Watching Fellini's movie is like having an absurd but very real dream, where the loneliness, sadness, anxiety, evil, happiness, and nostalgia and yearning hidden in the bottom of the heart come out in one go, with circus-style sets, carnival-style bustling noises, and the empty squares, lonely souls, and in Nino Rota's light music, interpreting a black comedy of laughter and sorrow. A scene of black humor comedy with sadness in laughter. The suffocating poverty of modern society, the lingering spiritual crisis, and the thoughts of no peace are purified into indifference and frankness in Fellini's images. He refused to criticize, and insisted on presenting what he saw, heard and thought with an autobiographical sentiment, describing the reality of life that we dare not face or are unwilling to face, so he made the real absurd, and made the absurd real, and finally transcended the surface of right and wrong and went straight to the essence of the heart. It is precisely in this way that the dramatic plot is no longer important to Fellini, and a structure similar to the state of daily life comes into being, with no fixed flow of plot and no causal relationship between the activities of the characters, and with the psychological changes of the characters, guided by the chaotic and changeable subjective thoughts, ushering in the final ending.
Every one of Fellini's films brings surprises, he is so persistent, so innocent, and so varied as a magician, that it is impossible to define the so-called Fellini image style. In Fellini's view, film is life, is a kind of visualized memory, so in his film, there is no self-righteousness to show off and show off, there is no director's deliberate management, everything seems pure and natural. The camera suddenly ceases to exist, and everything in the movie has no distance from the audience, no matter it is Rome in B.C., or Italy during the Fascist period, or the simple and beautiful Rimini, it looks as if it is beside us, and in the caricatured image, a bitter and sorrowful mood pervades the mind, and then there is a silent contemplation. Billy White said, "He [Fellini] was a first-rate clown with great, unique ideas." Yes, only a clown can sing and dance and be wild in a bitter and depressing world and yet still get applause from those who are sitting upright and moralizing. And to please others, full of laughter on the face, the two lines of crystal tears, clearly recorded the clown's delicate and not for the pathos of people. From this point of view, who can live so colorful than the clown?
First, the lonely bottom layer
Early Fellini film by the image of neorealism is obvious, this was involved in Rossellini's neorealism in the opening work of Rome, the unsuspecting city of the screenwriter, in the beginning of the directing, is still categorized into the neorealism camp, from the beginning of the first film with the director of the Latour Ada **** with the "acrobatic light," has been to the 1957's Nights of Cabiria, the lonely underclass of society has always been the protagonist of Fellini's films, from wandering entertainers to small-time crooks to prostitutes, whose miserable lives and the monstrous emotions derived therefrom are a source of pity for the people. In terms of presentation, the films are mostly location-based, close to life, without the stereotypes of staged lighting and photography, and to a certain extent, the films are quite documentary, which makes this period of Fellini's films the closest to the masses and the most touching part of his cinematic chronicle. However, from the very beginning, Fellini was not satisfied with the prison set by neorealism, therefore, when he expressed the tragedy of the people at the bottom of the society, he did not stay at the surface and visual reproduction like neorealism, but through the struggle and despair of the characters in their lives, he reflected their suppressed inner feelings. The Light of Acrobatics undoubtedly possesses the main characteristics of Fellini's images, as circus-style juggling and tear-jerking plots have since become a major part of Fellini's images, and the characters all aspire to greatness, just as the one who plays the goose on the stage performs as vigorously as he does, though nothing ever seems to change. When, at the end of the train, the troupe leader, as at the beginning of the film, is still in the mood to seduce the woman who is traveling with him, everything comes full circle.
