Can someone explain why Fellini is great?

Just about every film buff you meet says Fellini is one of the greatest directors. I just finished watching La Dolce Vita, twice. (yes for a total of 6 hours if you're counting lol) My feeling after each vieweing was lukewarm.

Did I miss something? Can any Fellini fans explain why this movie is great, or as some say 'the greatest film of all time'? I plan to watch "8 1/2" next, then if I have the patience I'll do "Amarcord". So if anyone has any insights on these 3 flicks, or anything else by Fellini, I'm all ears.

Note: I'm a huge fan of Antonioni... L'avventura / La notte / L'eclisse / Red Desert are 4 of my favourite films, and I love Risi's Il Sorpasso... so I'm no stranger to 1960s Italian post-neorealist cinema. I'm just not vibing with Fellini. What's the deal?

 

He is a wee bit overrated, simply because he was not the creator of his ideas on film because other film directors before him used them too.

 

That's exactly the feeling I get. He does some cool stuff, like in La dolce vita he breaks the 4th wall a lot, and that was definitely unusual for the times. But he wasn't the first director to break the 4th wall, that goes back to the 50s or even earlier.

 

Perhaps his innovative vein could be that he introduced rather psychedelic angles and shots in films like

 

That's a really helpful thought! Maybe that's the hidden value in his early 60s stuff; it's not full tilt psychedelic yet, but you can see it brewing.

So although he wasn't the first to use these tricks, he might've been the first to put them all together in one stylistic package.

 

Exactly! Antonioni is the biggest reason why I’m skeptical of Fellini. Both developed their signature style in 1960-1970 as a sort of response to neorealism, so both are sorta ‘weird’, but I see Antonioni’s weirdness as meaningful and thought-provoking while Fellini seems just random.

It’s like comparing the painter Dali with that guy who just threw paint blobs on a canvas and got famous for it. In Dali’s & Antonioni’s work, I see cool themes & structure even though it’s really weird, whereas with Paint Blob Man & Fellini, I just see randomness.

I haven’t seen The Passenger but that’s high on my list, thanks for the reminder! I started my Antonioni journey with L’Avventura (1960) and have been going in chronological order. I watched 5 films ending on Blow-Up (1966) and had to take a break because it blew my mind. The whole theme about “the closer we look at something, the more we lose sight of what it is” is brilliantly illustrated in the story about a photograph that contains the clue of a murder mystery, but the more he blows up the photograph the more ambiguous the image is. Stuff like that is where art & logic intersect, and I LOVE it.

With Fellini’s 8 1/2 (which I started watching the other day but decided to shut off and watch bugs bunny instead lol), I get that he’s being artistically unconventional, but without any logic it’s not my cup of tea. I dunno, I’ll keep trying but the point is I think Antonioni’s work draws the line between the real deal vs. the abstract art fraudsters ...and Fellini is dangling precariously over the edge.

(Of course I reserve the right change my opinion 180 degrees if I suddenly “get” Fellini!)

That’s so cool that you’ve actually studied acting & cinema. Are you still pursuing that, and have you landed any roles? At one point, acting/film was what I really wanted to do as a career, but I got diverted to a different path in life.

But speaking of acting, I think that’s another point that makes Fellini so hard to get into, while Antonioni excells: Fellini’s actors are often emotionless and wooden (deliberately?), while Antonioni cast some really expressive & charismatic actors. There’s Jack Nicholson as you mentioned, and his earlier films had the adorable Monica Vitti, charming Richard Harris & Alain Delon. These personalities really wake up a film even if the overall pace is slow & challenging.

 

"La Strada" is my 2nd favorite movie, but I'm only interested in his 50s work.

He's no Vittorio De Sica (who was Italy's #1 movie star before directing a single movie), though... The master of masterpieces. One was just on TCM yesterday (Two Women).... Hell, I don't even think he's half as good as Luchino Visconti, either, and those were just his Italian contemporaries.