Top 10 Federico Fellini Films Ranked: Happy Birthday Il Maestro

“Old Age” – says Fellini – “means cancelling a late-afternoon orgy”; while world of the old is a shrinking world, Fellini’s imagination always kept expanding: his late career filmography may or may not feel as cohesive yet even his whimpers are so enthralling to watch, his brilliance always bubbles up. His brand of neo-realism aka internal neo-realism puts more emphasis on poetry and dreams than rhetoric ideology to convey the sentiments; very much like the work of any great artist like David Lynch, his films have a life of their own that will always stand the test of time. Find our 10 Federico Fellini films ranked list below.

Fairy tales (and dreams) are the greatest expression of man by men and no one understood this better than Fellini; his deeply personal filmography when viewed as a whole reflects his genuine love for the medium: no wonder that as a kid he named the four corners of bed after the names of four cinema in Rimimi. He’s a joyful liar who used his art as a lie to tell the truth; and preferred artifice over reality with dreams as the most honest expression possible for humans.

The world mourns the passing of David Lynch, my peachy-keen Greatest of All Time, who apart from being a brilliant artist, most importantly happens to be a wonderful person; and it only feels natural that Fellini too loved him, since David Lynch was one of the few who was allowed to meet Fellini on his deathbed. Reflecting on Fellini’s passing in his autobiography Room to Dream, David says and I quote:

I think things happen the way they’re supposed to happen. When you get old you remember the way it was when you were doing your stuff, and you compare it with what’s happening today and you can’t even begin to explain the way things were to young people, because they don’t give a shit. Life moves on. One day these days will be their memories, and they won’t be able to tell anyone about that, either. That’s just the way it is, and I think Fellini was in that place. There was a golden age of cinema for Italy and France and he was one of the kings then, really important, so important to cinema, beyond the beyond important. Damn.

Without any further ado, here are the 10 quintessential (& my favourite naturally) films of Federico Fellini ranked:

10. The White Sheik (1952)

A Fellini debut in a true sense. Fellini critiques the bourgeois conditions, in this case the attachment of Passionate Dolly/Wanda with fotoromanzo (a photo-novel) and her own White Sheik fantasy. It’s one of those satirical never-meet-your-hero films that pokes the culture that partakes in celebrity worship. Fellini directs the movie like an emcee of a kind, while his style is still in primitive form, a lot of recurring motifs of his style are evident here. Unlike Variety lights, there’s no crazy night parties here, Fellini makes up for that by having rambunctious marches in broad daylight. This also marks the beginning of an incredible companionship between legendary Nino Rota and Fellini, the score here might not be Rota’s best but it neatly sets the chaotic and comical tone of the film. Some imageries in this film leave a lasting impression. I can see why Fellini felt the need to write a whole movie around Cabiria; the lovely cameo by Giulietta Masina is one of the highlights of this film.

9. Juliet of The Spirits (1965)

Fellini’s first feature length film in color, JOTS analyzes the status of woman in postwar Italy: a story about a failing marriage narrated from a woman’s perspective. The Felliniesque qualities in color leaves a memorable impression on the psyche.

8. City of Women (1980)

Certified Loverboy? Certified Assophile

At first it may seem kind of all over the place, yet it feels very compelling and captivating with the atmosphere Fellini creates. If Juliet of the Spirit was Fellini’s attempt to give a voice to liberation of a woman, in this movie Fellini depicts—as an accomplice rather than judge—men’s failure of understanding their feminine counterparts and cinema as a tool for projecting masculine fantasies about feminine on screen. The better parts of this movie are just hard to ignore, the images are unsurprisingly strong. The entire movie exists in a dreamlike liminal space and who better to tackle dreams than the man himself. Nino Rota was missed, but Bacalov did a very fine job with the score.

7. Orchestra Rehearsal (1978)

While most of the Fellini films turns away from the idea of a character as a social type, given how atypical and germane to his mythical world Fellini characters are; Fellini with this film examines the relationship of the individual to the society in which he lives. There’s a beauty with the way Fellini imparts such tangible characterization to these musical instruments; while the fluidity of his camera movements are restricted yet his imagination operates beyond the confines; without devolving into a mouthpiece, Fellini manages to convey the sentiments with such earnestness.

6. I Vitelloni (1953)

Try as one might to delay the onset of maturity, there comes a point when—as Scorsese puts it—you realize you can either grow up or forever be a child. With I Vitelloni, Fellini captures this transition into maturity in an autobiographical way. Set in the seashore town which can be attributed as Fellini’s own birthplace Rimimi, the story revolves around 5 vitelloni—lazy, directionless men. With an omnipresent voice-over paving the way for narrative to unfold with a youthful gaze, Fellini might not have yet took hold of surrealism here but he manages to capture the daydreams, superficial personalities and illusions of youth. Fellini’s own way of dealing with neorealism is kind of special, in the way it breaks away from the traditional objective qualities of neorealism while also preserving it by approaching the same from a subjective point of view, the combined effect is something quite unique. The denouement is certainly moving. The very obvious influence of this film on works of Scorsese particularly Mean Streets does not comes as a surprise. With I Vitelloni, Fellini takes the best elements of his past two films and puts them into smooth execution in a rather straightforward way. Nino Rota’s score is incredible here.