Fellini's images of his characters have always been full of sympathy and compassion, perhaps the director, who once lived in Rome and suffered from the hunger and cold of not having a job and the loneliness and misery of being alone, understands the difficulties and sorrows of the lower classes, and the characters in the film all carry a kind of uncertainty about their future. They are dissatisfied with the status quo and long for change, but in fact they are full of panic about the sudden change, which is best described in his trilogy of loneliness, The Road, The Liar and Night of Cabiria. The Road is undoubtedly a story of loneliness, as the heroine, Jelsomina, is sold to the wandering entertainer, Zambano, because of her family's poverty, to learn and perform with him. While on the run, the two hearts grow closer. Jelsomina's innocence makes reality seem more cruel, and Zangbano's roughness and lack of understanding make this supposedly beautiful love a failure, but in fact they are both poor people, a mentally retarded girl and a man who only knows how to use his chest to hold open the chain, or their encounter has long been doomed to be a tragedy. Zambano used to be abhorrent, he was crude and greedy, seducing women, stealing and even murdering, but when Jelsomina dies, when love is no more and loneliness pervades the heart, nothing matters any more, and the shot of the hobbling drunk, on his knees on the beach, crying out, who can resist that bone-chilling loneliness?
The sadness of the bottom layer, perhaps lies in the mire but do not know how to save themselves, "Liar" in Augusto in a certain point of view seems to be a hopeless person, but in fact he is so pathetic, time and again repeated those pathetic scam, when the side of the companions one by one to leave, and then changed a group of people, he remains unchanged, he finally wanted to change his life, but is not immediately clean up, but want to first big money, and finally, he wants to change the life, but not immediately. Instead, he tries to make a big score first, and is eventually beaten to death by his companions, and the irony of this con man's life becomes so great that he deserves just as much pity as those who have been conned. The Night of Kabylia is certainly a depiction of one of those people. The heroine, Cabiria, is a humble prostitute whose simplicity and naiveté rivals even that of Gelsomina in The Road, and as the night comes on she dances through the streets of Rome, her joyfulness and self-deprecating speech impressive. In her eyes, there is no ugliness in the profession of prostitution, and she longs for a change, but also just to have a love of her own. In the midst of a hypnotic session, she reveals her innocence and aspirations for the future, appearing to be self-respecting and proud, but this one dream becomes a gimmick for others to take advantage of, and the sadness of Kabylia lies in the fact that she possesses an ideal and a quest that doesn't belong to her, just as she is pushed down into the river at the beginning of the night by the man she loves. Just as she is pushed into the river by the man she loves at the beginning, or as she is brought back to the mansion by a celebrity in the middle, only to spend an empty night next door to her bedroom, her dream is at odds with reality. She is alert, but her belief in the illusion of romantic love destroys her and allows Oscar, the con man, to take advantage of her.
In the Loneliness trilogy, faith in futility and eventual despair have always been part of Fellini's expression, and the quest for happiness of the people at the bottom of the hierarchy looks doomed to be fruitless, just as Gelsomina's angels in The Road are doomed to die. Both The Way and The Night of Cabiria have a lively procession of the gods, and our heroine prays devoutly for a better life, as does the group of similarly impoverished people, but the power of the gods never manifests itself, and the distress grows further, and is more clearly depicted in The Night of Cabiria, where the prayers at the Madonna's shrine seem to have no effect, the crippled are still crippled, the sorrowful are still sorrowful, and love has still not come. the crippled remain crippled, the sorrowful remain sorrowful, and love still has not come. The Liar is an even more absurd description of this, when Augustus, a fraud who pretends to be a priest, accepts the prayers of the people, and everything becomes ridiculous, and those who pray to the liar for happiness are actually burying their own happiness with their own hands.
Second, from Rimini to the days of Rome
Rimini, Fellini's hometown, where nurtured Fellini's youth and creative inspiration, youthful happiness and trouble, rich country cinema seen and heard, unique toy dolls as well as colorful caricatures, almost affecting Fellini's whole life, but also became one of the contents of his constant nostalgia and reproduction. Rimini has a special meaning because of Fellini, it is in the process of Fellini's continuous abstraction and nostalgia, and ultimately become a long meaning of trust and nostalgia.
