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bocce
Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2005 1:18 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 24 May 2004 Posts: 2428
meant to say:

fellini despised television as a medium that porports to show reality but really manipulates it WITHOUT ENRICHING IT...
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censored-03
Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2005 4:08 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 24 May 2004 Posts: 3058 Location: Gotham, Big Apple, The Naked City
bocce wrote:
meant to say:

fellini despised television as a medium that porports to show reality but really manipulates it WITHOUT ENRICHING IT...
Boy, does that sound like the TV of today more than ever ?

In Ginger & Fred the old performing couple, who years before emulated the real Ginger and Fred are reunited after 30 years to perform on an almost surreal TV variety show that is ripe with typically odd Fellini characters. Fred is still a womanizing drinker and Ginger has moved on and has a life with a husband. The reunion brings back warm memories for both of a more romantic time, as the two realize their strong affection and fondness for eachother has never changed really, and never will.

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otto e mezzo
Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2005 1:36 am Reply with quote
Joined: 23 Jun 2005 Posts: 32
This is slightly off topic, but I want to tell you guys about my friends new Fellini web page. He is also in my documentary. He has one of the largest (probably the largest) Fellini collections in the world. With thousands of items.

He is currently in the process of getting the web site full of picts/scans from his collection. Please take a look at.

http://www.felliniana.com/

Right now he has rare pictures from "The Clowns" up on his site. Please take a look.
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otto e mezzo
Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2005 1:48 am Reply with quote
Joined: 23 Jun 2005 Posts: 32
Okay back on topic. Yes Fellini did hate Television. The ironic thing is that Fellini directed 5 TV commercials that aired in Italy.


Another thing. If you have the new "La Dolce Vita" DVD it has several of the shows that were produced for the film "Ginger and Fred".

One of my favorite shots in the whole film is of the antenna that Ginger looks out at from her hotel room. It reminds me of the structures in "8 1/2" and Fellini's continual use of hollow structures throughout his films. It's not my favorite film of Fellini's, but Marcello and Giulietta in the same film is a treat (also Franco Fabrizi who was also in a few other Fellini films).

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Please check out http://www.fellinidoc.com

Pictures of Florence, Rome, and Venice now up!
Click on the Italian flag.
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censored-03
Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2005 4:08 am Reply with quote
Joined: 24 May 2004 Posts: 3058 Location: Gotham, Big Apple, The Naked City
otto, thanks for the link, Don Young's website is great. I just acquired the Koch Lorber Intervista with the interesting Vincenzo Mollica documentary.

In Orchestra Rehearsal did anyone notice the cello player who initially didn't want any camera time without compensation, and then proceeded to talk a mile a mintute once the lights and camera's were rolling was played by the Greek language teacher in Amarcord who is razzed by the young boy pretending to enunciate a foreign word ? Funny guy.

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"Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel."
-- Horace Walpole
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bocce
Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2005 4:40 am Reply with quote
Joined: 24 May 2004 Posts: 2428
otto e mezzo wrote:
Okay back on topic. Yes Fellini did hate Television. The ironic thing is that Fellini directed 5 TV commercials that aired in Italy.


i'm not so sure that fellini hated television per se but rather the manner in which it was ill used. what i find perfectly understandable is him finding television commercials fertile ground for his imagination and sense of humor. after all, what are commercials but fantasies created to entice consumers into aquiring something they didn't know they needed? this irony could not have been lost on fellini.
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Ghulam
Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2005 9:18 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 4742 Location: Upstate NY
While I Clowns and Orchestra Rehearsal are considered to be TV productions of considerable merit, Fellini did express his dislike for the medium. "I don't know whether the game is worth the candle," he said.

He said that when an audience watches TV, they do not come to your house, but you go to their homes. This puts you in an inferior position. Whoever owns the television set is the master. In a theater or cinema, there is a climate of respect that predisposes one to a certain kind of listening. With TV, you enter people's home to entertain them while they are eating, or talkin to each other or in their beds making love, so that you have to try twice as hard to get their attention. He compared this to the situation of jugglers or acrobats in town squares who are trying to entertain people who are going about their own business. If you do not amuse the audience immediately, they will change channels. Snce people are in their own homes, they can insult you or ignore you. If an artist has to make a racket just to attract attention, he cannot be true to his "stylistics". The small format makes long shots impossible. "... for anyone like myself who believes in expression and not in information, television seems to have limits which are too confining." He considered his experience with The Clowns to be a failure. All this was said long before he made Orchestra Rehearsal.
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otto e mezzo
Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2005 2:53 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 23 Jun 2005 Posts: 32
Fellini didn't like TV because it broke up films. A film is playing and then it cuts to a commercial break. It breaks up what you were feeling at that time.

This is coming from one of Fellini's good friends and screenwriters, Gianfranco Angelucci.


My doc which features the rare TV commercials of Fellini also has commentary by Alberto Farina. He did research on the commercials and on Fellini's feeling towards TV. He thought that maybe Fellini did the commercials to show that commercials are fake and are just trying to get you to buy something.


