INDEX

1 INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................3 2 A FATAL ATTRACTION: FELLINI AND THE COMMERCIAL .....................4

2.1 THE TELEVISION COMMERCIALS ......................................................................................................... 7

3 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................9 4 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................11

1 Introduction
As Manuela Gieri asserts the relation between Fellini and the commercial image can be described like a fatal attraction. During his long career as director, this connection with the commercial has changed. In the firs part of his cinematography, Fellini uses the advertisement (quite always posters) to develop the narration, as an element inner to the story to bring more sense to the full plot, as well as, to give the social context to the story. The story line of his first films, like La Strada, I vitelloni and all the film that came before La dolce vita are characterized by realistic and documentary need. In this group of films, the time of the representation is linear and the story is linked to the direct description of the reality. Starting from La dolce vita, Fellinis filmic image became more similar to the logic of the commercial where the story telling is more free, as well as, the plot became more linked to the reason of desire and dream than the reality itself. Starting from Le tentazioni del Dott. Antonio the commercial represents ideal way through deconstructing from the prosaic narrative structure linked to the reality to oneiric narrative linked to morphology of desire. As C. Gieri asserts: infatti a partire dalla messa in forma delle tentazioni del Dottor Antonio/Federico che, in maniera sempre pi evidente ed esplicita, il discorso pubblicitario si prefigura come vera e propria tentazione interna dellimmagine felliniana. in questo testo che si assiste letteralmente al passaggio da una forma prosastica della realt alla forma ineffabile dellimmaginario onirico cos simile alla sintassi e alla morfologia del desiderio, un passaggio in cui significativamente Anitona oggetto e soggetto del discorso.1 Indeed, in some film of his filmography Fellini tries to underline the cultural importance of the television commercials inside the rise of the private television that was happening in Italia in that period. As Bondanella says: Con E la nave va, Ginger e Fred, Lintervista, e La voce della luna, entriamo in una fase della produzione felliniana dove il regista sottolinea limportanza culturale dello spot, non soltanto mettendo la pubblicit nei suoi film come contenuto ma anche producendo degli spot di alta qualit.2

Abruzzese A., Bertozzi M., Brancato S., Cecchini S., Bondanella P., degli Esposti C, Gieri M,

Marcus M., Lo schermo manifesto: Le misteriose pubblicit di Federico Fellini, a cura di Paolo Fabbri, Guaraldi, Rimini, 2002. p.99
2

Abruzzese. Op. Cit. p.32

This brief essay proposes to analyse how the television commercials represent for Fellini a point inspiration from which it marks a turning point in the reflection about the narrative structure of his films. Starting from the 70s, the cinematographic and commercial productions appear to have some common points. Fellini seems to be attracted from by liberty that the structure of the television commercials gives to the storytelling. He used the symbols and hyperbole of the television commercials language to express the dreamlike speech inside his films. The commercial gives the opportunity to break the usual narrative structure allowing to build free images which are not portrayed in a rational way in telling the main story. As Millicent Marcus asserts: Per esempio, la celebre tendenza felliniana verso lepisodico, il frammentario, il paratattico una tendenza che diventa marcata da La Dolce vita in poi, ma che si pu gi intravedere nella struttura dei film precedenti trova il suo veicolo ideale nello spot pubblicitario che spezza lunit narrativa del programma e si svincola da una struttura narrativa gerarchica e dominante... Il vezzo di inserire immagini gratuite, secondo lestro del regista vezzo che doveva cercare sempre una giustificazione narrativa nei primi film (le visioni di Giulietta, le epifanie di Amarcord) trova ampio sfogo negli spot televisivi. In questa sua libert dalle strutture convenzionali narrative, la pubblicit offre a Fellini uno spazio ludico e carnevalesco...3

2 A fatal attraction: Fellini and the commercial

Focusing on the reflection upon the relation between the cinematographic production of Federico Fellini and the television commercials, I would, in particular, like to draw the attention more on the connection between his filmography of the 70s and 90s and commercial production for the television for the brand Brarilla, Camari and Banca di Roma. Till the beginning of his career Fellini worked as journalist in the review Marc'Aurelio. At those times, Fellini wrote about 40 articles for Marc'Aurelio under the name Il raccontino pubblicitario, those articles parody the commercials of this time. As the same director said about that experience like journalist Non solo non

