Fellini's imagination is inexhaustible. He rarely uses scripts, but follows his own inspiration from moment to moment to decide what sequence to adopt, working out the details, via facendo, as he goes along.
What emerges is the full and varied complexity of modern life. The existential noia, the lethargy of man face to face with his reconstituted tabula rasa, is but a single moment, a small corner of that life. Fellini does not dissipate his artistic energies in the desperate task of trying to extract meaning out of a meaningless existence. The existential theme is there, not as a philosophical axiom, but as a subtle epiphany which illuminates the vast canvas at key moments. The naive prostitute, the pimp, the aristocratic dandies, the corrupt society women, the humanitarian writer, the shrewd peasant, the pathetic yet laughter-provoking idiot, the suicide, the insensitive cruel children, the everyday saints, the callous men and women who know how and where to pick their ripe pleasures, the bigots who pray for the salvation of others; the secularism of priests who have lost sight of their divine mission, the self-effacing beauty of the pure-hearted—all are depicted with human compassion and understanding in what T. S. Eliot has described as the dramatic objectivity of the "third voice of poetry."
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