In Defense of Federico Fellini

"Total Film" magazine recently ran a two part series on the 100 greatest directors of all time. Ranking at number one was Alfred Hitchcock. That is predictable. A British magazine chooses a British director who made decidedly popular (in a neither good nor bad way) films. Scorsese, Spielberg, Hawks, and Coppola round out the top five. These are not surprising choices, and they are not bad choices. These directors all deserve to be held in the highest regard and are indisputably among the great directors of all time.

However, that those directors were included is not the surprise. The surprise, and the criminal shame, is the absence of certain directors from the top. Most notably and most criminally is the inclusion of Federico Fellini on the list at #67. The argument belittles almost the entire second half of Fellini's career, calling his post-La Dolce Vita work "a byword for self-indulgence."

Never mind that what is typically known as Fellini-esque is the type of surreal, metaphoric symbolism that characterize his late work. Never mind that two of Fellini's Oscars for best foreign film came during this "self-indulgent" period. Never mind that he is almost solely responsible for keeping Italian filmmaking on the map during the formative years of the French New Wave.

All of this aside, it is still impossible and illogical to assert that Federico Fellini is anything but the greatest practitioner of his craft. He started, as did many of his Italian contemporaries, by making hard hitting neo-realist films like La Strada and Le Notti di Cabiria (The Nights of Cabiria). Unlike his contemporaries, however, Fellini branched out in the 1960s and produced what modern audiences are likely to think of when considering his work. In 1960, Fellini made La Dolce Vita, marking a shift in his work from humanistic and contemplative dramas to satiric, often comedic, and always intelligent tableaux of images and archetypes.

These archetypes laid the groundwork for the director's greatest achievement, 8 1/2. Some critics look at this film and see a director who has run out of ideas. The reality is that 8 1/2 represents Fellini at the peak of his creativity. He draws upon all of his considerable gifts and produces a film that says so much about how we think and feel that we almost have to shut out some of it. Those who ignore the artistry of 8 1/2 and claim that it is lazy and self-indulgent are missing the intentionality in everything that Fellini does. Every image in a Fellini film is carefully chosen for its specific implications on the world and for the viewer. There is nothing accidental about his filmmaking.

And, so it was with no small amount of shock and dismay that I read the "Total Film" article on the great directors of all time and discovered Fellini so near the bottom. I suppose that I must hope that history is cyclical and that, one day, Fellini will once again be revered for what he is: the greatest filmmaker of his generation, and arguably of any generation.