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Title
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Fellini's Wandering / Polska Sztuka Ludowa - Konteksty 2014 Special Issue
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Description
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Polska Sztuka Ludowa - Konteksty 2014 Special Issue s.232-242
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Creator
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Rutkowska, Teresa
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Date
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2014
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Format
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application/pdf
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Identifier
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oai:cyfrowaetnografia.pl:6097
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Language
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ang
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Publisher
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Instytut Sztuki PAN
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Relation
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oai:cyfrowaetnografia.pl:publication:6525
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Rights
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Licencja PIA
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Subject
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anthropology of film
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Fellini, Federico- twórczość
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Type
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czas.
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Text
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TERESA
RUTKOWSKA
Fellini’s Wandering
Art consists in making what is, in fact, artificial appear
real
(Filippo B ald in u cci, critic o f B a ro q u e art,
in:
The Life of Bernini)
i
love movement around. This is certainly the main reason
why I make films. To me the cinema is an excuse to make
things move (...) I don’t like being just a tourist. I don’t
know how to be one. Rather, I’m a vagabond, curious about
everything, entering everywhere, and all the time running the
risk of being thrown out by the police (...) I dislike travelling,
and am ill at ease on journeys. In Italy I can manage it: cu
riosity is aroused, I know what there is behind all those faces,
voices, places. But when I’m abroad this bores me: I no longer
know what anything means, I can no longer make anything
out, I feel excluded. All the same, there is always an atmos
phere of travel around me. Arrivals and departures, farewells
and welcomes. I love movement about me. My friends are my
fellow travellers.1
This is what Fellini wrote in a book that rather be
ing an autobiography is a collection of loose confessions
about his creativity, recalling the author’s childhood and
characterising the people who played an essential part in
his life. Fellini returned to moments from the past, of inn
portance from the viewpoint of his later artistic choices,
and revealed to the reader and the hypothetical viewer
the meanders of his convictions, predominantly artistic
and consequently existential and religious. This presenta
tion, however, has nothing in common with exhibition'
ism. Telling us so much about himself as an artist Fellini
simultaneously warned against the illusion that we are
becoming familiar with him as a person. Nor did he com
ceal that over and over again he had imposed successive
mystifications, and consistently repeated: I have invented
myself entirely: a childhood, a personality, longings, dreams
and memories?
Fellini carefully cultivated this fictional self-portrait
as evidenced not only by his films but also by the numer
ous interviews he gave so willingly, various articles, and
the above-mentioned book. This image - full of contra
dictions (Only fanatics or fools are free of doubt 3) - re
232
mains in its way cohesive when we look at it through the
prism of successive creative undertakings. A meaningful
inclination towards confessions and the construction
of one’s own likeness for the sake of the public is not
a common phenomenon among film directors. We be
come aware, therefore, more profoundly and distinctly
than in any other case just how apt is Fellini’s convic
tion that as a film artist he has been in the course of
his whole life making a single long film, while successive
titles possess for him, in contrast to the critics and the
audience, a purely conventional and technical mean
ing. Fellini remains one of those artists of the cinema,
scarce among contemporary filmmakers, whose oeuvre
bears such an unusual imprint of personality and indi
vidual style. This statement, obvious for everyone who
has watched at least some of his films, conceals a great
variety of phenomena difficult to distinguish according
to the principle of a simple register, and even more dif
ficult to interpret. All attempts at enclosing them within
an assumed interpretation scheme are doomed to fail.
This is why writing about them we are compelled to
concede to fragmentariness. It is quite possible that the
most honest solution would be to admit that we treat
Fellini’s oeuvre as a reservoir of problems from which
we extract that, which at a given moment appears to
be interesting or useful. This holds true also upon this
particular occasion.
The motif that we shall render the theme of our re
flections does not dominate either from the viewpoint of
meaning or stmcture. It does, however, feature a certain
persistent repeatability, which inclines to recognise it as
an essential component of Fellini’s style. This is the motif
of wandering, transition in space. Peregrination became
the most universal parabola of human existence, ex
ploited, it would seem, to the limits of possibilities and
yet - as in art - it still contains considerable cognitive and
aesthetic forces because it expresses man’s eternal need,
namely, the intensification of contact with surrounding
reality and other people.
Teresa Rutkowska
• FELLINI’S WANDERING
The space within which we move has a physical, sen
sually discernible character on par with a psychic one.
This psychic aspect of spatial relations has been thor
oughly analysed by Georges Matoré in his L ’Espace hu
main. L ’expression de l’espace dans la vie, la pensée et l’art
contemporains: contemporary space resembles man, its re
cipient. It has assumed the form of a certain historical en
tity, whose symptom continues to encompass literature,
art, institutions and language.4
A t the crossroads of collective and individual experi
ences there assumed form in the contemporary civilised
world a certain type of space, to which Matoré ascribed
the attributes of motion and discontinuity. Man acts (and
thus moves and sets things into motion) in an environ
ment that itself remains in constant motion. Motion also
marks creation since in accordance with Henri Bergson’s
interpretation (a view shared by Jean Epstein, a film theo
rist) form is registered motion. A reflection on this situa
tion contains conceits and metaphors that we use while
wishing to express our thoughts and emotions. If this
motion of thought has a target, then the latter is mutual
communication.
The Cartesian-Newtonian model of the world sanc
tioned by Eurocentric culture delineated the norms and
principles of conduct. This disproportion between indi
vidual tension and unrest and the above-mentioned order
has been always alleviated by art. How does film fit into his
context? Among all the means of artistic expression film
appears to be most destined to manifest and generate the
feeling of discontinuity in the contemporary world. Film
space, as a rule, features heterogeneity and is a succes
sion and sequence of numerous and varied spaces consti
tuted and modified by the camera, which accepts variable
points of view and perspective and moves with different
speed in all directions. Each of those spaces vanishes in
order to make room for a successive one. Their selection
and sequence are determined by authors in the course of
editing according to certain perception rules and recep
tion conventions as well as an accepted artistic principle.
If this course is realized correctly then the viewer does not
experience the afore-mentioned variability and succumbs
to illusion. The outcome of the above-described opera
tion is the depicted space in which the plot takes place
or, as Pierre Francastel described it, three-dimensional diegetic space. In this manner, out of such a spatial mosaic
there emerges a certain entity whose characteristic fea
tures include a differentiated degree of cohesion or non
cohesion. The problem of artistic space had to be tackled
by all coherent theories of film. I mention this because I
treat space as an element of reality least resistant vis a vis
film procedures. Similar creative potential is enrooted in
the element of time although it cannot be examined in
the film as separate from reality; this does not diminish its
role in the holistic structure of the work.
Fellini captured time-space in an absolute and arbi
trary manner. It is fascinating to observe how in his suc
233
cessive films, from I Vitelloni and La Strada to And the Ship
Sails On, Ginger and Fred, and even Intervista there takes
place gradual subjectivisation, how it assumes specific fea
tures and succumbs to the voracious visual imagination
of the author. Dreams, phantasmagoria, illusion, recollec
tions - the latter most often and in the most ostentatious
manner - become part of the course of narration. The
past and the future permeate the present since - the artist
seems to be saying - the child that we once were and the
dreams about our future selves are embedded in different
storeys of our consciousness and by coexisting in us deter
mine all our activities.
