Fellini 100 series fetes the Italian maestro's centenary with new film restorations, at The Cinematheque
Extensive retrospective features masterpieces like La Strada and lesser-known finds like Toby Dammit and Il Bidone
Variety Lights, the beloved Italian director’s 1950 debut feature, streams as part of the virtual Fellini 100 series.
February is going to be Fellini-esque, as The Cinematheque celebrates the 2020 centennial of one of cinema’s most bold and beloved maestros with an extensive retrospective.
While the theatre’s non-virtual Fellini 100 retrospective may have been interrupted in late November by pandemic closures, Vancouver audiences can now enjoy a selection of five newly restored titles from their living rooms, available to stream now until March 11.
Works include Federico Fellini’s delightful, vaudeville-set debut feature Variety Lights, filmed in 1950 and following a tawdry troupe of performers.
Elsewhere, the series features his poetic masterpiece La Strada, in which a brutish circus strongman (Anthony Quinn) buys a poor widow’s slow-witted daughter as an assistant (Fellini’s wife Giulietta Masina).
La Strada is Federico Fellini’s poetic masterpiece.
Look, too, for lesser-known discoveries like the noir-esque Il Bidone, a tale of three small-time con men who pose as priests in order to swindle the poor. American tough-guy actor Broderick Crawford stars.
Prepare for chills watching the spooky Toby Dammit, Fellini’s wildly stylish update of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Never Bet the Devil Your Head”. (It’s preceded by La Jetée, Chris Marker’s 27-minute Möbius-strip tale of memory and time travel, set in a post-apocalyptic Paris, from 1962.)
And travel to Rome’s storied Cinecittà in 1987’s Intervista. The director’s penultimate film is a surreal pseudo-documentary that serves as a freewheeling summation of Fellini’s career, complete with appearances by Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg.
Fellini began directing neorealist features in the early 1950s, becoming a household name by the 1960s for his extraordinary series of dazzlingly creative films rooted in memory, dreams, desire, and fantasy. In the English-speaking world, few filmmakers were more synonymous with the international “art” cinema.
Screenings cost US$9, with all ticket purchases directly supporting The Cinematheque. Find more information here.
This post was sponsored by The Cinematheque