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Federico Fellini is often considered a disengaged filmmaker, interested in self-referential dreams and grotesquerie rather than contemporary politics. This book challenges that myth by examining the filmmaker’s reception in Italy, and by exploring his films in the context of significant political debates. By conceiving Fellini’s cinema as an individual expression of the nation’s “mythical biography,” the director’s most celebrated themes and images — a nostalgia for childhood, unattainable female figures, fantasy, the circus, carnival — become symbols of Italy’s traumatic modernity and perpetual adolescence.
“As a scholar deeply immersed in Italian culture, Minuz knows the material inside and out, and his fresh interpretations of Fellini’s films reference both the political and artistic climate in which they were created. Smoothly translated by Perryman, Political Fellini is a truly valuable book, one that delves deep into Fellini as a critic of politics on a larger scale and society as a whole… Highly recommended.” · Choice
“Political Fellini is a well-researched and -referenced study of Fedrerico Fellini, Italian cinema, and culture. He gives deep insight into Italian cinema and political culture. Both students and experts of cinema will hugely benefit from Political Fellini. It is the first full-length biography and study of Fedrerico Fellini as a great Italian filmmaker. It is a must read for everyone who is interested in cinema.” · The Washington Book Review
Andrea Minuz is Assistant Professor of Film & Media Studies in the Department of Art History and Perfor;ming Arts, University of Rome “La Sapienza”. He is the author of La Shoah e la cultura visuale. Cinema, memoria, spazio pubblico (Bulzoni Editore, 2010) [The Holocaust and Visual Culture: Film, Memory, the Public Sphere].
Preface to the English edition
Acknowledgments
Essential Chronology by Fabio Benincasa
Introduction: Political Fellini?
Chapter 1. Fellini and “Italian Ideology”
Chapter 2. Mythical biography of a Nation
Chapter 3. La dolce vita, our contemporary
Chapter 4. Fellini, Mussolini and the complex of Rome
Chapter 5. Fellini and feminism
Chapter 6. A public dream. The Italy of Prova d’orchestra
Chapter 7. You don’t interrupt an emotion
Appendix: the Maestro and the Divo, Fellini in the Andreotti archives
Selected Bibliography
Index