It could be said that Fellini’s films oscillate increasing
ly distinctly towards thematic structure. 5 This means that
a certain number of elements comprising the main theme
(the town of Rome in Roma, the process of growing up
in Amarcord, the creativity crisis in 8 1/2, the degrading
power of television in Ginger and Fred) become organized
into a chain of sequences (variations on a theme). The
criteria of their selection and orderly arrangement are di
verse and the decisive ones may include:
- analogies and associations, as in Roma (the artist
validated this arbitrariness by giving the film the title: Fel
lini’s Roma);
- episodic construction of a literary work, as in Satyri
con (in this case, the pictorial justification of the choice
is the content of the frescoes appearing in different se
quences);
- reminiscences of youth, due to their very essence
fragmentary and incomplete, as in Amarcord (with a dis
tinction of points “significant” in the life of the protago
nist);
- construction of the interview in Intervista (in which
responses to consecutive questions gradually fill Fellini’s
artistic “self-portrait”).
The number of such possibilities is endless. The motif
of the journey and roaming thus functions in Fellini’s oeu
vre in a dual fashion. Either as an element (more or less
clear-cut) of the thematic core (wandering across Italy in
La Strada, the journey in search for a remedy against the
impotence of one of the protagonists in Satyricon, the sea
trip to the island shores in And the Ship Sails On, mean
dering around the city of dreams - Cinecitta - in Intervista,
or the obsessive pursuit of erotic experiences in Casano
va), or else as a construction principle, when wandering
consists of transition from image to image, sequence to
sequence, and episode to episode. A geometric indicator
of this quest is, as a rule, a circle, an ellipse or a labyrinth
together with the whole symbolic baggage of those fig
ures.
The construction scheme of wandering is, moreover,
intensified by travelling, applied with extraordinary predi
lection. In this fashion, a journey becomes a way of per
ceiving reality, with the member of the audience invited to
take part in the imaginary voyage. His consent to co-participate, however, is an indispensable condition for recep-
Teresa Rutkowska
• FELLINI’S WANDERING
tion and in no case guarantees reaching all the meanings
even in those cases when we have a guide who- as in And
the Ship Sails On - speaks to us directly from the screen
or - as in Roma - addresses us off screen. Fragments regis
tered on the film tape of reality, oneiric scenes, acts of im
agination and retrospection - all pass in front of our eyes
in linear order. We cannot tell to which we should ascribe
the status of truth and in which we should perceive mysti
fication. Apparently, the ultimate solution is unattainable
or assorted interpretations are authorised since this men
tal landscape is by the very nature of things ambivalent.
So often non-verbalised ciphers remain unclear, outright
esoteric. We are concerned not only with the value of
the mystery due to every masterpiece, or the ontological
ambiguity of artistic symbolism. We also keep in mind
the ultra-personal mythology of the artist, inscribed into
the image. The objects, persons, and events comprising it
and arranged into visual configurations can be treated as
a call number infallibly indicating the author, although
their function does not end here. We are dissatisfied with
aesthetic contemplation and feel provoked to delve into
meanings. Fellini - the demiurge, the creator - builds his
film universe, and with each successive film proves that
his creative power is growing and becomes unlimited.
He thus multiplies the secrets of film “being”. We seek
explanations in personal experiences, in our “museum of
the imagination”. We follow closely connections and af
filiations in order to understand (?), feel (?) and experi
ence (?). This process consists to a great extent of placing
the work within tradition, but not in order to deprive it
of its independent being but to perceive it in its entire
multidimensionality. It is unique but does not exist as an
isolated island. It becomes a place for a crossing of multi
ple paths, one of which leads to Baroque aesthetics. It is
one of many but remains highly promising. Not without
reason whenever there is mention of the significance of
the Baroque in contemporary culture the name of Fellini
must appear next to such names as Claudel, Ghelderode,
Genet, Gombrowicz and Arrabal. 6 This is why it seems
that we may hazard an analysis of the "eternal theme”
of wandering within the context of Baroque tradition. If,
however, we speak about Baroque tradition in the case
of Fellini then we do so exclusively in such an interpreta
tion as the one proposed by Michał Głowiński: Tradition
is not an emulation of the shapes that phenomena assumed in
past epochs but it is the past seen through the eyes of people of
the succeeding period, the future actively continued and trans
formed. 7 It is towards a thus comprehended tradition that
we turn while seeking a solution for the dilemmas of our
epoch. Gerard Genette noticed that contemporary reflec
tion about art applies the Baroque as a mirror, seeing in
it also our anxieties, tastes, and experiences, and render
ing it a sui generis bridge between the present and the
past. 8 This does not take place without a certain reason.
After all, it was the Baroque that produced archetypical
characters on which twentieth-century mythology con
centrated: Faust, Don Quixote, Don Juan, and Hamlet,
all rebelling against the reality and society that gag them.
The heart of the matter does not involve illusory albeit
attractive analogies to the situation of the contemporary
man by drawing the Baroque away from its social, philo
sophical and historical roots. Such an approach would be
just as barren from the viewpoint of cognition as it would
be futile owing to the dissimilarity of the old perception
models of time and space as well as different principles of
comprehending and expressing causal-effective relations.
For this reason, systems of references and associations set
into motion while deciphering assorted works can differ
in various epochs and cultures. A t the same time, some of
these elements are deeply enrooted in collective memory
while others possess a more fleeting character; some be
long to collective experiences while the rest constitute an
expression of creative individuality; some are perceived by
means of simple references to a sensually tangible reality
while the characteristic feature of others is a less or more
complicated symbolism. In this manner the status of an
artwork is never determined conclusively and certain as
pects of its meaning are replaced by new ones. Reference
to tradition always takes place upon the basis of selectionschematization from the angle of assumed purposes. If we
speak, therefore, about the continuum of culture then we
have in mind the fact that an artwork contains both the
past and an anticipation of the future.
This thesis is rather paradoxically illustrated by Ar
nold Hauser in: The Social History of Art and Literature:
The artistic outlook of the baroque is, in a word, cinematic; the
incidents represented seem to have been overheard and spied
out; every indication that might betray consideration for the
beholder is blotted out, everything is presented in apparent ac
cordance with pure chance. The comparative lack of clarity in
the presentation is also related to this quality of improvisation.
The frequent and often violent overlappings, the excessive dif
ferences in the size of objects seen in perspective, the neglect
of the directional lines given by the frame of the picture, the
incompleteness of the material and the unequal treatment of
the motifs are all used intentionally to make it difficult to see
the picture as a lucid whole [...] The more cultured, fastidi
ous and intelligently interested in art a public is, the more it
demands this intensification of artistic stimuli. But apart from
the attraction of the new, the difficult and the complicated, this
is once again an attempt to arouse in the beholder the feeling
of the inexhaustibility, incomprehensibility and infinity of the
representation —a tendency which dominates the whole of ba
roque art. 9 Let us add the emotional striving, omnipresent
in Baroque visual arts, towards capturing motion in all of
its symptoms, the predilection for trompe-l’oeil, and the
ability to obtain astonishing optical effects. The Baroque
vision of the world, the product of the imagination of art
ists and dreamers, finds strong support in precise scientific
models devised by the astronomers, physicists, engineers
and philosophers of the epoch. Anamorphic and illusionistic painting, laternae magicae, theatrical machinery and
234
Teresa Rutkowska
• FELLINI’S WANDERING
stage design applied paradoxes of perspective, the break
down of space, the phenomena of reflections in lenses
and mirrors, the game played by shadow and light. This
particular technological factor functioning on the border
line of reality and illusion creates new visual transfigura
tions endowed with metaphorical dimension and outright
cinematic features.