Millicent. Op. Cit. p.64

la rinnego a parole, ma mi pare che nei miei film, continuamente, ci siano situazioni collegate a quel tipo di esperienza.4 After that Fellini come back to describe the television commercial in some of this film. One of the most important films for our analysis is, without a shadow of a doubt, Le tentazioni del dottor Antonio. In this film, Fellini represents the strong effect of milk advertisement upon the insane psyche of bourgeois, Dottor Anotonio Mazzuolo. The commercial poster in which the famous actress, Anita Ekberg, is depicted is able to produce a real struggle inside the mind of Dottor Antonio, which in vain tries to fight with his sexual instinct. This episode of the anthology Boccaccio 70 is interesting for different reasons; first of all, it seems an attempt to investigate and reflect up the complex nature of the commercial: Fellini underlines that the commercials often use the sex appeal to sell its products, in this case the milk, that is the product that the commercial promotes, is associated with the sexual desire. Since the 60s, the commercial lost his referent (the product itself) to become an imaginary creation that represents the desire of shopping. In the case of Le tentazioni the milk/product is substituted with the body of the actress, Anita, which represents the sexual desire. Another important aspect is, as Peter Bondanella says: Dopo Le Tentazioni e 8 e , tutto il cinema di Fellini diventa onirico, e per conseguenza, il linguaggio cinematografico di Fellini diventa pi simile a quello dei sogni 5. Indeed, Le Tentazioni prefigures the reflexion inside the Fellini Filmography about the role of the cine as screen upon which the audiences desire is reflected and mediate. With Ginger e Fred and Lintervista, Fellini underlines the cultural relevance of the television commercials. Ginder e Fred depicts the struggle between cinema and television; in his parody of the television, Fellini takes the commercial like the most negative element of the new culture. He suggests that the commercials in the television violates the rhythm and the flow of a film or any artistic creation of a director: La prepotenza, laggressione, il massacro della pubblicit televisiva inserita in un film come una violenza contro una creatura umana: la percuote, la ferisce, la scippa. Un film, una creazione artistica dove tutto stato calcolato perch abbia quel respiro, quel ritmo, quella cadenza, quella musicalit, sottoposto a

Olivieri, Angelo Limperatore in platea: i grandi del cinema italiano dal MarcAurelio allo

schermo, Edizione Dedalo, Bari, 1986, p. 64.

5

Bondanella. Op. Cit. p.28

una brutale intervento esterno, fatto a martellate, ecco questo mi sembra sia proprio criminale.6 Through the commercials inside the film, Fellini represents the television like a grotesque medium where with the most arbitrary association everything is mixed. The bad taste of the commercial takes form in the advertisement (inside the film, Ginder e Fred) of the Beatrix watch. In this advertisement, he makes reference to one of the most important masterpieces of the Italian literature (The Divina Commerdia of Dante) for consumerist aim. The commercial language that he uses in his advertisements is a hyperbolic space where every aspect of the life is turned in a show and as a consequence everything is equalized and lost its real meaning. Fellini criticizes the television like a disinformative and coarsen spectacle able to enslave the spectator to the logic of the marketing. In Intervista Fellini depicts Cinecitt, the place that represents the Italian cinematography, which has become a spot for a set of numerous commercials in the television. Fellini also wants to report that such important place for the Italian cinema is subject to the economical logic of the new private television. The same fate befalls to an important actor like Mastroianni which is constrained to do television commercial. The last scene of Intervista portrays the Indians with the antenna in their hands, instead of the spears, that attack to a cinema troupe. With this metaphor, the director aims to criticize the fact that the new commercial television is killing the old cinema. As Fellini stated in an interview: In una sala cinematografica anche se film non ci piaceva, la soggezione intimorita e affascinata dal quel grande schermo ci obbligava a rimanere seduti, fino alla fine, se non altro per una coerenza di tipo economico, avendo pagato un biglietto; ma adesso, in una sorta di rivincita rancorosa, appena ci che vediamo tende a richiederci unattenzione che non vogliamo concedere, tac!, un colpo di pollice e togliamo la parola a chiunque, cancelliamo le immagini che non ci interessano, siamo noi i padroni nato cos uno spettatore tiranno, despota assoluto, che fa quello che vuole ed convinto sempre pi di essere lui il regista, o perlomeno il montatore delle immagini che sta vedendo. Come sar possibile tentare di sedurre ancora uno spettatore cos?7 In this statement, Fellini suggests the idea that the television now has turned its audience into masters. The audience is the director and the editor of the images that he sees in the television. Because of this consuming trend, he finds it almost impossible to allure such an audience.
6 7

Feferico Fellni, Ginder e Fred, Longanesi, Milano, 1986, p. 75. Federico Fellni, Intervista sul cinema, Roma, 1983, p. 163-4.

