[Luci del Varieta is the first real Fellini film.] It is so, obviously, in the subject-matter: the faded underside of show-business, the gaudy, tawdry, improvised world of one-night stands and not knowing where the next meal is coming from. Here Fellini is speaking from his own experience of people he has known…. What makes it a film which no one but Fellini could have invented (both conceived, that is, and put on the screen) may perhaps best be illustrated not by generalities but by studying two particular sequences: the party at the castle and the wanderings of Kecco, the comedian-manager, after he leaves his new star Liliane one night in the city. Each is developed according to a ravelling and unravelling process which is to become characteristic of the key sequences in Fellini's work: from a simple beginning, through a complex action in which the main characters and their problems become swallowed up, or nearly, and then a gradual disentanglement which leaves them alone at the crisis of their troubles before they and those around them are scattered—to a new and probably joyless day, I nearly said, taking it for granted that all these scenes take place at night, and their aftermath in those bleak, cheerless dawns which punctuate Fellini's films with confirmation of the old despair. (p. 19)
As might be supposed in a private world so coherent as Fellini's, there are certain backgrounds—and, naturally, the characters and situations they so intimately complement—which recur again and again, and so acquire, beyond their general effectiveness in colouring our vision of what takes place in front of them, the quasi-independent significance of a constant symbol. Once one starts trying to pin them down in this way, though, it is all too tempting to force everything into the pattern, and clearly Fellini's mind does not work that way. (p. 20)
This is a free excerpt of 307 words. There are 4,404 words (approx.
15 pages at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our Fellini, Federico 1921–: Critical Essay by John Russell Taylor Access Pass.