This manner of treating a work of art as a domain of a
multi-directional permeation of assorted tendencies and
traditions as well as various periods is not a rarity. Today,
both literature and other fields of the arts are the scene of
meetings much more surprising and paradoxical than the
one with which we deal in our reflections.
On the other hand, post-World War II fascination
with the Baroque was so conspicuous that some critics
were inclined to distinguish it as barocchus postabellicus,
neo-Baroque or post-Baroque. Actually Baroque inspira
tions may reveal themselves at assorted levels of an art
work. As a rule, especially in literature, such reference is
purely superficial and formal. At times, it involves the use
of certain motifs or the exploration of “Baroque” emo
tional states, intellectual associations, and sensitivity.
Their presence in the very tissue of a contemporary work
is subjected, naturally, to other philosophical or artistic
premises, different styles and outright dissimilar art, but
the very ascertainment of this presence exerts a great
impact on the reception of the artwork since it outlines
a particular context of deciphering the meanings. We
could say that in the same artwork or situation of the re
cipient there exist particular stimuli provoking the use of
Baroque rhetoric. A conglomerate of artistic, intellectual,
ethical and emotional phenomena encompassed by the
term: “Baroque culture” simmers with inner contradic
tions and tension. The vanitas vanitatis motto is accom
panied by lush sensuality and violent passion. Man’s fate
is envisaged as an irresolvable antinomy of body and soul.
The tragic perspective of the disintegration and destruc
tion of material leading towards death thus coexists with
the cult of life together with all its symptoms. The inces
sant antagonism between Thanatos and Eros, despair
and joy, suffering and laughter, darkness and light, the
apotheosis of youth and the fear of physical annihila
tion, the rent between a vision of paradise lost and the
infernal abyss, between heroism and the insignificance of
human deeds - these elements are perennially present in
the temporal existence of the Baroque man, fully aware
of this duality. He thus treats life as a game, an assump
tion of successive roles and a process of putting on masks.
He is an actor in the grand spectacle of the world. Those
few whose intellectual predispositions permitted them to
assume the position of a spectator - Descartes, Pascal,
Spinoza or Leibniz - could, from a distance, find certain
regularities in this chaos. only metaphysics brings order
and comfort. States of rapture, ecstasy, and slumber open
for a moment the gates of the mystery and restore sense
to temporal strife. Omnipresent unrest provoked quests
235
and the posing of questions. Art of the period reveals
the whole diversity of eschatological imagination. The
Baroque - as Lichański wrote - encourages to Travel, to
become acquainted with the Universe, is a journey from evil
towards goodness, from ignorance towards awareness, from
a biological being towards becoming conscious of human vo
cation. 10 It is at that precise moment that the metaphor
of life as roaming, a pilgrimage, gains an unprecedented
distinctness that remains exciting even today.
Those motifs were accompanied by certain formal fea
tures distinguished during the nineteenth century in an
opposition to Classical art, a feat accomplished by Hein
rich Wolfflin in such an apt manner that up to this day
his antonym constitutes a point of departure for all reflec
tions about the Baroque. Wolfflin declared that Classi
cism is linear and visual, while the Baroque is painterly.
The Classical vision was cast upon a plane, while the Ba
roque vision developed inwardly. The Classical composi
tion is static and closed, while the open Baroque compo
sition develops dynamically in all directions and is filled
with mobile and active forms. Classical forms tend to lean
towards the Earth, while those of a Baroque composition
soar upwards. 11 Classicism seeks unity - particular ele
ments retain their autonomy but are closely connected
with each other within a uniform rhythmic system. The
Baroque astounds with its diversity, but all elements of
an artwork are co-dependent and together create an ef
fect that cannot be reduced to a sum of constitutive el
ements. Classicism aims at lucidity, while the Baroque
work is ambiguous. Obviously, this highly schematic and
general contents-form characteristic of the Baroque has
numerous faults. First and foremost, it does not take into
account the immense variety of the artistic phenomena,
some outright incomparable, that took place at the time.
On the other hand, as Jan Białostocki noticed, it renders
the Baroque a category much too wide and capacious for
it to be useful to an historian of art. 12 For our needs, how
ever, it seems totally satisfactory and justifies the gradual
rehabilitation of the Baroque that could be observed for
the last half a century after years of rejection.
The predominance of the kinetic factor over the static
one, so typical for the Baroque, as well as the discovery of
motion, animation, and the fluidity of space once again
bring to mind film. Just as the Baroque, according to
Hauser, contained an encoded film quality as regards the
manner of transmitting the contents, so film, or at least
some of its styles, could be described as Baroque. This
opinion is shared by Jean Bouquet, an outstanding expert
on the Baroque, the film expert Charles Pozzo di Borgo13
as well as many other researchers who deal with film from
the viewpoint of the history of art and who notice the
greatest saturation with Baroque qualities in films by Max
Ophüls, Orson Welles and Federico Fellini. The affilia
tion of the Baroque and film art is demonstrated in an
inclination towards gathering curious and astonishing ef
fects, a predilection for opulence, artificiality and illusion,
Teresa Rutkowska
• FELLINI’S WANDERING
a deformation of reality so as to reveal its multi-dimen
sional character, a special fondness for oneiric poetic and,
finally, a neo-Heraclitean vision of the world conceived
as a non-permanent set of mobile signs. We assume that
an artist’s set of convictions concerning reality implicates
the selection of certain artistic media, the narration struc
ture, and the manner of using the categories of time and
space.
Finally, in order to ultimately legitimate our reflections
here is a statement made by Jan Białostocki who despite
all fundamental doubts concerning attempts at expand
ing the conceit of the Baroque beyond its epoch wrote:
Probably the greatest dose of the Baroque can be found in
films by Fellini. In his works a special combination of natural
ism, expression and dynamic together with deep and intense
poetry is disclosed in colourful and lush forms, whose richness
irresistibly brings to mind the tradition of the Roman Baroque,
so close to this artist. 14
Presumably, this statement does not pertain solely to
the formal aspect of the director’s oeuvre. The very es
sence of the Baroque contains a concurrence of the po
etic and thematic conception. We thus assume that the
Baroque qualities of Fellini’s films are not restricted to
narrowly comprehended style but reach much deeper
and assume an existential dimension. As the earlier cited
Genette wrote so movingly: the Baroque existential idea
is but intoxication, albeit conscious and, one might dare
say, orderly. 15
Fellini declared that in his opinion we are immersed
in a decadent epoch that is the end of a certain phase
in the development of mankind, a time when principles
endowing our existence with meaning are being toppled;
nevertheless, this situation did not fill him with horror but
offered hope because it promises new life. 16He believed
that decadence is conditio sine qua non of renascence, and
lived not awaiting the death of civilisation but joyously
anticipating its transformation.
