SOURCE: "Fellini: Changing the Subject," in Film Quarterly, Vol. XLIII, No. 1, Fall, 1989, pp. 36-48.

In the following essay, Burke discusses how Fellini's major works reflect key issues in literary and film theory, namely the notions of authorship and identity.

The career of Federico Fellini offers remarkable parallels to the recent history of individualism and the subject, especially in the domain of film theory. Particularly evident is the concurrence of Fellini's reputation and the fate of auteurism: 1954 was the year of La Strada and of Truffaut's promulgation of a politique des auteurs; 1959 saw the shooting of La Dolce Vita and the emergence of the French New Wave; 1962–63 brought 8 1/2 and Andrew Sarris's influential "Notes on the Auteur Theory."

Without question, Fellini's reputation benefited by an auteurist moment which valorized the film director as artist, gave strong impetus to the European art film movement, and, in so doing, aligned itself with...