For the first time, Fellini used delicate strokes to describe the memory of the past in The Prodigal Child. The atmosphere of Rimini seemed so closed, yet so tolerant, that people lived here so languidly and cozily that many of them squandered their youth unconsciously. The prodigal children in the movie seem to be content with the status quo, and with the exception of Moraldo, who dawdles into a sense of inner emptiness and loneliness, the other four seem happy to accept the offerings of their families. Fausto is capable of having children but incapable of being a father, and he still continues to seduce women and cause trouble. Alberto seems more content with the status quo, happy to accept the sacrifices his sister makes for the family, and is clearly outraged when she leaves home in pursuit of happiness because it means that he must take on the burden of providing for the family. Ricardo dreams of becoming a singer, but never makes an ounce of effort to do so. Leopoldo, although he hopes to become a writer, is constantly distracted by the girl upstairs. They are nourished by Rimini's closed-minded tolerance, and are lost in the cycle of uninteresting and vicious life. This early work of Fellini's, with its obvious neorealist overtones, is the reason why Fellini left Rimini. When Mollardo left on the morning train, the people of Rimini were still asleep, and Mollardo, that is, Fellini, was already awake.
If The Prodigal Child carries the reality of Rimini, then Amarcord carries the hometown in Fellini's memory. Some people say that "Amarcord" describes Fellini's attachment to his hometown and love, in my opinion, Fellini is more in the expression of their past and nostalgia, when the vicissitudes of the past, in retrospect, all the past seems beautiful and delicate, all the bitterness are sweet and frank, all the people are so lovely and true, their simplicity, their shortcomings, it seems to be a worthwhile valuable property. The most important thing to remember is that you have to be able to get the best out of your life. If one must speak of nostalgia, it must exist in Fellini's heart, a homeland that holds his past and his romance. In fact, Fellini did not like the real Rimini in all respects, and the Rimini in Amarcord is certainly an abstracted and purified world, a world that does not exist in reality. When the flittering winds dance and the soft waves lapping at the shore, Rimini welcomes its own spring, the people rejoice, and the ritual of burning the symbol of cold and hungry witches in the town square overflows with an old youthful restlessness, remembering the hometown, which not only has delicate seasons and friendly people, but also has Fascism, lies, and fat breasts. Fellini describes the simplicity and nature of the place, where everything is like a cloud, where everything is worth remembering, where he has his own views and opinions on the so-called moral corruption and orthodox education, and where, underneath the repression, there is the uninhibited youth. The beautiful woman called Gradisca, how many fantasies and losses to people, when people do not dare to approach her due to inferiority and speculation, she can only be lonely and far away from home, while Rimini is still in the delicate accordion, interpretation of the immortal legend and hope. After the funeral, it was a joyful wedding, so spring came again, and everything went on week after week ......
Rome is also a place to be nostalgic for Fellini, where the memories are even more genuine and beautiful. The director fell in love with this ancient and sacred land from the moment he stepped into Rome. Rome undoubtedly also carries part of Fellini's memories of his hometown, so "Rome" has the teenage rebellion, fascist madness, noisy movie theaters, endless sexual fantasies, and all-encompassing tolerance and motherhood. The young man who symbolizes the youthful Fellini came to Rome and experienced the changes here, from the ordinary family to the war, and then to the brothels ...... Fellini put the ancient Rome, the Rome of the Fascist period and today's Rome, crisscrossed in front of our eyes, with a deep admiration and love for this place, and then there was the subway With a deep admiration and love for the place, there are scenes of encounters with ancient ruins in the tunnels, car accidents, castles, hippies, demonstrators and so on, all of which are both close and far away, the beautiful, the ugly, the liked and the disliked, that's what Rome is all about. Inside the laughing theater, the stage is as exciting as the stage. Fellini said, "What I'm trying to say in Roma is that the Rome of the present and the Rome of the ancient times are the same in their bones, they are very close." When the group of motorcycles at the end of the film passes through the streets of Rome, wandering before the sculptures and city monuments, it is not so much to show the incongruity between present and ancient Rome, but to show the vitality of ancient Rome and the momentum of forward development.
