Fellini - Hardcover

Baxter, John

3.53

34 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312112734 ISBN 13: 9780312112738

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1994

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The author of The Hollywood Exiles presents the first biography of the legendary filmmaker since his 1992 death, elucidating a complex, difficult man whose fantasy film world often seemed truer than real life.

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From Kirkus Reviews:

An annoying, superficial, and spiteful reductionist biography of the late Italian filmmaker. Baxter (The Hollywood Exiles, 1976) is more intent on dashing the self-promulgated ``myth'' of Fellini (192093) than on the assemblage of a creditable life story. Presented a Lifetime Achievement Oscar shortly before he died, the Italian director was a consistent prize winner in Hollywood, at Cannes, and elsewhere with such landmark films as La Strada (1954), Nights of Cabiria (1957), La Dolce Vita (1960), 8� (1963), and Amarcord (1973). Baxter provides detailed synopses of most of the films and delves into such background material as the development of the screenplays, casting, and selection of the crew. He discusses Fellini's childhood in Rimini and youth in Rome; his early exposure to cinema and some of his influences; his career as a cartoonist/journalist; his 50-year marriage to actress Giulietta Masina (``a relationship,'' Baxter claims, ``more like brother and sister''), and his supposed jealousy of and resistance to her emerging stardom following La Strada and Cabiria; his lordly treatment of those who worked for him; and his tumultuous association with producer Dino de Laurentiis. The author also catalogues, with little amplification and plenty of innuendo, ``a parade of sexually charged images'' from Fellini's childhood and dreams, which often became manifest in his films. Throughout, there is a persistent, pointless sniping. Baxter hints that Fellini bribed his high school teachers. We learn that he didn't really run away with the circus. He notes that as a 1930s schoolboy Fellini was photographed ``smartly turned out'' in his youth group uniform, implying that this somehow negated his adult anti-fascist beliefs. Baxter goes to great lengths to point out that Fellini's distant father, dominant mother, and ``a sensitive, creative disposition'' are ``often associated with homosexuality, but there's no evidence of physical affairs.'' Utterly lacking in artistry or insight--an unbearably long, trashy tabloid article. (24 pages of b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright �1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

Flamboyant Italian director Federico Fellini kept a detailed dream diary which became the source for nearly all his later films, among them Casanova and 81/2. His immersion in Carl Jung's theories, obsession with the occult and reliance on psychics are among the revelations in Baxter's disarming, captivating biography. Drawing on interviews with Fellini (who died in 1993 at age 73) and his colleagues and friends, Baxter limns a self-doubting director, autocratic on the set and in his personal relationships, jealous of the success of his actress wife Giulietta Masina, and beset by anxiety about his public image, eventual death and sexuality. Son of an unresponsive father who was a traveling coffee salesman, Fellini was reared largely by dominating women. We learn that he and Giulietta led distant lives in a jaded marriage, and that he pursued passionate, nonphysical love relationships with Roberto Rossellini, Marcello Mastroianni and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Puncturing Fellini's self-mythologizing, Baxter links the soaring screen fantasies to the frustrated private individual. Photos.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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