FEDERICO FELLINI

FEDERICO FELLINI

Born - January 20, 1920(1920-01-20)
Rimini, Italy

Died - October 31, 1993 (aged 73)
Rome, Italy

Spouse(s) - Giulietta Masina (1921-1994)

Biography

Fellini's father Urbano (1894-1956) was a traveling salesman and wholesale vendor. In August 1918 he married Ida Barbiani (1896-1984) in a civil ceremony (with the religious celebration the following January). After Federico's birth in 1920, two more children arrived: Riccardo (1921-1991) and Maria Maddalena (m. Fabbri; 1929-2002). Urbano Fellini was originally from Gambettola, where the young Federico vacationed at his grandparents' house for several years.

Born and raised in Rimini, his childhood experiences would later play an important part in many of his films, in particular, I Vitelloni (1953), 8½ (1963) and Amarcord (1973). It is misleading, however, to assume that all his films contain autobiographical anecdotes and fantasies. Intimate friends such as screenwriters Tullio Pinelli and Bernardino Zapponi, cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno and set designer Dante Ferretti have insisted on how Fellini invented his own memories simply for the pleasure of narrating them in his films.

During Mussolini's Fascist regime, Fellini and his brother, Riccardo, were part of the Avanguardista, the fascist youth group that every adolescent Italian male was obliged to join. It must be clearly stated, however, that Fellini and his family were not fascists or in sympathy with fascism. After moving to Rome in the spring of 1939, Fellini landed a well-paid job writing articles for the hugely popular satirical weekly, Marc’Aurelio. It was at this time that he interviewed Aldo Fabrizi, inaugurating a friendship that would lead to professional collaboration and radio work. Of conscription age since 1939, Fellini had nonetheless managed to avoid being drafted through a suite of clever ruses. Commenting on this turbulent epoch, Fellini biographer Tullio Kezich notes that although “the Marc’Aurelio period was happy, the happiness masked a phase of shameless political apathy. Many living under the Mussolini dictatorship during its last years experienced the schizophrenic tug between official loyalty to the regime and the intrinsic freedom of humor.”

In 1942, Fellini met Giulietta Masina, and a year later, on October 30, 1943, they were married. Thus began one of the great creative partnerships in world cinema. Several months after their marriage, Masina fell down the stairs and suffered a miscarriage. Then, on March 22, 1945, Pierfederico (nicknamed Federichino) was born but died a mere month later on April 24. These family tragedies affected the couple in profound ways, particularly in the conception of La strada (1954).

The Fascist regime fell on July 25, 1943 and the Allies liberated Rome on June 4, 1944. During that euphoric summer, Fellini set up the Funny-Face Shop with his friend De Seta, drawing caricatures of Allied soldiers for money. It was here that Roberto Rossellini came to see Fellini about his project, titled Rome, Open City (1945). Rossellini wanted the young man to introduce him to Aldo Fabrizi and collaborate on the script (with Suso Cecchi D'Amato, Piero Tellini, and Alberto Lattuada). Fellini accepted, contributing gags and dialogue.

In 1993 Fellini received an Oscar "in recognition of his cinematic accomplishments that have thrilled and entertained audiences worldwide." That same year, he died of a heart attack in Rome at the age of 73, a day after his fiftieth wedding anniversary. His wife, Giulietta Masina, died six months later of lung cancer on March 23 1994. Fellini, Giulietta Masina and their son Pierfederico are buried in the same bronze tomb sculpted by Arnaldo Pomodoro. Shaped like a ship's prow in the water, the tomb is located at the main entrance to the Cemetery of Rimini.

The Federico Fellini International Airport in Rimini is named in his honor.

Filmmaking career

Variety Lights (1950), Fellini's first film, was co-directed with the more experienced director, Alberto Lattuada. The film is a charming backstage comedy set amongst the world of small-time traveling performers, a world Fellini knew well after working on Roberto Rossellini's Paisà in 1946. While the film shoot was an exhilarating one for the 30-year-old Fellini, its release to poor reviews and limited distribution proved a disaster for all concerned. The production company went bankrupt, leaving both Fellini and Lattuada with debts to pay for over a decade.

