Federico Fellini - Influence and Legacy

Influence and Legacy

Personal and highly idiosyncratic visions of society, Fellini's films are a unique combination of memory, dreams, fantasy and desire. The adjectives "Fellinian" and "Felliniesque" are "synonymous with any kind of extravagant, fanciful, even baroque image in the cinema and in art in general". La Dolce Vita contributed the term paparazzi to the English language, derived from Paparazzo, the photographer friend of journalist Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni).

Contemporary filmmakers such as Woody Allen, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Pedro Almodovar, Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, Emir Kusturica, David Lynch, Girish Kasaravalli, David Cronenberg, Martin Scorsese, and Juraj Jakubisko have cited Fellini's influence on their work.

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

I Vitelloni inspired European directors Juan Antonio Bardem, Marco Ferreri, and Lina Wertmuller and had an influence on Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973), George Lucas's American Graffiti (1974), Joel Schumacher's St. Elmo's Fire (1985), and Barry Levinson's Diner (1987), among many others. When the American magazine Cinema asked Stanley Kubrick in 1963 to name his favorite films, the film director listed I Vitelloni as number one in his Top 10 list.

Nights of Cabiria was adapted as the Broadway musical Sweet Charity and the movie Sweet Charity (1969) by Bob Fosse starring Shirley MacLaine.

8½ inspired among others: Mickey One (Arthur Penn, 1965), Alex in Wonderland (Paul Mazursky, 1970), Beware of a Holy Whore (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1971), Day for Night (François Truffaut, 1973), All That Jazz (Bob Fosse, 1979), Stardust Memories (Woody Allen, 1980), Sogni d'oro (Nanni Moretti, 1981), Parad Planet (Vadim Abdrashitov, 1984), La Pelicula del rey (Carlos Sorin, 1986), Living in Oblivion (Tom DiCillo, 1995), 8½ Women (Peter Greenaway, 1999), Falling Down (Joel Schumacher, 1993), along with the successful Broadway musical, Nine (Maury Yeston and Arthur Kopit, 1982). Yo-Yo Boing! (1998), a Spanish novel by Puerto Rican writer Giannina Braschi, features a dream sequence with Fellini that was inspired by 8½.

City of Women was adapted for the Berlin stage by Frank Castorf in 1992.

Fellini’s work is referenced on the albums Fellini Days (2001) by Fish and Funplex (2008) by the B-52's with the song Juliet of the Spirits, and in the opening traffic jam of the music video Everybody Hurts by R.E.M. It influenced two American TV shows, Northern Exposure and Third Rock from the Sun.

Certain of his film related material and personal papers are contained in the Wesleyan University Cinema Archives to which scholars and media experts from around the world may have full access. In October 2009, the Jeu de Paume in Paris opened an exhibit devoted to Fellini, running through to January 2010. The exhibition included Fellini ephemera, television interviews, behind-the-scenes photographs, and excerpts from La dolce vita and 8½. It also featured the Book of Dreams based on 30 years of illustrations and notes by Fellini.