The great Italian director was born 100 years ago this month. What better time to stream his best work…
Federico Fellini celebrates his 100th birthday on 20 January – in an inactive sense, admittedly, given that he left us back in 1993. It’s a centenary worth noting. Thirty years on from his last film, Fellini still feels like the first name in Italian cinema, the one laymen can remember even if they’ve never seen a frame of his work, and the one whose imprint – or many imprints, given his wild directorial evolution from stark neorealism to baroque stylisation – is most visible in the contemporary work of compatriots from Paolo Sorrentino to Alice Rohrwacher.
The BFI is marking the milestone with a touring retrospective of Fellini’s work, though the BFI Player has some choice fare for those who can’t get to a cinema. The centrepiece of their selection, unsurprisingly, is La Dolce Vita, itself celebrating a 60th anniversary this year, and still looking rather chic – thanks in part to a recent 4K facelift. Once an emblem of new-era hedonism, its roving, restlessly horny tour through Rome’s beautiful celebrity set may not shock as it once did, but it retains its mesmerising whirligig energy. If the paparazzi-targeting satire seems a little less harsh these days too, that’s largely because so much pop commentary has followed in its sleek-suited, skinny-tied image. And was Marcello Mastroianni ever so electric?