Fellini's first solo-directed film was The White Sheik (1952). Starring Alberto Sordi, the film is a revised version of a treatment first written by Michelangelo Antonioni in 1949 and based on the fotoromanzi, the very popular photographed cartoon strip romance magazines published in Italy at the time. Producer Carlo Ponti had commissioned Fellini and Tullio Pinelli to develop the treatment. Finding the finished screenplay perplexing, Antonioni gave it to Alberto Lattuada who also turned it down. Fellini then decided to take the plunge and direct the film himself.

Working on the new script with Fellini and Pinelli was playwright Ennio Flaiano (who also co-wrote Variety Lights with Fellini and Lattuada). Together, they crafted a now classic tale of a newly-wed couple whose outward appearance of respectability is demolished by the fantasies of the immature wife (convincingly portrayed by Brunella Bovo). For the first time, Fellini and his composer, Nino Rota, worked together on the film's score. Having met in Rome in 1945, their collaboration continued successfully until Rota's death during the making of the ill-fated City of Women in 1980. This exceptional artistic relationship has been memorably described as one of "empathy, irrationality and magic."

A major discovery for Fellini after his great neorealist period (1950-1959) was the work of Carl Jung, whom he first read in 1961 under the supervision of noted Jungian psychoanalyst, Ernst Bernhard. Jung's seminal ideas on the anima and the animus, the role of archetypes and the collective unconscious were vigorously explored in such classics as 8½ (1963), Juliet of the Spirits (1965), Satyricon (1969), Casanova (1976), and City of Women (1980).

Fellini's films were widely acclaimed, and four of his films won the Best Foreign Film Oscar: La strada (1954) ; Le Notti di Cabiria (1957) ; 8½ (1963) and Amarcord (1973). Another film, La dolce vita (1960) is considered a seminal film of the 1960's, and was voted the sixth greatest film of all time by Entertainment Weekly. La dolce vita also contributed the term paparazzi to the language. The term derives from Marcello Rubini's (played by Marcello Mastroianni) photographer friend Paparazzo. In 1990, Fellini won the prestigious Praemium Imperiale awarded by the Japan Art Association. Considered as the equivalent of the Nobel Prize, the award covers five disciplines: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Music, and Theatre/Film. Past winners include Akira Kurosawa, David Hockney, Pina Bausch, and Maurice Béjart.

Other work

In 1948 Fellini acted in Roberto Rossellini's Il miracolo with Anna Magnani. To play the role of a silent rogue who is mistaken by Magnani for a saint, Fellini had to bleach his black hair blond. Fellini also wrote scripts for radio shows and movies (most notably for Rossellini, Pietro Germi, Eduardo De Filippo and Mario Monicelli) as well as numerous and often uncredited gags for well known comic actors like Aldo Fabrizi. A gifted caricaturist, Fellini produced satirical drawings in pencil, watercolors and colored felt pens that toured Europe and North America, and which are now eagerly sought after by collectors. Much of the inspiration for his sketches was derived from his own dreams while the films-in-progress stimulated drawings for decor, costumes and set designs (just as it was for Sergei Eisenstein whose own drawings share striking affinities with Fellini's work).

In 1991 Fellini's graphic novel Trip to Tulum was translated into English by Stefano Gaudiano and published in the magazine Crisis with artwork by Milo Manara. Elizabeth Bell supplied additional English translation for the Catalan Communications edition, selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the best trade paperbacks of 1990.

In 1992, Fellini worked in close collaboration with Canadian director Damian Pettigrew on a long final interview for the cinematic portrait Fellini: I'm a Born Liar (2002) that has been described as the maestro's "spiritual testament" by Fellini biographer Tullio Kezich.

Influence and legacy

A unique combination of memory, dreams, fantasy, and desire, Fellini's films are deeply personal visions of society, often portraying people at their most bizarre. The term "Felliniesque" is used to describe any scene in which a hallucinatory image invades an otherwise ordinary situation. Important contemporary filmmakers such as David Lynch, David Cronenberg, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Tim Burton, Pedro Almodovar Terry Gilliam and Emir Kusturica have all cited Fellini's influence on their work.

