Screenwriter

Ennio Flaiano

5: briefs
13:00: average
65 min: in total

On film.briefs5

Nights of Cabiria

Federico Fellini · 1957

Federico Fellini’s 1957 drama follows Cabiria, a Roman sex worker, through a series of encounters that test but never extinguish her capacity for hope. Giulietta Masina’s performance anchors a film that favours duration over plot, quiet observation over exposition, and emotional fidelity over resolution. Shot on location across Rome and its outskirts, with cinematography by Aldo Tonti and Otello Martelli and music by Nino Rota, it won the 1958 Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.

13:00

The White Sheik

Federico Fellini · 1952

Federico Fellini’s 1952 debut as sole director follows a nervous groom whose bride vanishes in Rome to meet the hero of her favourite photo-strip. Built around the mechanics of Italian fotoromanzi, the film uses crisp comic timing, stylised cinematography and Nino Rota’s light score to dissect how mass fantasy reshapes desire, class performance and marital expectation — without sentiment or resolution.

13:00

Juliet of the Spirits

Federico Fellini · 1965

Federico Fellini’s 1965 Juliet of the Spirits is his first feature-length colour film, starring Giulietta Masina as a Roman housewife whose repressed inner life erupts in visions, memories and surreal encounters. Shot at Safa Palatino and Cinecittà Studios, it uses colour, costume and set design as primary tools to map a woman’s slow, non-linear path toward self-perception. Though nominated for two Academy Awards and widely acclaimed abroad, its reception in Italy was divided — some critics finding its baroque surfaces overwhelming its human core.

13:00

8½

Federico Fellini · 1963

Federico Fellini's 1963 film follows Guido Anselmi, a film director retreating to a spa town while his crew waits for a script he cannot write, sliding between the demands of producers, mistresses, his wife and memories of his Catholic childhood without marking the boundary between what is happening and what he is imagining. Shot by Gianni Di Venanzo in high-contrast black and white, scored by Nino Rota, and led by Marcello Mastroianni, the film won two Oscars, for costume design and international feature, and has stood since as one of the most direct portraits of creative paralysis committed to film.

13:00

La Dolce Vita

Federico Fellini · 1960

Federico Fellini's 1960 portrait of a tabloid journalist drifting through Rome's high society over a week of nights gave the world the word paparazzi and became both a critical landmark and a box-office hit despite censors in several countries. Marcello Mastroianni anchors an episodic structure built around parties, a starlet's arrival, and a friend's unexplained despair, shot largely at Cinecittà on Piero Gherardi's elaborate sets.