It was with 8 1/2 (1963) that Fellini fully exorcised established cinematic conventions. His self-referential masterpiece, about a film director’s struggle with creative block, switches freely between past and present, reality and dream, creating a delirious, stormy dreamscape. Known for his keen interest in Jungian psychoanalysis, he would journey further into the hallucinatory mind with Juliet of the Spirits (1965), about a woman’s path to self-discovery through dreams and visions. Autobiographical and deeply personal threads run throughout his oeuvre, most obviously in I Vitelloni (1953) and Amarcord (1973), inspired by his upbringing in Rimini, a city on the Adriatic coast. The characters brought to life by Marcello Mastroianni in La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, and City of Women (1980) can all be viewed as manifestations of the director himself.
The consistency Fellini achieved was also a result of his enduring collaborations. The actors Mastroianni and Giulietta Masina come to mind instantly—if Mastroianni acts as Fellini’s alter ego, Masina represents the dreamer in him. Nino Rota’s stirring music carries a life of its own, and forms the backbone of Fellini’s cinema. His key writing partners included Tullio Pinelli, Ennio Flaiano, and Brunello Rondi, who contributed to some of his most celebrated works. And Cinecittà’s Rome soundstages provided Fellini with a home base and a malleable dream machine that allowed him to actualize his imagination with no need for compromise.