Polish director, Wojciech Has (1925-2000), whose two major films, The Saragossa Manuscript (1965) and The Hour-Glass Sanatorium (1973) are outstanding examples of modernist fantasies, has often been compared to Fellini for the sheer "luxuriance of his images" (Gilbert Guez in Le Figaro).

In 2001, singer Fish released an album titled Fellini Days, taking inspiration for the lyrics and music from the works of Fellini

Filmography as director

• Luci del Varietà (1950) (co-credited with Alberto Lattuada)
• Lo Sceicco Bianco (1951)
• I Vitelloni (1953)
• L'amore in città (1953) (segment Un'agenzia matrimoniale)
• La strada (1954) Oscar (best foreign language film)
• Il bidone (1955)
• Le Notti di Cabiria (1957) Oscar (best foreign language film)
• La dolce vita (1960) Oscar (best costumes)
• Boccaccio '70 (1962) (segment Le tentazioni del Dottor Antonio)
• 8½ (1963) Oscar (best foreign language film and best costume design)
• Giulietta degli Spiriti (1965)
• Histoires extraordinaires (1968) (segment Toby Dammit)
• Satyricon (1969)
• I clowns (1970)
• Roma (1972)
• Amarcord (1973) Oscar (best foreign language film)
• Il Casanova di Federico Fellini (1976) Oscar (best costume design)
• Prova d'orchestra (1978)
• La città delle donne (1980)
• E la Nave Va (1983)
• Ginger and Fred (1986)
• Intervista (1987)
• La voce della luna (1990)

FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA

FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA

Born - April 7, 1939 (1939-04-07) (age 68)
Detroit, Michigan, U.S.

Spouse(s) - Eleanor Coppola (1963-)

Children - Gian-Carlo Coppola (1963-1986)
Roman Coppola (b.1965)
Sofia Coppola (b.1971)

Parents - Carmine Coppola (1910-1991)
Italia Coppola (1912-2004)

Francis Ford Coppola (born April 7, 1939) is a five-time Academy Award winning American film director, producer, and screenwriter. Coppola is also a vintner, magazine publisher, and hotelier. He earned an M.F.A. in film directing from the UCLA Film School He is most renowned for directing the highly regarded Godfather trilogy, The Conversation, and the Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now.

Life and career (1960 to 1978)

Francis Ford Coppola was born to Carmine Coppola, at the time first flautist for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and his wife Italia in Detroit, Michigan on April 7, 1939, the second of three children (his sister is actress Talia Shire). Two years later Carmine became first flautist for the NBC Symphony Orchestra and the family moved back to suburban Long Island, New York where Francis spent the remainder of his childhood. Coppola had polio as a boy, leaving him bedridden for large periods of his childhood, and allowing him to indulge his imagination with homemade puppet theater productions. Using his father's 8mm movie camera, he began making movies when he was 10. He studied theatre at Hofstra University prior to earning an M.F.A. in film directing from UCLA Film School where he made numerous short films. While in UCLA's Film Department Francis met Jim Morrison, whose music was used later in Apocalypse Now.

In the early 1960s, Coppola started his professional career making low-budget films with Roger Corman and writing screenplays. His first notable motion picture was made for Corman, the low-budget Dementia 13. After graduating to mainstream motion pictures with You're a Big Boy Now, Coppola was offered the reins of the movie version of the Broadway musical Finian's Rainbow, starring Petula Clark, in her first American film, and veteran Fred Astaire. Producer Jack Warner was nonplussed by Coppola's shaggy-haired, bearded, "hippie" appearance and generally left him to his own devices. He took his cast to the Napa Valley for much of the outdoor shooting, but these scenes were in sharp contrast to those obviously filmed on a Hollywood soundstage, resulting in a disjointed look to the film. Dealing with outdated material at a time when the popularity of film musicals was already on the downslide, Coppola's end result was only semi-successful, but his work with Clark no doubt contributed to her Golden Globe Best Actress nomination. During this period, Coppola lived for a time with his wife and growing family in Mandeville Canyon in Brentwood, California, according to author Peter Biskind in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (Touchstone Books, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1998). In 1971, Coppola won an Academy Award for his screenplay for Patton. However, his name as a filmmaker was made as the co-writer and director of The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974), which both won the Academy Award for Best Picture — the latter being the first sequel to do so.

