Federico Fellini

by Burke, Frank; Waller, Marguerite R.

• ISBN13: 9780802006967
• ISBN10: 0802006965
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-07-01
• Publisher: Univ of Toronto Pr

Summary

Federico Fellini remains the best known of the postwar Italian directors. This collection of essays brings Fellini criticism up to date, employing a range of recent critical filters, including semiotic, psychoanalytical, feminist and deconstructionist. Accordingly, a number of important themes arise - the reception of fascism, the crisis of the subject, the question of agency, homo-eroticism, feminism, and constructions of gender. Since the early 1970s, a slide in critical and theoretical attention to Fellini's work has corresponded with an assumption that his films are self-indulgent and lacking in political value. This volume moves the discussion towards a politics of signification, contending that Fellini's evolving self-reflexivity is not mere solipsism but rather a critique of both aesthetics and signification. The essays presented here are almost all new - the two exceptions being important signifiers in Fellini studies. The first, Frank Burke's "Federico Fellini: Reality/Representation/Signification" laid the foundation in the late 1980s for considering Fellini's work in the light of postmodernism. The second, Marguerite Waller's "Whose Dolce Vita is this Anyway?: The Language of Fellini's Cinema" (1990), provides a contemporary re-reading of Fellini's most successful film. This lively and ambitious collection brings a new critical language to bear on Fellini's films, offering fresh insights into their underlying issues and meaning. In bringing Fellini criticism up to date, it will have a significant impact on film studies, reclaiming this important director for a contemporary audience.

Author Biography

Frank Burke is Professor of Film Studies at Queen's University. Marguerite R. Waller is Professor of English and Women's Studies, University of California, Riverside.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Frank Burke
Acknowledgments	xi
Chronology	xiii
Illustrations	xvii
Introduction	3	(23)
Marguerite R. Waller
Federico Fellini: Realism/Representation/Signification	26	(21)
Frank Burke
Subtle Wasted Traces: Fellini and the Circus	47	(18)
Helen Stoddart
Fellini and Lacan: The Hollow Phallus, the Male Womb, and the Retying of the Umbilical	65	(27)
William Van Watson
When in Rome Do As the Romans Do? Federico Fellini's Problematization of Femininity (The White Sheik)	92	(15)
Virginia Picchietti
Whose Dolce vita Is This, Anyway? The Language of Fellini's Cinema	107	(14)
Marguerite R. Waller
`Toby Dammit', Intertext, and the End of Humanism	121	(16)
Christopher Sharrett
Fellini's Amarcord: Variations on the Libidinal Limbo of Adolescence	137	(18)
Dorothee Bonnigal
Memory, Dialect, Politics: Linguistic Strategies in Fellini's Amarcord	155	(14)
Cosetta Gaudenzi
Fellini's Ginger and Fred: Postmodern Simulation Meets Hollywood Romance	169	(19)
Millicent Marcus
Cinecitta and America: Fellini Interviews Kafka (Intervista)	188	(21)
Carlo Testa
Interview with the Vamp: Deconstructing Femininity in Fellini's Final Films (Intervista, La voce della luna)	209	(24)
Aine O'Healy
Selected Bibliography	233	(2)
Filmography	235	(2)
Contributors	237