The decadent movement shatters three categories:
the category of truth based on the order of logical ration
alism, the category of spatial (with a distinctly outlined
centre), political, and socio-cultural unity, and the cat
egory of purposefulness, comprehended as the existence
of a certain eschatological order contrasted with the cat
egories of ambivalence, differentiation and doubt. 17 This
is, at the same time, the quintessence of the “Baroque”
situation. Such historians of art as Elie Faure or Henri
Focillon perceived the Baroque as a closing phase in the
evolution of each style whose character is if not eternal
(as d’Ors envisaged it) then at least supra-temporal. Fel
lini matches this tradition of thinking perfectly.
such symptoms of Baroque qualities appear in his
films sufficiently clearly for us to hazard rendering the Ba
roque tradition an interpretation key to, e.g. an analysis
of the spatial structure of Fellinis films, even contrary to
the director’s demonstrated animosity towards all labels
of this sort. Asked outright about his opinion about the
236
“Baroque roots” attributed to him Fellini snorted: what
is not Baroque in contemporary art? 18 Since, however,
he did not negate the suggestion categorically we may as
sume that he regarded himself as a co-participant of this
current. It is precisely space, across which the protago
nists of his films roam, and in a certain sense Fellini too,
as long as he marks his presence, that with the passage
of time evolve from quasi-realistic (never realistic) to in
creasingly conventional, artificial, and invented. space
assumes Baroque traits and its disillusion is undoubtedly
an intended undertaking.
Setting things into motion - or the
beginning of a journey
In a small seaside town a careless, irresponsible and
useless life is being led by a group of friends - good-fornothings, i vitelloni, i.e. perennial bullocks fearing inde
pendence. They share an existential situation, a wish to
flee the hemmed in small town, and an unwillingness to
embark upon any sort of activity that could actually make
their wishes come true. Their enclosure is not geographi
cal. The town borders on the sea, still real and magnificent
(later it too will become artificial), that the protagonists
see as a symbol of a link with the world, a premise of hopes
that are to be achieved, an impulse for hazy dreams about
the future. The sea is eternal motion, element and en
ergy. A train track also delineates a path towards a better,
happier, and more complete existence. This is a real road
and thus the only to create the opportunity chosen in the
closing sequence by Moraldo. Only he musters sufficient
courage to cross the enchanted circle of psychic inertia.
The state of anticipation for something that is to
transpire, the awaiting for a paroxysm, an enlightenment
that would set free a force capable of transforming exist
ence bring to mind not only Chekhov but also Beckett
and Buñuel. We know little about the protagonists but it
remains obvious that the source of their feeling of being
trapped is to be found in the psyche - they are prisoners
of their own device. The world together with its prob
lems follows its course somewhere next to them, without
their participation, while they wander aimlessly between
a seedy restaurant, a billiard hall, a beach, a theatre, a
cinema and their family homes treated only as a source
of subsistence and a place for some respite. Night-time
roaming along the labyrinths of streets and on the border
line between slumber and vigil, carnival fun that makes
it possible to forget one’s identity, moments of reflection
on the beach - all introduce a special emotional climate
conducive for presenting not so much the social-ethical
aspect of events as the metaphorical-ethical one. Just as
grotesque is the contrast between the aspirations of the
protagonists to “levitate” and the trivial, mundane exist
ence from which they carefully eliminate all that could
possess any sort of spiritual significance. Attempts at soar
ing have a pitiful finale. Finally, an angel stolen from a
religious-articles shop partly as a form of revenge, partly
Teresa Rutkowska
• FELLINI’S WANDERING
out of sheer boredom, becomes the “angel of doom” who
shatters the pleasantly unruffled purposelessness.
The narcissistic, infantile egoism of the protagonists
does not, however, possess unambiguous moral classifica
tion. Fatal for those who remain behind and those dearest
to them, it can become a form of salvation for Moraldo
planning to escape. Characteristically, nothing in his ex
perience with the exception of a brief meeting with a boy
working at a train station foretells the awakening that will
take place. The significance of this encounter cannot be
interpreted in the categories of a simple causal-effect re
lationship. The encounter and the conversation between
the boy and Moraldo, a brief stereotypical exchange of
opinions, appear to be deprived of a sub-text. The boy
answers an ordinary question by saying that he is on his
way to work and is afraid of being late; in addition, he is
excited by the task that he is expected to perform. Noth
ing else takes place. But the same boy reappears in the
finale. Now, it is his turn to ask Moraldo about the des
tination of his voyage. Moraldo, however, is incapable of
answering - it is still much too early. For the time being,
the main objective is to leave. The boy becomes a mes
senger of fate, preparing the protagonist to set off for a
journey. Just as in life, we learn what is really important
much too late.
Moraldo or someone resembling him will make an
appearance in Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, Roma, or Intervista. Fel
lini liked to say about himself that he was an eternal,
spiritual vitellone. He admitted to an affiliation with his
protagonists since he too tried to exploit everything that
he encountered in life for his own good. This, naturally,
pertains predominantly to the sphere of creativity. Fellini
used the psychological archetype of the artist in accord
ance with which he passes through life in the manner of a
thief and brings to Cinecitta all that he manages to steal.
19 Years later, in Amarcord he returned to the small town
of his childhood. But this homecoming to a past even
more distant possesses already a perspective entirely dif
ferent than 1 Vitelloni and in no case is a “remake” of the
latter. The young protagonists are still not leaving on a
journey but continue being firmly enrooted in family life
and that of the small town community. Although their
feeing of security inevitably vanishes as adulthood looms
they are still capable of dreaming. Here, the quintessence
of their dreams is the sea together with an unattainable
transatlantic liner - the promise of a great and magnifi
cent world. The sea, enveloped in a hazy mist, is poign
antly beautiful and the liner is as enormous as the world
and its might so spellbinding that is seems unreal. Is it
then an illusion? The whole allure of immaturity, after all,
is contained in the fact that one can succumb with impu
nity to illusions, which in Amarcord resemble a metaphys
ical experience or a state of ecstasy, as in the sequence of
getting lost in the mist swathing familiar places or in the
scene of a dance performed in front of an empty hotel,
with certain features of danse macabre evoking phantoms
237
that long ago became part of the past. Here, the film is an
art of setting the past into motion. In the case of Fellini
one can never be certain to the end whether that, which
took place actually occurred or was only a dream.
