He would explore settings ranging from ancient Rome in Fellini-Satyricon (1969) to a cruise ship on the eve of World War I in And the Ship Sails On (1983), but he and his collaborators would make these places feel as if they were creations sprung fully formed from Fellini’s mind. Peppino De Filippo and Anita Ekberg in The Temptation of Doctor Antonio (1962)įellini’s resulting color films would find his imagination unleashed.
Aside from one last black and white film - 8 ½ (1963), which dealt with the dreams and fantasies of a male protagonist a year after this short film - Fellini would never again make a film in black and white. Most importantly, The Temptation of Doctor Antonio marked a big technical change for Fellini. While Fellini had explored toxic masculinity in films such as I Vitellioni (1953) and La Strada (1954), he had never satirized male sexual repression to the comical degree that he would in color films such as Amarcord (1973) and Fellini’s Casanova (1976). Its focus on viewing the world through the mind of protagonist Doctor Antonio - a moralist who crusades against an “indecent” milk advertisement featuring actor Anita Ekberg, who later torments him in a long dream sequence - would show his increasing preoccupation with dreams and fantasies in films such as Juliet of the Spirits (1964) and The Clowns (1970). In many ways, it was a telling overture to the second half of his career. That quality is color.įellini’s first work in color was a short film called The Temptation of Doctor Antonio (1962), a part of the anthology film Boccaccio 70. But aside from subject matter there is another, technical quality which delineates Fellini’s body of work into two halves. The second, more controversial half is more fantastical in content and based more on his own memories and fantasies.
The first half is more influenced by the Italian neorealist movement that his mentor Roberto Rossellini partially created. Scholars and film fans tend to divide the career of Federico Fellini, who would have celebrated his 100th birthday this year, into two periods.
“The artist is the medium between his fantasies and the rest of the world.” - Federico Fellini
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