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Close up of Federico Fellini

Federico Fellini’s Favorite Films

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The favorite films of the Italian director (including one of his own) are comical, subtly disturbing, surreal and beautiful.

Federico Fellini said that he felt better when he was inventing. His memories, then, were always stored in the room of a memory that was imagined, recreated and reconstructed with his favorite films and real events, memories that overlapped and were then difficult to differentiate between. His list of favorite films is therefore a tour through the intimacy of his brilliant psyche, a connector of worlds and never a slave to restraint.

  1. The Circus/City Lights/Monsieur Verdoux (1928,31,47, Charles Chaplin)
  2. Any Marx Brothers or Laurel and Hardy
  3. Stagecoach (1939, John Ford)
  4. Rashomon (1950, Akira Kurosawa)
  5. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972, Luis Buñuel)
  6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick)
  7. Paisan (1946, Roberto Rossellini)
  8. The Birds (1963, Alfred Hitchcock)
  9. Wild Strawberries (1957, Ingmar Bergman)
  10. 8 1/2 (1963, Federico Fellini)

Although numbered, his list doesn´t include ten but many more films, and in the most audacious act of all, he adds a movie of his own. “I have seen 8 1/2 over and over again, and my appreciation only deepens,” Roger Ebert wrote about the film. “It does what is almost impossible: Fellini is a magician who discusses, reveals, explains and deconstructs his tricks, while still fooling us with them. He claims he doesn’t know what he wants or how to achieve it, and the film proves he knows exactly, and rejoices in his knowledge.”

Judging by his selection, Fellini has comical, subtly disturbing, surreal and beautiful memories of film directors.

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