L a Strada - or light at the end of the
tunnel
We are now living in a kind of dark tunnel of suffering, un
able to communicate with one another, but I already feel I can
see a glim in the distance, a sense of new freedom; we must try
to believe in this possibility of salvation. 20 La Strada is in its
entirety a parable about roaming. Just as in the Baroque
picaresque novel, the journey across the geographic space
of Italy in rain, mud, heat and freezing weather is actually
spiritual, an individual quest for oneself within an escha
tological perspective. Among all of Fellini’s films this one
has the most concise and closed construction, and starts
and ends along the seashore. Here, the sea is encumbered
with archetypical meanings, including a symbol of free
dom and an opening towards liberty. Gelsomina’s farewell
to the sea is also addressed to the word of Nature to which
she belongs. Entering the path of the wanderer in the
company of Zampano means the acceptance of captivity
that will last to the moment when Gelsomina discovers
her calling. For the protagonists of the film the journey is
a compulsion, a way of winning means to subsist, and they
can only move forwards. Along the road, on both its sides,
there stretch enormous empty spaces, which just as in I
Vitelloni reflect the spiritual condition of the given char
acter. Emptiness is of great significance in every Fellini
film. In this state of temporal-spatial suspension the pro
tagonists experience their loneliness. The tightly closed,
inner world of the human being is an anti-thesis of the
empty infinite space depicted in the film. These vacant
places belong to intermediate spaces (Zwischenräume).
Luzius Keller wrote that the term suggests assorted mean
ings. The spaces are empty predominantly as physical
phenomena. They include, however, also borderlands be
tween dream and awakening, where the intellect and the
eye still fulfil their normal function but already set off for
an unrestrained voyage. 21
Such roaming, as has been said earlier, takes place
also upon the level of consciousness. In La Strada the
beast and the saint, endlessly inflicting pain on each
other, also walk towards each other. In the Pascalian
manner they are drastically contrasted and comprise two
opposite sides of human nature. Assuming the pose of a
tree Gelsomina merges with Nature. Planting along the
roadside tomatoes, the fruit of love that she will never see
ripen, listening to inner music, isolated from the world
by a barrier of silence and starved for emotion she has
no chances for establishing understanding with the cruel,
strong, degenerate Zampano, whose life is to a consider
able extent reduced to physiological reactions. Contrary
to the profound solitude accompanying people in their
peregrinatio vitae none remains isolated. They constitute
Teresa Rutkowska
• FELLINI’S WANDERING
parts of a whole, i.e. the world in its spiritual and material
complexity. A network of unclear and unpredictable ties
connects everyone and everything.
Gelsomina experiences rapture for the first time when,
lost among the participants of a procession, she notices a
figure of the Virgin Mary. Then she visits a sick child. An
essential function in her spiritual crystallisation is also ful
filled by music. Finally, there is the meeting with II Matto
- the Fool. At the key moment it is he who in a parable
about a pebble explains to her that everything that ex
ists has a certain role to play. This tightrope walker, an
angel with artificial wings, a carrier of poetry and mystery,
suspended between heaven and earth, has a prominent
part to perform in the metamorphosis of Gelsomina and
Zampano. During a stopover at a monastery Gelsomina
is already capable of verbalising the sense of the task to
which she feels a calling, namely, to accompany Zampano
on his way regardless of circumstances. A t the end, un
der the impact of a shock of Il Matto’s death caused by
Zampanó, her bonds with the real world grow looser. A
sacrifice is being made, albeit without the participation of
her will and awareness. Now starts the process of chang
ing Zampanó into a human being. When some time later
he hears a tune once played by Gelsomina on a trumpet
he recalls what actually took place as if under the spell
of angelic trumpets. News about her death kindles a mo
ment of revelation. A purifying bath in the sea, liberating
cries and tears cause the beast to show a human face. A
ray of light illuminates the kneeling man. A sign of grace
or simply the glare of the rising Sun? Oscillation, the per
meation of reality and metaphysics produce this Baroque
image devoid of conflicts, albeit ambivalent and dual.
The world being created
In Fellini-Satyricon (1969), featuring stylistic qualities
totally different than those of his preceding films, the art
ist had already achieved complete visual independence.
He built ancient Rome by referring to his imagination and
historical knowledge. Paradoxically, the literary source
was Petronius’ Satyricon libri, the first realistic novel con
taining detailed descriptions of Roman customs and sites.
It has survived only in fragments and thus the motives
and intentions of the protagonists’ journey are not quite
clear. We only know that they incurred the wrath of Priapus, the phallic god of bountiful harvests, who probably
punished Encolpius, one of the protagonists, by causing
sexual impotence for which he seeks a remedy. Fellini pre
served the episodic construction without undue concern
for a logical connection between particular fragments,
which means that the film is dominated by an oneiricastral ambiance. The characters move as if in a dream.
The resources of the means of expression they apply
are slight, the facial expressions - theatrical and limited,
and the lines they exchange are not always understand
able, since they use Latin or outright incomprehensible
onomatopoeias whose rhythm and sound resemble the
238
Latin of Cicero. Fellini accepted that the only accessible
ancient reality is an idea that we had created upon the
basis of its extant fragments. At the same time, he did not
want to emulate the stereotype of “Roman qualities”. The
places where the protagonists: Enclopius, Ascylto and Giton appear are not topographically recognized, but since
each episode starts with a detailed, meticulous descrip
tion such identification does not pose greater difficulties:
a theatre, a brothel, a pinacotheca, baths, the temple of
Hermaphrodite, a patrician’s residence. Not a single his
torical building, with the exception of insula Felicles, a gi
gantic residential edifice whose description has survived
in documents from the epoch. This is one of the most
Baroque sequences in Fellini’s entire oeuvre. The inner
walls of the building contain, all the way to the top, cells
and caves crammed with human offal. Spiral stairs lead
to the abodes and the space in the centre is a monstrous
well. The image brings to mind depictions of the Tower of
Babel and a series of engravings titled Carceri d’Invenzione
(The Imaginary Prisons) by Giovanni-Battista Piranesi.
This graphic artist and engraver lived in the eighteenth
century, but many researchers, such as Marguerite Yourcenar, 22 consider him to be a master of the Baroque who,
just like Fellini, spent his whole adult life in Rome.
Carceri is a gloomy vision of wooden and stone con
structions. A repetitively recurring motif consists of all
possible variants of stairs, bridges and spans along which
human figures move laboriously and in a state of frenzy.
U. Vogt-Goknil wrote that they never rest and always
strive at something. Using the remnants of their strength,
they stagger along the bridges and climb stairs so as to
reach new bridges and new stairs. Tormented by an infin
ity of possible repetitions they move from one transitory
situation to another. Paradoxically, their prison consists
of eternal wandering. 23 In Hamlet, Rosencrantz declares
that the whole world is a prison and Hamlet adds: A goodly
one, in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons.
24 This cosmic dimension of Piranesi’s prisons is intensi
fied by the size of the wandering figures, microscopic in
proportion to the space they traverse. A truly infernal and
evocative vision.
One of the reasons is that this is an image of inferno
in the shape of a monstrous crater rendered permanent
in European culture by Dante in The Divine Comedy or
by Michelangelo in The Last Judgement. But only filtered
through Piranesi’s Baroque consciousness did it become
universal and appears as the plight of man, his eternal
destiny.