In his last Film, La voce della luna, Fellini describes the condition of Italian mass media and criticizes the extreme power of the commercial whose nature is extremely aggressive and intrusive. The ending part of the film insists on the new habit of the televisions spectator accustomed to watch abrupt interruption because of the commercial. The protagonist, Ivo, a man able to speak with the nature, manages to speak with the moon that represents his lover, Aldina. Their short discussion is finished with the scream of the moon Pubblicit8.

2.1

The television commercials

In 1984, when he was 64 years old, Fellini agreed to make a commercial for Campari, the famous Italian aperitif. It features a man and a woman seated across from one another on a long-distance train. The man smiles, but the woman averts her eyes, staring sullenly out the window and picking up a remote control to switch the scenery. She grows increasingly exasperated as a sequence of desert and medieval landscapes pass by. Still smiling, the man takes the remote control, clicks it, and the beautiful Campo di Miracoli of Pisa appears in the window, embellished by a towering bottle of Campari. If we take accurate look to the commercial, we can say that one of the central theme of it is the incapacity from the televisions spectator to put attentions to what he is watching, as well as, the lack of concentration of him. As Peter Bondanella says: Se si osserva questo messaggio implicito pi da vicino, lasciando da parte quello pi esplicito dellinvito allacquisto di una bottiglia di Campari, si nota come il tema riguardi lincapacit o la scarsa volont da parte dello spettatore di guardare con attenzione unimmagine visiva. La costante mancanza di attenzione e concentrazione tipica dello spettatore televisivo contemporaneo, sintomo evidente della quale lo zapping, sembra averne limitato sino allannullamento la capacit di interpretazione di unopera, per cos dire seria, come quella cinematografica.9 The reflection about the powers of the televisions spectator able to produce his own representation, as well as, to edit his own program through the use of the remote control, connects one time more his cinematic production with the commercial one because this is also one of the theme of the film Ginder e Fred.

8 9

In English, Commercialssssss. Boundanella. Op. Cit. p. 33.

Also in 1984, Fellini made a commercial, titled Alta Societa (High Society) for Barilla rigatoni pasta. As with the Campari commercial, Fellini wrote the script himself and collaborated with cinematographer, Ennio Guarnieri and musical director, Nicola Piovani. The couple in the restaurant were played by Greta Vaian and Maurizio Mauri. The waiter in the restaurant utters all the cuisines they have in their menu. Hearing all those sophisticated names of the French dishes, Greta asks for pasta rigatoni. In this commercial Fellini makes fun of the sophisticated French cuisine and promote the simplicity of a plate of Italian pasta. Another important aspect is that the director associates the product with the sexual field, as he wants to imply the act of oral sex with the word rigatoni. As Bondella says: il termine rigatoni, infatti, nel gergo dellItalia di qualche decennio addietro ed in particolare nellEmilia Romagna di Fellini, indicava il sesso orale Se il termine rigatoni allude al sesso orale si spiega immediatamente il motivo per il quale alla semplice pronuncia di tale parola ci si sente sempre al dente e quindi duri, sia letteralmente che figurativamente.10 In 1991 Fellini made a series of three commercials for the Bank of Rome called Che Brutte Notti or The Bad Nights. In the first episode, titled The Tunnel Dream, Paolo Villaggio drives into a tunnel; the comforting strain of a piece by Rossini play in the background. The lovely moment is suddenly interrupted by a noisy cracking sound. Stones and water start to fall, fault line fill the tunnel, and then a block of cementer caves in. The protagonist has evidently been dreaming and the dream has turned into a nightmare. He jumps from his bed and finds himself face to face with his psychoanalyst. The psychoanalyst supports him saying: You will have good dreams now, thanks to the security that Banca di Roma provides. The doors of the bank open and Villaggio finds himself in bed in the middle of a big bank. In the second episode, called The Dream of the Lion in the Cellar, the protagonist is dressed as a schoolboy in a sailors outfit, following an exotic beauty down into a basement. A lion with flaming eyes immediately appears before him, but oddly the animal is crying. The boy cant keep himself to crying either. The psychoanalysts diagnosis: Why must you keep a lion in the basement, humiliating and degrading it? You need security if you want to live well at Banca di Roma.