In between The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, Coppola directed The Conversation, a story of a paranoid wiretapping and surveillance expert (played by Gene Hackman) who finds himself caught up in a possible murder plot. The Conversation was released to theaters in 1974 and was also nominated for Best Picture, resulting in Coppola being one of the very few filmmakers to have directed two films competing for the same Best Picture Oscar since the annual number of nominees was cut down to five in 1945. While The Godfather Part II won the Oscar, The Conversation won the 1974 Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

During this period he also wrote the screenplay for the critically and commercially unsuccessful 1974 adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby (starring Mia Farrow and Robert Redford) and produced George Lucas's breakthrough film, American Graffiti. Also during this period, Coppola invested in San Francisco's City Magazine, hired an all-new staff, including mob daughter and writer Susan Berman, and named himself publisher. Although critically acclaimed, it was short lived. The magazine floundered until 1976 when Coppola published its last issue.

Coppola often worked with family members on his films. He put his two sons into The Godfather as extras during the street fight scene and Don Corleone's funeral. His sister, Talia Shire, played Connie Corleone in all three Godfather films, the first and last of which his daughter Sofia also appeared in. His father Carmine co-wrote much of the music in The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, and Apocalypse Now. His nephew, Nicholas Cage, starred in both Rumble Fish and Peggy Sue Got Married.

Career: 1979 to present

Following the success of The Godfather, The Conversation and The Godfather Part II, Coppola set about filming Apocalypse Now, a version of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, with the setting changed from colonial Africa to the Vietnam War. Before setting off to make the film, Coppola went to his mentor Roger Corman for advice about shooting in the Philippines, since Corman himself was familiar with shooting a film in that area. It was said that all Corman advised Coppola was "Don't go". The creation of the film went into Hollywood's history books as one of its most notorious fiascos when the production was a disaster from the start, being beset by numerous problems, including typhoons, nervous breakdowns, Martin Sheen's heart attack, and an unprepared Marlon Brando with a bloated appearance (which Coppola attempted to hide by shooting him in the shadows). It was delayed so often it was nicknamed Apocalypse Whenever. The film was equally lauded and hated by critics when it finally appeared in 1979, and the cost nearly bankrupted Coppola's nascent studio American Zoetrope.

However, like Citizen Kane, its reputation has grown in time and Apocalypse Now is regarded by many as a masterpiece of the New Hollywood era. Roger Ebert considers it to be the finest film on the Vietnam war and included it on his list for the 2002 Sight and Sound poll for the greatest movie of all time.

The 1991 documentary film Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, directed by Eleanor Coppola (Francis's wife), Fax Bahr, and George Hickenlooper, chronicles the difficulties the crew went through making Apocalypse Now, and features behind the scenes footage filmed by Eleanor.

After filming Apocalypse Now Coppola famously stated:

"We were in the jungle, there were too many of us, we had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little, we went insane."

Despite the setbacks and ill health Coppola suffered during the making of Apocalypse Now, he kept up with film projects, presenting in 1981 a restoration of the 1927 film Napoléon that was edited and released in the United States by American Zoetrope. However it wasn't until the experimental musical One from the Heart (1982) that he returned to directing. Unfortunately, the film was a huge failure, although it developed a cult following in later years. In 1986 Coppola, with George Lucas, directed the Michael Jackson film for Disney theme parks, Captain Eo, which at the time was the most expensive film per minute ever made.

In 1990 he completed the Godfather series with The Godfather Part III which, while not as critically acclaimed as the first two movies, was still a box office success. Some reviewers criticized the casting of Coppola's daughter Sofia, who stepped into a role abandoned by Winona Ryder just as filming began.

His eldest son, Gian-Carlo Coppola, was in the early stages of a film production career when he was killed on May 26, 1986 in a speedboat driven by Griffin O'Neal. Coppola's surviving son, Roman Coppola, is a filmmaker and music video director, directing his first feature film, CQ and videos for The Strokes.