In Fellini’s film too Hell becomes a reality accessible to
human experience and obtains the dimension of a meta
phor of life. This image recurs in many films and numer
ous variants. Sometimes it attains great impetus and its
dimensions become outright striking, as in the sequences
of feasts, orgies and spectacles in Satyricon and Casanova,
in the scene of an excursion to the bottom of a steamship
in And the Ship Sails On, and during a television show in
Teresa Rutkowska
• FELLINI’S WANDERING
Ginger and Fred. Elsewhere, as in II bidone in the scene of
a New Year’s Eve ball or in Juliet of the Spirits in the scene
of a reception, it assumes a smaller-scale character but its
distinguishing features include great intensity suffused by
a claustrophobic atmosphere. Fellini’s films do not have a
strict boundary between those three visual spheres - life,
Hell and spectacle, which remain in a state of constant
permeation.
The episode in insula Felicles in Fellini-Satyricon pos
sesses a special symbolic dimension due to its distinctive
iconographic connotations. The Felicula tenement house
soared above Rome in the manner of a skyscraper and
was deciphered in those categories already by Tertullian.
Writing about the megalomania of the Valentinians, he
noted, that they transformed the universe into a large, fur
nished apartment house, in whose attics they have planted their
god under the tiles (ad summas tegulas) and accuses them of
“rearing to the sky as many stories as we see in the Insula of
Felicula in Rome. 25 After an earthquake, Hell topples both
in Fellini’s film and in the Apocalypse. The already home
less protagonists set off into the world, but the “labyrinth
experience” will accompany them throughout their meanderings. They roam while feeling that they are being
constantly threatened, and despite their common plight
they remain dreadfully alone. They traverse lands popu
lated by monsters and freaks. Labyrinths, spirals, ruins and
deserts create a sui generis psychological reality and are the
figures of the human interior. The scene in a villa of sui
cide victims, suffused with idyllic peace and cheerfulness,
contrasts with this background. Such beauty must be an
nihilated. The cruel laws of the Empire have reached the
residents condemned to death. This is the way in which
the last bastion of humanity becomes annihilated. When
Enclopius finally attains his objective and is cured it turns
out that he is now alone. In the closing scene he boards a
ship moored along the coast in order to sail to Africa. He
will continue the peregrination on his own.
such a solution would be, however, much too simple.
Already an earlier scene in a pinacotheca made us aware
that we are dealing with a specific time knot, a paramensia of sorts, when the illusion of déjà vu or déjà vecu takes
place. The frescoes studied by Enclopius feature charac
ters known from previous episodes and recurring on fres
coes and mosaics in other fragments and, ultimately, on
pieces of walls in the last frame. Did the events really oc
cur or were they a figment of the imagination, and if they
did take place, then when? History repeats itself inces
santly. such recurrence and entry into history à rebours is
the crossing of the Rubicon by school students during an
on-the-spot lesson in the opening sequence of Roma.
This time Federico Fellini wanders across Rome
alone. His roaming is based on the same principle as the
one proposed by Jung:
We have to describe and explain a building, the upper sto
rey of which was erected in the nineteenth century; the ground
floor dates from the sixteenth century and a careful examina
tion of the masonry discloses the fact that it was reconstructed
from a dwelling-tower of the eleventh century. In the cellar
we discover Roman foundation walls, and under the cellar a
filled-in cave in the floor of which stone tools are found and
remnants of glacial fauna in the layers below. That would be
the sort of picture of our mental structure. 26
Could Fellini have found a better terrain for seeking
his identity than Rome? The title: Fellini's Roma clearly
expresses his intentions. The artist presents a personal vi
sion of the town. The spiral along which he walks is hem
ming in. He abandons wide spaces and embarks upon a
journey to innermost recesses, across successive strata
of time; he withdraws and then returns. But time can
not be totally tamed. The gentle coexistence of numer
ous epochs, with which Fellini so evocatively charms us
by applying all the potential of film technology, is mere
illusion. The supremacy of the present is an essential
feature of our world. Its destructive force is shown in a
startling sequence of the disappearance of the frescoes
and the disintegration of works of art turning into dust.
The destruction is caused by a stream of air invading a
buried patrician home through an opening made during
the construction of a city subway. Material substance suc
cumbed to annihilation, but an antidote to the feeling of
the passage of time could be found in the intensity of ex
periencing a moment, since it is the sum of such moments
that is decisive for the value of human existence. Fellini’s
oeuvre resembles amassed moments of such insight. The
majority are an illusion, a mystification revealed increas
ingly vividly by each consecutive film.
Upon certain occasions this state of ecstatic rapture,
one of the prime themes of Baroque painting and sculp
ture, assumes in Fellini’s interpretation the features of
derision without losing its mystic aura. This is the case
in the closing sequence in Roma, with an ecclesiastical
fashion show, or the meeting with a medium in Juliet of
the Spirits.
Roma is the director’s first film in which a mixture of
the illusion of reality and the reality of illusion fulfils such
an essential artistic function. Thanks to this interference
there comes into being a special rhythm of the work, a
pulsating of sorts. An apogee of oneiric intoxication is fol
lowed by a fluent return to existential reality, but the im
age always retains its ambivalent, hyperbolic properties.
In Roma the secret of illusion is still preserved. Totus mundus agit histrionem, as in the known Baroque motto. The
boundaries constantly grow blurred. There is no division
between spectators and actors.
A film lacking a traditional plot does not have a tradi
tional protagonist. The wanderer and, at the same time,
the cicerone is the author, whose commentary guides us
through successive spheres. From among the thousand
ways of showing the town Fellini selected the one that
in certain respects remains connected with the mode in
which reality was constructed in previous films. In Fellini’s
Roma the prevailing feature are enclosed places: narrow
239
Teresa Rutkowska
• FELLINI’S WANDERING
lanes, twisting corridors, an old, gloomy palace, subter
ranean interiors; part of this labyrinth is a highway. The
same highway that in American films is a symbol of open
ing towards infinite space here becomes a substitute of
an infernal circle with no exit, crowded to the limits of
possibilities. The film ends with a motorcycle cavalcade
along streets deep in slumber. Turn after turn, deafening
modernity conquers the Eternal City. The artist has one
more refuge - Cinecitta, the dream factory, where it is still
possible to create a world more genuine than the real one.
The expansive present day, however, makes its presence
known. In Intervista we see clearly how the walls of a con
crete housing estate encroach upon the film studio.
As his artistic personality underwent crystallisation
Fellini assumed the position of an observer. He was not,
however, a moralist, a philosopher or a theoretician of
culture. He remained a storyteller, who for the sake of
art seized increasingly large domains of reality. With the
assistance of the magic media offered by film he trans
formed the macro-cosmos of the universe into the micro
cosmos of his imagination.
Ilusory journey
Had Fellini agreed to pose to a portrait of a Baroque
artist he would have probably chosen for his protagonist
Don Juan, whose complicated personality reveals the
whole profundity of the existential, metaphysical and eth
ical determinants of rebellion expressed in fervent erotic
activity. The Casanova character is totally devoid of such
features. Felicien Marceau consistently contrasted the two
figures, 27 describing Don Juan as a monk of love whose
determination and absorption have something of an apos
tle. This, however, would be an apostle-Antichrist, bat
tling against God and the whole system of values borne by
religion. He considers bliss to be a measure for conquering
and subjugating the soul. He is interested only in women
who are a personification of the ideas that, like columns,
support the foundations of social order. He becomes ex
cited by the struggle waged with them, the overcoming of
obstacles, and, finally, the spectacular victory won while
aware of his dignity and supremacy. Finally, he possesses
the strength of a demon. This conception of a protagonist
does not match the structure of the film world construed
by Fellini. The characters in his films do not gain such a
degree of independence. Even director Guido from 8 1/2
is embroiled in a whole network of relations that bind him
as much as they constitute him as an artist. While real
izing their life message the Fellini characters, concerned
with their place in the world, exert an impact on its fate
but in a way that is never conscious. They function like
cogs in a gigantic mechanism, the homunculi in Piranesi’s
illustrations. Fellini’s films are mobile frescoes, multi-stra
ta paintings.