Boundanella. Op. Cit. p. 35-36.

In the third and last dream, titled The Picnic Lunch Dream, the classic damsel-indistress scenario is turned upside down when a man (Paolo Villaggio) finds himself trapped on the railroad tracks with a train bearing down on him while the beautiful woman he was dining with climbs out of reach and taunts him. But its all a dream, which the man tells to his psychoanalyst. The analyst interprets the dream and assures the man that his nights will be restful if he puts his money in the Banco di Roma. The commercials for the Banca di Roma show the link between some film of Fellini where his cinematographic language is based in the Jungian speech of dream and the commercial production. In both the visual is built around the logic of the dream. Indeed as Tullio Kezich says: The significant thing here is that Feferico, when asked to invent little stories for these commercials, was right to turn to his own dreams, recorded so many years earlier. In fact, toward the end of his life, the shadow of the great film he never made, Il viaggio di G. Mastorna, weighs heavier on him, and he perhaps regrets not having done it. The writer Ermanno Cavazzoni has said that during the filming of La voce della luna, he realized that Fellini wasnt adapting his novel so much as he was culling variations for atmospheres and themes from his own Mastorna. The same could be said about the bank commercials. Fellini was horribly aware of the fact that he would never get to make the movie hed continually postpone, and so he made ads about it11

3 Conclusion
This essay, through the analysis of the Fellinis filmography starting from the 70s, tries to give an overview of the particular relation between the cinematic production of the director and the television commercial. This relation that can be described like love and hate. On one hand, he criticizes the commercials as they destroy the flaw and structure of the films as well as creating master-like spectators by giving them the power to reedit the images they see with the remote controls. This fatal attraction comes true when he, on the other hand, takes advantage of the freedom of using these commercials in his films. The commercials give to Fellini the opportunity to build his films around the logic of desire and make free the plot from the needs of the story telling. So that, due to influence of commercial Fellinis image builds itself according to the logic of dream and fantastic. As Manuela Gieri asserts:

Kezich, Tullio, Federico Fellini: his life and work, New York : Faber and Faber, 2006. p. 393.

Nel corso di questo viaggio il rapporto tra Fellini, il suo cinema e la pubblicit rimasto lungamente invischiato negli esiti alterni del giudizio che il regista ha negli anni espresso nei confronti delluso massificato della televisione e della pubblicit audiovisiva... Noto dunque il movimento attrattivo e poi repulsivo da lui sperimentato nei confronti della televisione. Da un lato attratto dalla possibilit di sintesi e di immediatezza del racconto televisivo, nonch dalla possibilit di una maggiore intimit col telespettatore, ma poi sempre pi consapevole del potere di frammentazione del racconto sia grazie allo zapping che grazie alle costanti e intrusive interruzioni pubblicitarie e anche conscio del progressivo abbassamento del rapporto tra spettacolo e spettatore, privato come esso di qualsiasi magia e seduzione nellasfissiante familiarit dellambiente addomesticato della casa massmediologica.12

Only such artists like Fellini could turn simple commercials into pieces of art. He managed this with the deconstruction of the traditional storytelling and using some central themes that are fundamental in his filmographic poetry such as the human desire and dreams.

Degli Espositi. op. Cit. p. 92-93.

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4 Bibliography
Olivieri, Angelo Limperatore in platea: i grandi del cinema italiano dal MarcAurelio allo schermo, Edizione Dedalo, Bari, 1986. Federico Fellini, Intervista sul cinema, a cura di Giovanni Grazini, Laterza, Roma, 1983. Feferico Fellni, Ginder e Fred, Longanesi, Milano, 1986 Abruzzese A., Bertozzi M., Brancato S., Cecchini S., Bondanella P., degli Esposti C, Gieri M, Marcus M., Lo schermo manifesto: Le misteriose pubblicit di Federico Fellini, a cura di Paolo Fabbri, Guaraldi, Rimini, 2002. Kezich, Tullio, Federico Fellini: his life and work, New York : Faber and Faber, 2006.

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