Third, the death of betrayal
Fellini shot in 1960, "the sweetness of life" is an extremely important turning point, the film reversed the previous pattern of poverty and the tragic lives of people in the lower stratum, and began to show the spiritual crisis of the upper class, prompting him to make such a change in the reason may lie in the post-war economic miracle in Italy, hidden behind the extremely dangerous spiritual desertion. behind the economic miracle of post-war Italy lay an extremely dangerous spiritual desolation. After getting rid of poverty, people found that their lives were not "sweet", spiritual poverty and emptiness troubled people's hearts, the decline of tradition and morality, and the pain of entering the modern society made these new aristocrats, who had just come out of material poverty, face unprecedented confusion and contradiction. Fellini used an extremely vivid beginning to show this predicament faced by the people, a helicopter hanging Christ's statue hovering over Rome, here Fellini's intention is very obvious, the upper class of the desolation of the lawlessness occurred in the eyes of Christ, indulgence, indulgence in enjoyment of the mainstream of the society's attitudes and pursuits, the soul and beliefs in this useless, the rationality of a long time ago broke down. The other helicopter, followed by two reporters who keep shooting and making eye contact with the bikini-clad beauties on the balcony, is undoubtedly a metaphor for the advent of a noisy and disorganized mass-media era. In the midst of instinctive indulgence and survival, chaos and despair pervade. The Sweetness of Life is a portrait of the depravity of the new Rome. Under the eyes of the protagonist, Marcello, a reporter who mixes with the upper class, one numb person after another takes turns to appear, cheating, betrayal, partying, striptease ...... all sorts of absurd things one after another, but so close to the real. After the movie people from the sea fished out of the four unlike the sea monster, it is this kind of dystopian society is a true depiction, as in "Amarcord" in the winter in the abnormal open-screen peacock in general, in this kind of society under, everything is not strange. There is an intellectual, Steiner, who starts out as an enviable figure, a role model and a dream for Marcello, yet he ends up killing his children and committing suicide. Behind the show of a decent life is unbearable boredom and emptiness, and with his death, Marcello's way out is doomed to be cut short. At the end of the movie, a group of people after the carnival came to the beach, Marcello met the innocent country girl, in the whistling sea breeze they could not communicate, they are not in the same world after all, and finally Marcello's departure, marking a clean break with the past, because the girl is what Fellini said: "Marcello's nostalgia and no longer the romance. "
Eight and a Half is certainly a continuation of The Sweetness of Life, and a movie in which Fellini is honest about the dilemmas he faced at a certain time. The title doesn't mean much, except to note that Fellini had made seven films prior to this one, as well as two shorts slightly equal to half a movie. The film is somewhat autobiographical, but not entirely the director himself. In terms of presentation, as Fellini began to be influenced by Jung's psychological theories, the film shifted radically from a general story structure to a non-plot structure, and the introduction of the stream-of-consciousness technique gave the film an unprecedented degree of subjective arbitrariness, with the plot developing as the mood changed and finding extremely appropriate turning points, and with reality, dreams, memories, and the subconscious mind appearing in alternating ways, but in an orderly fashion, as this state of affairs seemed to be closer to the state of mind of everyday life. close to the state of mind of everyday life. Guido, the hero, is a movie director who is faced with two dilemmas, one is the depletion of his creativity, and the other is the relationship between him and three women. The beginning of the movie is also profound. In the crowded traffic, Guido is so bored that he breaks away from the car and flies into the sky, while in another shot, he is tied to a string like a kite and pulled back to the ground. This alludes to a paradoxical state between reason and emotion, between freedom and repression, and Guido is pulled back to the ground, just as in the film's unfinished sci-fi escape from the earth, which ends in futility, and the reality remains the same. Guido's entanglements with the three women are quite interesting, with the emotional crisis with his wife having been made clear, and with his mistress there seems to be nothing but vile and unpleasant sex. When the angel of his heart appears, he also realizes that he is just a commoner, and Guido's ideal is disillusioned and his spirit is in chaos. The movie ends with a "wheel dance" scene directed by an acrobatic magician, in which all the people Guido knows, past, present, dead and imaginary, appear, and the absurdity of this is self-evident, as is the endless acrobatics of life, which is just a meaningless cycle.
