In Diegesis

Is it possible to fault Fellini for 8 ½? Was his most distinguished film an act of betrayal? Was Fellini foreswearing any allegiance he may have owed to honoring his Italian Neo-realist roots? Certainly, diehard neo-realist proponents may argue that Fellini was a traitor, and on the other end of the spectrum, Surrealist advocates and Bunuel acolytes would argue that Fellini’s genius was just naturally evolving, a crucial growth process that happens to any truly great artist. They might say that Fellini was finally falling into his proper stride as a filmmaker, and that Surrealism is a step forward artistically.

Is one mode of thought – say, Neo-realism or Surrealism – greater than the other? What words might comprise a definition of ‘greater’, in this context? What can a movie be, and what should a movie be, assuming that film is most appropriately suitable to one particular style of make?
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Vittorio De Sica died in November of 1973. I quietly wonder to myself if he got a chance to see Bergman’s “Scenes from a Marriage” or Terrence Mallick’s “Badlands,” which were both released that year. I wonder if, in October of ’73, perhaps he had a thought, a notion of his influence on cinema, a sense of oneness with the world he devoted so much love to. I fear the possibilities: could he have felt his occupational existence to be futile? Is it possible that, days before his death, he had a conversation with a loved one that outlined the death of his ideologies in the world around him (see: “The Sting” won the best picture Oscar statuette that year). The matter of discerning the answer to both my wonderings and my fears is not so much a question of truth, but a question of De Sica’s subjective understanding of truth. The question is not whether or not Italian Neo-Realism breathes in today’s cinema just as viscerally as it did in the cinema of 1973; it most certainly does, and did. I only hope that De Sica had at least a slight, if not whole, understanding of his works’ magnitude of influence. Maybe, if he did manage to feel the almost-unbearable reality of “Scenes from a Marriage,” my hope might be a certainty. (more…)