content, it adds Marshall's personal style and song and dance elements.
"This movie is not a remake of 'Eight and a Half','" Marshall exclaimed in a panic, "and I couldn't remake that movie in millions of years." I will never touch Fellini and his masterpiece of eternal greatness and genius. Marshall's films are broadway style, full of songs and dances, full of hilarity and splendor, and he integrates his style into the sequel story of "Eight and a Half" to become "Nine".
8 "Eight and a Half Women": A Tribute to The Last Modernism
Peter Greenaway, a director who loves to combine classical ideas with modern, experimental forms, and whose visual language is full of symbols, is a new milestone for him in his constant attempts to innovate. The name of the movie seems to be related to "Eight and a Half Parts". The film can be seen as an allusion to Fellini's own life, because Fellini's relationship with women has been entangled throughout his life, and there is a potential proposition in the middle: "The film - Fellini - woman". In order to show that Fellini did not say broken this proposition, Peter. Greenaway used this film about cinema to reveal Fellini's hidden film proposition, according to postmodernism, the film about cinema is also a meta-film.
Greenaway started with a father and son, introducing the motif that the film wanted to express— the ancient phenomenon, roots, and consequences of male sexual fantasies. The father-son relationship is also reflected in "Eight and a Half Parts", but the father in the film eventually leaves the protagonist Guido and his mother, with other women, and occasionally appears in the dreams of adult Guido. In "Eight and a Half Women", the father and son who love each other form a united front to conquer women.
"Eight and a Half Women" expresses the age-old proposition of male sexual fantasies.
Greenaway asked through the words of the characters in the film: "Is there any director who makes a movie to satisfy his sexual fantasies?" "Most of them are like this." In fact, Greenaway is not only self-deprecating, the "director" in this sentence is Fellini when he made "Eight and a Half Parts". When the father and son discuss fellini's films, the son called Fellini "pimped Italian old man", accusing Fellini of idealizing women. So, despite Greenaway's repeated claims that the film is free of machismo —the only evidence is the nude footage of men almost equal in length as the film—he is accused of "discrimination against women."
And in Fellini's eyes, women are a miracle, women are the universe. A woman is a part of a man's body, but she is much taller than him because a woman is born an adult, she is born to know everything, just like her mother, with the energy she has accumulated to survive, with rebellious experiences in the depths of her memory. Men create an illusion of intellectual superiority for themselves, trying to dominate their lives with this kind of mental violence, but this struggle is unfair.
Although Greenaway and Fellini have a very different attitude towards sex, this absurd work can still be seen as an alternative homage to Fellini and the Eight and a Half.
1/2 "It's Not Just You, Murray": The Most Timely Tribute
The origin of the title of Fellini's pinnacle, Eight and a Half, is because before directing this film, Fellini himself independently directed exactly eight and a half films, half of which was "The Temptation of Dr. Anthony" in the short film collection "70 Years of Boccaccio", which was also Fellini's first color film, co-directed with Vittorio de Sica, Mario Monicelli and Luceno Visconti.
"70 Years of Boccaccio" was released a year before "Eight and a Half", and a year after "Eight and a Half" was released (1964), a film school student on the other side of the ocean made a 15-minute short film to pay tribute to his idol. Titled It's not just you, Murray, the short film depicts the story of two gangsters, Murray and Joey, ending with Joey picking up a loudspeaker at the circus in direct homage to Eight and a Half. The student's name was Martin Scorsese, and this short film can be seen as the prototype for the later Poor Streets.
At the end of "It's Not Just You, Murray", Joey picks up a loudspeaker at the circus to pay direct tribute to "Eight and a Half Parts".
After entering college, Scorsese began to contact European film masters, "Eight and a Half" became his favorite, in his view" "film is life", and Fellini's film about the filmmaker himself marked "the perfect victory of personal cinema". Fellini deservedly became the Italian director who had the greatest influence on him. When he debuted, he secretly hoped that he could become another Fellini "within ten years".
As a descendant of Italy, Scorsese has been influenced by Italian culture since childhood, and the imprint of Italian culture can be glimpsed in many of his works. After his fame, he made a documentary film, "My Journey to Italy", starting with Rossellini's "Rome, the Undefended City" and ending with "Eight and a Half Parts". Moreover, it is said that in the new film "The Irishman" with his old partner Robert De Niro, he will once again pay tribute to Fellini's classics "Eight and a Half" and "La Dolce Vita". C