On the exploration of the spiritual crisis, "Juliet and the Genie" continues, the female version of the "eight and a half" of the movie, the perspective to women, Juliet's emotional crisis, reflecting the spiritual crisis of the society in the other side of the crisis, when her husband betrayed, Juliet faced an unprecedented pain in the panic, visions, childhood, nightmares at times plagued her in order to In order to get rid of the situation, she even participated in a friend's sex party, but all of this is useless, for a weak and traditional woman, the pain in this is hard to express. In the modern world, where beliefs are broken and pessimism is the norm, all people can do is numbly accept it and let it go.
Fourth, the dream of madness
After Eight and a Half, in fact, Fellini's autobiography also came to an end, he said: "Mollardo is the boy who searches for the meaning of life in The Prodigal Child, which is exactly how I was portrayed at that time. And then almost as soon as I realized that this meaning would never be found, Mollardo evolved into Guido in Eight and a Half Men. It was at this point that the Mollardo within me disappeared, or at least hid in embarrassment at my own ignorance." After that, Fellini's shadow is visible, except vaguely in "Roma" and "Amarcord," but it's become a kind of look back and sentimentality. Frantic dreams now occupy the main part of Fellini's images, they are like a magnificent spectacle, showing the joys and fears of people's hearts, surrealistic sets, guiding the audience to travel through time and space, navigating through the past and present, and dreaming dreams that could not possibly exist in reality.
The Satyricon was written by Petronius, a nobleman of the Nero era. The book was not discovered until the 17th century, and itself has long been mutilated, which is exactly what Fellini was interested in with his imaginative points of view, and the images he presented were of a bizarre and fascinating world of superstition, poetry, killing, and wandering... ...all of which are like mottled frescoes with a classical splendor and cultural flavor. The characters in the movie are as wild as they are today, and the decadence that Fellini operates in is so similar to the real world that the meaning of borrowing from the past to satirize the present is also very obvious. This is more clearly expressed in "Casavano", Fellini admitted that this is an 18th century version of "The Sweetness of Life", Casavano is undoubtedly the ancient version of Marcelo, he is empty of talent, in fact, only his sexuality, and others and even himself only care about this, which makes him become numb, empty, like a puppet, just like the mechanical bird that he often brought around. Like the mechanical bird he often carries around, the end of the movie, which has him fall in love with a puppet doll, illustrates his own hollowness, which can only be matched by a puppet. The film is certainly not an ordinary biography, but is in fact a transplantation of Italian real life behind the economic miracle of infinite emptiness. It's a device that was also used in 1980's "City of Women" and 1983's "Sail".
Fellini's last film, The Sound of the Moon, is undoubtedly a mesmerizing masterpiece. The protagonist, Ewart, is a madman who has just been released from a psychiatric hospital, so the world in his eyes is no longer real, but twisted and poetic, a world that is different from the real world, and from the world of real madmen, which is why I prefer to think of the film as a dream similar to City of Women. A distorted world that seems to reflect the real world, where emptiness and madness exist side by side, where vulgarity and vanity fly together, and where Ewart's madness seems more like normalcy, where his poetic hallucinations are accompanied by a longing for warmth and tenderness, which is exactly what is disappearing and being left behind in an increasingly indifferent real world, and yet, Ewart is sad, and his poetic feelings come from his madness. Said Fellini: "When Ewald realizes in the film that more than one woman can wear Marisa's shoes - in fact many women can - I find it very sad. Whatever age he was, it meant he was old." And so the dream has been shattered, the romance is no longer there, and in the midst of the fantasy, the moon has been captured to earth, emitting a shallow wail of sadness, and this is the reality, everything is upside down because of the madness, and everything is empty because of the loss of faith.......
Overall, it seems that Fellini's work is varied, and that he is a man who pays attention to his inner feelings and is Unafraid to bare his heart, his work exposes human shortcomings and pangs time and again in a thought-provoking way. Each of his movies has a long meaning that lingers on for a long time, the future of the characters, the state of society, the meaning of existence, etc. Perhaps it all stems from the fact that he himself is a sincere person, and so his dreams become the dreams that people **** have.
Reposted from Beanstalk