5. Amarcord (1973)

A spiritual predecessor to I Vitelloni, Fellini here focuses on an entire generation of prewar Italians, instead of few vitellonis, dominated by fascist regime and limited by eternal adolescence. The politics of this film never overpowers the sentiment Fellini tries to convey, infact despite a backdrop of Fascist regime, this movie does not take sides or partakes in dichotomizing individuals into left or right, good or bad, rather it presents everyone in this film as more or less a clown. There’s a lot of empathy to be found here, the visuals create a sense of nostalgia for the place and time. I just love the way Fellini never acquiesces to an ideology driven movie and always maintains his firm command over images; harnessing the power of visuals to evoke emotions. At this point, I sound too repetitive in my praises for Nino Rota; his score for this movie is sublime.

4. La Strada (1954)

Highway is a lonely place and a man needs a company, the man in La Strada is a tougher-on-the-outside-insecure-on-the-inside, short-tempered and short on compassion type of guy named Zampanó. This is a film depicting the transformation of such a hard-ass person into something better, more humane (I hope so). What initiates the change in this man is the compassion offered by a simple young innocent woman, Gelsomina. Giulietta Masina’s performance here is magnetic, effortlessly she’s able to generate so much empathy for her character complemented with comical Chaplin-esque expressions that she tries to not over-do. Given Fellini’s penchant for circus-frenzy stuff, he goes all out with his various camera techniques (lots of 360° shots) to actively engage the audience with element of spectacle. The second half of this film is quite bleak, the sentiments that Fellini aims to convey are reciprocated strongly, for if one thing that this movie contains a lot of is, it’s compassion. With the help of impactful poetic imageries the denouement this film reaches is bittersweet yet very moving. Nino Rota going all out with the score once again.

3. La Dolce Vita (1960)

Fellini’s detached look at the contemporary hedonistic lifestyle, the facades, the masks and the superficial personalities of these characters, without any moral judgements. There’s a natural progression and refinement in the way Fellini captures imageries and focusses not on the dialogues but on the visual storytelling to get the sentiments across. A picture is worth a thousand words and any director who can harness the power of imageries in such a manner can literally do anything in cinema. With La Dolce Vita, Fellini also captures the essence of tabloid photography, which ultimately gave birth to paparazzi culture (the word in itself derived from a character named Paparazzo). Fellini’s view however isn’t completely pessimistic, his vision offers not an end or deterioration but a possibility of a rebirth for an artist in new circumstances, a sign of life instead of death. This possibility is explored through the perspective of Marcello, a journalist who happens to have literary ambitions. Certainly a push towards more abstract Fellini though it’s not quite there yet. The production design and set pieces do offer a heightened sense of realism, Piero Gherardi rightfully won that Oscar. Bless Nino Rota.

2. Nights of Cabiria (1957)

If La Strada is considered a fairy tale then with Nights Of Cabiria, Fellini creates a harmony between his own mythical world and real day-to-day life with the help mystical imageries and a brand of neorealism that is very exclusive to Fellini only. Yet at the very core, Gelsomina and Cabiria share similarities. Both played with such a tragicomic strength by Giulietta Masina, makes you care so much for her character. The circular narrative of the film leads Cabiria to face the reality of her illusions and dreams, it’s like watching an impending train-wreck hoping for it to not happen but knowing how inevitable the incoming disaster is. Fellini embraces his ringleader qualities by inculcating several exotic parties and number of processions throughout the film. Even when it seems to be all over for Cabiria, Fellini invokes humanity in such a poetic way that the ending leads to deep catharsis. Cabiria fully ripens as a character by the end, our worry changes into hope and ultimately assurance that she will be alright sooner rather than later. Nino Rota never stops cooking, does he?!

1. 8½ (1963)

Fellini completely abandons the urge of representing quotidian lifestyle and moves forward into the abstract territory and compared to his works preceding this, optimally uses dream-like imageries drizzled with drops of surrealism to let the audience visualise the process of creativity and what it takes to make a movie without partaking in any pretentious intellectualization about the same. This is easily his most personal film so far, and an honest cinematic expression of his own fantastical world. I think rationalizating the powerful emotions experienced by this film are almost reductive; it’s a movie which emphasizes on visualization than analyzation. Much of what happens to the director protagonist in this movie, mirrors the events that Fellini himself faced (a Fellini sci-fi would actually go hard though). Almost 60 years later and this feels fresh and powerful, more ambitious and personal than a significant amount of films made today, and I believe it would continue to stand the test of time for a long long time. Ultimately, what really resonated with me (like many others) is the “acceptance” part of the film, Fellini’s characters don’t undergo drastic character arcs or self-improvement, rather they end up feeling completely ripe than what they seem like in the start, the ending leads to a soulful catharsis. Piero Gherardi’s set designs here are absolutely incredible, and so is Nino Rota’s score.

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