The artist chose Casanova because the latter harmo
niously blends with the image of the world on its way to
wards annihilation. As a hypocrite and a liar he matches
240
perfectly the social order of eighteenth-century Italy. It
is not his intention to topple any principles. Casanova
proves to be a master in arranging situations that permit
him to bypass those principles in such a way so that the
surrounding would not feel threatened. Don Juan was a
great recluse rejected by society, and his outbursts were
observed with leniency. He was a perfect technician of
sensual love, but his avid climbing to the pinnacles of
erotic perfection is by no means heroic. Fellini pitilessly
robbed his protagonists of all signs of greatness. In the
film, Casanova’s existence is subjected to a single pur
pose - seduction. The objective of his conquests is pleas
ure treated as a ritual and a duty. Just like time, however,
it demonstrates a destructive force. We watch gradual
physical and mental deterioration. From the first scenes
of the film Fellini portrayed the proximity of eroticism
and death, their presence in the theatre of life. The open
ing sequences take place in Venice, a town branded with
the stigmata of death and disintegration, but also the site
of orgiastic carnival fun. The film starts with a ceremony
of drowning a gigantic skull in the water of the lagoon
to mark the commencement of the carnival. Now, it is
possible to briefly forget about inevitable destiny. Death,
however, is ever present in the narrow streets with mist
enveloping canals and mysterious palaces full of nooks
and hidden passages.
A feeling of vague menace accompanies the protago
nist during his journeys across Europe. This is a strange
tour, conducted to flee from oneself and in search of
ever-new ways of satisfying an obsession - a journey to
nowhere. As Fellini stated ironically: He has travelled all
over the world, but it is as if he never left his bed. 28 Casanova
focuses his whole energy on a laborious and mechanical
repetition of pursuits whose outcome is always the same
sexual act. This routine-like character of activity, stressed
by Fellini, discloses the marionette nature of the protago
nist. Casanova resembles a puppet steered by a directorpuppeteer. Inside the puppet - under the wig, the powder,
the rouge and the white caftan - there is nothing, the
puppet is empty. Casanova is just as artificial as his latest
partner, a mechanical doll. The reality in which he lives
is also pretence from beginning to end. In the last frame
a stagecoach drives off to the film props room across a
plastic lagoon. Lights slowly go out. Fellini - the author of
this masquerade - personally reveals the fleeting nature of
illusion brought to life.
Hic transit gloria mundi
On the eve of Wold War I the ship Gloria N sets sail
on a trip so that the friends and admirers of the famous
opera singer Edmea Tetua could in accordance with her
last will scatter her ashes near the island of Erimo (E
mori?). And the Ship Sails On is full of symbols, figures and
emblems. Out of their tangle there emerges a vision of the
end of a certain epoch, forecasting the downfall of West
ern civilisation. Here, Fellini discloses fully his Janus-like
Teresa Rutkowska
• FELLINI’S WANDERING
face. Janus - one of the oldest Roman deities - was wor
shipped first as the god of beginnings, steering the creation
of deities, the cosmos, people and their deeds; 29 then he
became the god of all transitions: from the past to the fu
ture, from one state to another, from space to space, from
vision to vision. Two-faced, he supervises the entrance
and the exit, the interior and the exterior, the up and the
down. The film world of Fellini is subjected to precisely
such control and expresses boundless imperialism.
Entire reality in the story of And the Ship Sails On is the
product of film technology. An artificial sea created in the
studio carries a model of a ship rocked on artificial waves.
Over the horizon there stretches an artificial sky, and at
the bottom of the steamship there reclines an enormous
artificial rhinoceros. In this auto-ironic gesture the author
was concerned with revealing film illusion, and just as in
Casanova he embarked upon this task in the last frame.
First, the audience cannot ignore the fact that the real
ity seen on screen is totally the product of the author’s
imagination. Second, the metaphorical-symbolic features
of the image become considerably intensified once we
become aware that each element, even the most strange
and amazing, has been introduced purposefully and thus
can be, although does not have to, a carrier of some sort
of meaning. As a rule, the film image contains alongside
presented reality also elements of a reality absorbed by
the film naturally and as if by accident. In And the Ship
Sails this is present only in the physiognomy of the actors,
while all the rest is mere imitation and an esoteric magical
emulation of Nature. The mystification is highly perverse.
The film functions at three time levels. The first sequenc
es - in sepia, as in old photographs or film newsreels carry us into the past. More, the documentary conven
tion suggests that we are dealing with authentic events
reported by an eyewitness. When the time machine is set
into motion and the plot starts to develop, the image and
the documentary convention assume natural colours.
This is the level of the filmed present, by no means uni
form and continuous but built of separate episodes albeit
not without a certain narration scheme. Finally, after the
surprising ending, when it becomes obvious that reality
had been created by the author there remains only the re
ality of the film studio with the exhausted director. Each
time stratum is, therefore, absorbed and appropriated by
the next one.
The last consequence of the mentioned mystification,
the disclosure of the mechanism of illusion, is an inter
pretation of the artistic vision. The world appears to be a
glass globe without an exit. Just as frescoes by Giambattisto Tiepolo or Pietro da Cortona create the impression of
figures floating towards an endless sky, which ultimately
proves to be a beautifully painted ceiling, so in the case of
Fellini the infinite space of the ocean and the blue sky are
pieces of colourful plastic stretched on scaffolding.
Wandering, sailing is the destiny of man, but it would
be futile to expect an explanation of this motion’s mean
241
ing. Fellini wrote: Yes, I haven’t yet lost faith in the journey,
even though it often seems dark and desperate. 30His belief in
art offers uplifting proof. In And the Ship Sails On we are
dealing with the same pulsating rhythm of narration as in
Roma. At the same time, as if confirming what had been
said, the apogee of ecstasy and intoxication, extremely
evocative since it radiates also beyond the screen, comes
at those moments when true art is heard. These are the
sequences of a Gypsy dance or a spellbinding concert
performed with wine glasses in a galley. There comes a
time when the whole ship, together with the passengers
cultivating their spiritual qualities, explodes. The only
creatures left alive are the narrator-journalist and a fe
male rhinoceros, which will provide him with sufficient
food. But we must not treat this ending too seriously. If
everything is pretence and deceit then final annihilation
too does not have to be ultimate.
Intervista is ultimate testimony of Fellini’s faith in the
journey. The ride in a fantastic blue tram from the centre
of Rome to the Cinecitta studios is an opportunity for pre
senting views concerning the cinema and art in general as
well as for a self-analysis of the director’s creative and life
stand. Memory is the motor force that sets the mechanism
of time into motion. Fellini draws attention to the rather
essential difference between recollections and memory.