I also enjoyed the part where the man was asking for money to appear in "O R"

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Please check out http://www.fellinidoc.com

Pictures of Florence, Rome, and Venice now up!
Click on the Italian flag.
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censored-03
Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2005 10:13 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 24 May 2004 Posts: 3058 Location: Gotham, Big Apple, The Naked City
Monday's Fellini Cruise



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bocce
Posted: Sat Jul 23, 2005 1:53 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 24 May 2004 Posts: 2428
the thing i find odd about fellini's supposed dismissal of TV is that italian television, in particular, is about as surreal as it gets within the EU. RAI (the major italian TV producer) subsists on a formulaic diet of a variety show sandwiched btwn two slices of oprah-like talk.

typically, you have 1) a swarmy host with one or two scantily clad and overmade up adjunctants who supposedly make a talk circle, 2) a live audience who are actually encouraged to ask the most ludicrous questions or make borderline obscene comments and 3) third rate "star" entertainers who will erupt into song and dance at the slightest nudge from either of the aforementioned and then, promptly resume their seat and continue the repartee to the apparent glee of all present.

it's a circus and so rife with the possibilities for satire that i can't imagine fellini passing up on it. better yet are the commercials in which every contrivance is made to allude to either unapproachable luxury or morally acceptable consumption (angels and devils proliforate).

more to our point is the news (or in our case, documentary filming) which is normally very chatty AROUND the issue but rarely confronts it and thus, informs nothing. they (the italians) seem to have taken the bill beutel/roger grimsby model of reportage to heart as a keeper.

in ORCHESTRA REHEARSAL (and later FRED AND GINGER), we are seeing fellini looking at television as it is, not necessarily what it could be in the proper hands (say, his). actually, it would have been the perfect medium for this master of the episodic...maybe.
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censored-03
Posted: Sat Jul 23, 2005 2:13 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 24 May 2004 Posts: 3058 Location: Gotham, Big Apple, The Naked City
Quote:
better yet are the commercials in which every contrivance is made to allude to either unapproachable luxury or morally acceptable consumption (angels and devils proliforate).
After watching all of these Fellini films and reading this above, makes me want to just say..wow did the Roman Catholic Church ever fuck with these peoples minds ! (Italians) Evil or Very Mad Twisted Evil Cool Shocked Mad Question Rolling Eyes Exclamation

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"Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel."
-- Horace Walpole
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bocce
Posted: Sat Jul 23, 2005 2:34 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 24 May 2004 Posts: 2428
well. religion and mind fucking works all the way around...

that's why jews have ortodox, conservative and reformed practices. no one really wants to necessarily give up on the core beliefs...they simply want to make DOGMA (man made) more applicable to the "real world".
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Ghulam
Posted: Mon Jul 25, 2005 12:06 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 4742 Location: Upstate NY
While almost all of And the Ship Sails On is set at the sea, it was all filmed at Cinecetta. There is no real ocean liner and no real sea. Fellini used up nine studios to stage his movie. This in spite of the fact that CGI was easily available in 1982 when it was made.

The story is set in 1914 when the assassination of the Austrian Archduke in Sarajevo set off WW I. A ship sails from Naples taking the ashes of an opera star Edmea to be scattered at a Greek island (Maria Callas' ashes were taken to a Greek island 5 years before this movie was made, probably not the same island that was owned by Aristotle Onassis). Aboard the ship are some of the greatest stars in opera and ballet, famous orchestra conductors and art critics, and other luminaries, such as the Grand Duke of Herzock, his blind sister and his prime minister, and a rhinoceros. Strange happenings are soon underway among these mourners, including marital infidelity, sexual escapades, homosexual attractions, pedophilic insinations, court intrigues and a lot more. A singing competition between famous opera singers in the huge boiler room of the ship is hilarious. The rhinoceros, missing his mate, becomes the cause of bad odor upsetting the refined crowd. A group of Serbian refugees, escaping Austrian pursuers, is picked up by the ship, to the consternation of the invited guests. An Austrian warship chasing the Serbians demands that the ocean liner hand them over. A Serbian throws a hand grenade at the battleship, which bombards the ocean liner and both are sunk. The only survivor from the ocean liner is a newspaper reporter and the rhinoceros.

The movie was a commercial failure. The critics were divided. Though the movie uses many symbols, their allegorical meaning is not taken to any logical conclusion, and there is no coherent overall motif. There are some pleasures to be had in some scenes mocking the genteel society on the verge of extinction. But even the title "And the Ship Sails On" is confusing, since the ship does sink.
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bocce
Posted: Mon Jul 25, 2005 1:57 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 24 May 2004 Posts: 2428
this film is not nearly as entertaining as it is if you have some opera background...

the selection of verdi's forza del destino and, to a lesser degree, nabucco really inform the film's narrative as do the other selections.

also i think melville would have been flattered by the deferrential nod at the end.

as i recall, this is an affectionate nod and poke in the ribs...a grand opera with an operetic soundtrack (no nino rota) peopled by operatic subjects.

i think the title refers to the persistence of memory (thank you, salvador) and it's individual inclusion in the fabric of history which will be conjured in the retelling by the sole human survivor...a reporter.
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bocce
Posted: Mon Jul 25, 2005 2:29 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 24 May 2004 Posts: 2428
actually, i'm not sure that fellini wasn't riffing on 1965's SHIP OF FOOLS just to show that in fact the ship (repeatable history) did sail on and would continue ala the flying dutchman (also the subject of an opera by wagner).
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