Coppola's daughter, Sofia Coppola, has gone on to become a director in her own right. She became the first American woman to nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director. Her films include the critically-acclaimed The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation.

Coppola's father, Carmine, was a renowned composer and musician, and wrote the scores of many of his son's films; his nephew Nicolas Cage is an acclaimed actor. While another nephew is Jason Schwartzman of Rushmore fame. He also has a nephew, and is brother to Jason Schwartzman, Robert Schwartzman. Robert Schwartzman appeared in the movie Virgin Suicides done by Francis Ford Coppola's daughter, Sophia Coppola. Robert Schwartzman also appeared in The Princess Diaries as Michael Moscovitz and now has his own successful band Rooney. In recent years, Coppola with his family has extended his talents to winemaking in California's Napa Valley at the Rubicon Estate Winery in Rutherford, California. With his company "Francis Ford Coppola Presents," he also owns a winery in Geyserville, Sonoma County, Francis Ford Coppola Presents Rosso & Bianco winery, produces a line of specialty pastas and pasta sauces under the brand name Mammarella, and has resorts in Guatemala and Belize, inspired by his accommodation in the Philippines during the making of Apocalypse Now, with decor supervised by Eleanor Coppola.

In 1997, Coppola founded Zoetrope All-Story, a flashy literary magazine that publishes short stories. The magazine has published fiction by T.C. Boyle and Amy Bloom and essays by David Mamet, Steven Spielberg, and Salman Rushdie. Since its founding, the magazine has grown in reputation to become one of the premier American journals of literary fiction. Coppola serves as founding editor and publisher of All-Story.

In 2001, Coppola re-released Apocalypse Now as Apocalypse Now Redux, restoring several sequences lost from the original 1979 cut of the film thereby expanding its length to 200 minutes.

The director is based in the San Francisco Bay Area where he co-owns the Rubicon restaurant along with fellow San Franciscan Robin Williams, and Robert De Niro. In addition to his restaurant, Coppola serves as the Honorary Ambassador of the Central American nation of Belize in San Francisco, California. On their official roster of worldwide honorary consulates found on their official website, he is referred to as "His Excellency Ambassador Francis Ford Coppola," although he is not a Belizean citizen.

In November 2005, Coppola took part as a special guest at the 46th International Thessaloniki Film Festival in Greece.

Filmography

• The Terror (1963, uncredited director)
• Dementia 13 (1963, director & writer)
• You're a Big Boy Now (1966, director & writer)
• Finian's Rainbow (1968, director)
• The Rain People (1969, director & writer)
• Patton (1970, writer)
• THX 1138 (1971, executive producer)
• The Godfather (1972, director & writer)
• American Graffiti (1973, producer)
• The Conversation (1974, director, writer & producer)
• The Godfather, Part II (1974, director, writer & producer)
• Apocalypse Now (1979, director, writer & producer)
• The Black Stallion (1979, executive producer)
• Kagemusha (1980, executive producer)
• One from the Heart (1982, director & writer)
• Koyaanisqatsi (1982, executive producer)
• The Outsiders (1983, director)
• The Black Stallion Returns (1983, executive producer)
• Rumble Fish (1983, director, writer & producer)
• The Cotton Club (1984, director & writer)
• Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985, executive producer)
• Captain Eo (1986, director)
• Peggy Sue Got Married (1986, director)
• Lionheart (1987, executive producer)
• Gardens of Stone (1987, director & producer)
• Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988, director)
• Powaqqatsi (1988, executive producer)
• The Godfather: Part III (1990, director, writer & producer)
• Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992, director & producer)
• The Secret Garden (1993, executive producer)
• Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994, executive producer)
• My Family, Mi Familia (1995, executive producer)
• Jack (1996, director & producer)
• The Rainmaker (1997, director & writer)
• Sleepy Hollow (1999, executive producer)
• The Virgin Suicides (1999, executive producer)
• Lost In Translation (2003, executive producer)
• Kinsey (2005, co-producer)
• Marie Antoinette (2006, executive producer)
• Youth Without Youth (2007, writer/director)