In his opinion, reminiscences possess the features of an
anecdote, while memory is like breathing - constant, un
interrupted and independent of will 31. It is also unques
tionably the direct reason for his works. In this particular
film such a reason for roaming memory is an interview
given to a Japanese television crew concerning a film ad
aptation of Kafka’s Amerika made in Cinecitta, a decision
explained by the fact that Kafka actually never visited
America. Intervista contains two time spheres: the present
and Fellini’s youth or, more exactly, his first contact with
the cinema and the studio. In the film, however, time has
been compressed, while both spheres overlap and in the
visual stratum possess an identical distinctness. only one
moment in Intervista displays vivid features of the past:
the black-and-white scenes from La Dolce Vita screened
in the “visible” presence of Marcelo Mastroiani and An
ita Ekberg, both a quarter of a century older. The spatial
structure in this film is perhaps even more complex than
in earlier works. There are several journeys, the first being
a tram ride. Originally staged, it turns into an imaginary
trip across jungles full of wild animals and prairies - enter
ing the world of film. The actors, whom we previously saw
putting on their make-up and choosing costumes, now
assume their parts and once the tram arrives at the studio
they have already become characters from an era half a
century earlier. There follows a tour of Cinecitta. These
three temporal-spatial levels: real - the present (although
also incessantly “falsified” and subjected to modification),
the past, and the fantastic-imaginary, function simultane
ously within the range of Cinecitta. Action takes place
both outside and in the studio, but of all films made by
Teresa Rutkowska
• FELLINI’s WANDERING
Fellini in the last years of his life this one is certainly the
most “open” towards natural, real space. For the first time
for very long, sunlight and rain are employed to fulfil their
natural dramatic function. The forces of Nature, however,
resist the author and do not succumb to his pressure; they
comprise an undesirable obstacle that the Director, the
prime protagonist of Intervista, must tackle. The essence
of Fellini’s cinema is the magic of arrangement, “orderly
enchantment”. Fellini believed in the cinema.
Provocative divulging of film illusion does not annul
the magic of Fellini‘s films just as elementary familiar
ity with physics does not destroy the magic of the vision
evoked in Barque anamorphoses, whose structure is in
certain respects close to that of his works. As we change
the vantage point we face increasingly new meanings
and mysteries of this dynamic-spatial configuration, fluid
and elusive. Their status is always uncertain and am
bivalent. We can ignore this aspect, but if we succumb
to the impact of ambiguous excess, so typical for Fellini’s
films, it turns out that one-dimensional reception is in
sufficient. Although ultimate comprehension consists of
a selection of accessible meanings according to our key
we are inclined to watch these films once again or out
right many times. This procedure, otherwise quite normal
and indispensable for someone whose target is analysis, in
this concrete case permits more than a relatively precise
recognition of the contents of images and the principles
of their construction. Recurring symbols and visual con
notations remembered in this manner make it possible to
perceive Fellini’s works as a process. The spatial utopias
created by him start to blend to such an extent that each
of his works treated as isolated appears to be incompara
bly poorer than when they are inscribed into a continuum
of artistic visions that fit into each other in the manner
of Chinese boxes. Each film possesses fragments of previ
ous ones interwoven into its tissue and conceals the em
bryo of the next film. This principle of inclusion functions
upon different levels in order to become realised in a ma
ture creative conception. It attains infinity and appears
to be the artist’s unique striving towards the absolute in
the belief that there is a reason for each thing. It is he,
the creator-magician, who sets into motion film reality
and commands it to parade in front of our eyes so that a
moment later he may in a self-ironic gesture show us its
mechanism. The journey is illusion, but the metaphysi
cal component present in each of Fellini’s films, even if
only for the blink of an eye, opens up domains that evade
all control; it appears insignificant that their foundation
is composed of a magic trick or optical illusion. The Ba
roque of Fellini’s oeuvre is not a hollow ornament - it ap
pears to be embedded in his cosmology.
242
Endnotes
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2
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5
6
7
8
9
10
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31
Federico Fellini, Fellini on Fellini, London 1976, p. 51,
52-53.
Federico Fellini, op. cit., p. 51.
Federico Fellini, (interview) “Forum”, no. 26, 1987.
Georges Matoré, L'Espace humain, Paris 1962, p. 35.
Cf. Gerard Genette on novels by A. Robbe-Grillet, in:
Figure III, Paris 1966, p. 84.
Cf. Jeanyves Guérin, Errances dans un archipel introuvable.
Notes sur les résurgences baroques au XX s., in: Figures du
baroque, Paris 1983 and Baroque et cinema. Etudes cinematographiques, 1960, fasc. 1-2.
Michał Głowiński, Tradycja literacka, in: Problemy teorii lite
ratury, Wroclaw 1987, p. 342.
Gerard Genette, Figures I, Paris 1966, p. 20
Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art: Renaissance,
Mannerism, Baroque, vol. 3, Routledge, London 1999, p.
176.
Jakub Zdzisław Lichański, Barok i dzień dzisiejszy, “Poezja”,
fasc. 5/6, 1977.
After: Germain Bazin, in: Le language de style, Paris 1977. Cf.
also: Jadwiga Sokołowska, Spory o barok, Warszawa 1971.
Jan Białostocki, Barok, styl, epoka, postawa, “Biuletyn Historii
Sztuki”, no. 1, 1958.
Cf. Baroque et cinema, op. cit.
Jan Białostocki, Refleksje nad barokiem, “Poezja”, fasc. 5/6,
1977.
Gerard Genette, Figures I, op. cit.
Federico Fellini, Fellini on Fellini, op. cit., p. 157.
Cf. Jean François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, New
York 1984.
Cited after: Jean-Yves Guérin, op. cit., p. 339.
Federico Fellini, (interview) “Le Messager européen”, Paris
1988, fasc. 1.
Federico Fellini, Fellini on Fellini, op. cit., p. 158.
Luzius Keller, Piranesi czyli mit spiralnych schodów, “Pamiętnik
Literacki”, fasc. 1, 1976 (French edition: Piranèse et les
Romantiques français. Le mythe des escaliers en spirale, J. Corti,
Paris 1966).
Marguerite Yourcenar, Sous benefice d’inventaire, Paris 1980.
U. Vogt-Göknil, cited after: Luzius Keller, op. cit.
William Shakespeare, Tragedy of Hamlet, Sparklesoup
Studios, Irving 2004, p. 39.
Cited after: Jerome Carcopino, Daily Life in Ancient Rome,
transl. E. O. I., George Routledge and sons, London 1943,
p. 26.
Carl Gustaw Jung, Mind and the Earth, in: idem, Contribution
to Analytical Psychology, transl. H. G. and F. Baynes, London
1928, pp. 118-119.
Felicien Marceau, Casanova, Paris 1948.
Federico Fellini, (interview) “Première”, fasc. 12, 1987.
Dictionaire des Symboles, Paris 1969, p. 427.
Federico Fellini, Fellini on Fellini, op. cit., p. 158.
Federico Fellini, (interview) “Première”, fasc. 12, 1987.
