Fellini, in my opinion, is one of the best filmmakers ever. His mastery is underappreciated in many respects. One episode from his life seems to me especially important in understanding his later filmmaking.
In April 1967, while preparing Il viaggio di G. Mastorna, a film about a journey into the afterlife, Fellini became gravely ill and was admitted to the Clinica Salvator Mundi on Rome’s Gianicolo hill. According to his collaborator Gianfranco Angelucci, he remained there for about a month, while doctors feared advanced lung cancer.
A visit from an old school friend from Rimini, the doctor Ercole Sega, nicknamed Bagaròn, changed everything. Sega reviewed his medical records and suggested an unusual allergic pleurisy, described in Angelucci’s account as Sanarelli–Shwartzman disease. Treatment with cortisone reportedly brought a rapid recovery.
The illness contributed to Fellini’s abandonment of Mastorna, although the unrealised film continued to nourish his imagination and influence his later work. To me, this encounter with the possibility of death marks a profound turning point. From that moment, I see a new intensity and freedom in his films. His mastery seemed to carry a touch of God. This is my own reading of his work, but I feel that the connection deserves much more attention.
Another story, from before that illness, reveals Fellini’s mischievous humour. In a 1977 interview with Dick Cavett, with Sophia Loren sitting beside him, Marcello Mastroianni recalled being invited to meet Fellini on a beach near Rome to discuss La dolce vita. He brought his lawyer, hoping to preserve a little professional dignity. The producer wanted Paul Newman, but Fellini preferred Mastroianni’s ordinary, anonymous face.
Encouraged by his lawyer, Mastroianni asked to read the script. Fellini summoned the writer Ennio Flaiano, who presented him with blank pages containing a drawing: a man swimming with an enormous penis, surrounded by dancing mermaids. Mastroianni recalled his embarrassment, then his decision to sign anyway.
I love this anecdote for what it reveals about both men: Fellini’s irreverent imagination and Mastroianni’s willingness to laugh at himself. Calling his face ordinary seems an extraordinary understatement to me. Yet perhaps Fellini recognised precisely what made him exceptional—the ability to appear completely human while carrying the viewer into the strangest worlds.