In another age Fellini would have been a Botticelli or a Bosch rather than a Leonardo. His vision is comic and surreal rather than realist. (p. 71)

Fellini is a thoroughly filmic artist. He is often put down as being a romantic. But, as with objective and subjective, the description is irrelevant. (p. 73)

Fellini's inability to stick to a predetermined course, his constant improvisation, his delight in coincidence is no more irrational than their opposites. It is irrational only if rationality is equated with the rules of logic the rationalists invented. Fellini's mind is one of the most alert and perceptive of the twentieth century—that he will often start a film or a scene with a sketch rather than with words is simply his way of conceptualizing and planning his work. He thinks visually. Does that make him irrational? Only if rationality is limited to the vocabulary of...