Take this as you will, I see this as a largely optimistic relic. Even 70 years ago people were decrying television as the DEATH of cinema, then it was home video, then internet piracy, then steaming, then COVID literally shuttering cinemas as the end. But here we are, thousands of us who still listen and hold a master like Fellini in regard. There's always been bad audiences, people who just aren't wired to enjoy cinema as some aren't wired to enjoy sports or written poetry. There's always an enemy, but the stubborn persistence of, as Fellini puts it, people who park there car and line up for a ticket etc.. it's that persistence where lies the art
I mean, Cinema has always been dying. It had its death decried when it was born. It also had a death when sound came on. It's not that Cinema is dying per se, but ways of doing films are dying.
The phrase "the death of cinema" usually means cinema as the primary means of entertainement. Of something that the common folk could go to see maybe everyday after work, getting entertained and socializing with some friends. In a social level, a death of something rarely means that the thing completely disappears. But it has been decades since going to the movies has been the primary means of entertainment for hundreds of millions of people. What Fellini talks about is kinda how convenience always wins. Staying in your house and getting your laughs and gasps from the confort of your home trumps the quasi-religious experience of going to the movies. Now even more with a device that can spare you from even getting up from your couch.
Art in cinema is more accessible than it's ever been. While it's still ignored by the masses with their distractions, it's still likely that there're more cinephiles than ever, with the ability to find the films we're looking for rather than be stuck to what our local theater offers.
Agreed, I don't think that cinema will ever truly die. I can see it reducing and collapsing within certain areas, but like with opera houses, it'll always have an audience
@@mrsinkaya It's not really a collapse. It's the way things have always been. In neolithic times, I imagine old poets and tale masters would complain that no one listened to the great stories anymore, ya know, the stories about Zeus or Thor or Anansi, or whatever other prehistoric myth. And yet those myths still pervade the culture. What they mean is, "they don't do it like I did it." And every generation says that. Fellini fell in love with cinema, but in his parents' time, it was considered a low-brow medium compared to books. And the novel was considered low-brow and disreputable when it first appeared. Shakespeare lived to see the puritans close down the theaters of England, claiming them to be a profane affront to moral values. And yet, in Fellini's day, they didn't have these long-form serial TV shows telling a single story over years. From that point of view, a film only requires a goldfish's attention span. I can only assume, were he alive now, he'd see the obvious worth of TV shows like Mad Men, or Russian Doll, or The Last of Us, that take the time to explore deep emotions. That kind of TV content wasn't an option in the 70s when this interview was recorded. Every generation seems to claim the sky is falling, even the geniuses of that generation. Christopher Nolan is freaking out because the cinema is dying off. And that's happening because you can get cinema-level quality playback and sound in your own home, without getting gouged on popcorn. It's not the same as the theater experience, but in some ways, it's better. Change is sometimes good and sometimes bad, and sometimes both at the same time. But it always comes. Complaining about it like this serves no one. He's right that the ritual changed from the time he was a kid. TV changed it. But the ritual isn't the meaning of the ritual. And it is the foolishness of age that assumes the trappings of ritual and its purpose are the same thing. He judges the people he's complaining of without really understanding them. Those of us who grew up flipping channels found our Fellini films that way. David Lynch and the Coen Brothers, two heirs to the Fellini mode of cinema, rose to fame through flipping cable channels, not box office success. Most cult hits were born that way, from the ashes of bad box-office through the womb of cable. The greatest cinematic works of the 80s were largely flops that found new life because enough people who'd initially dismissed them found them by chance cable and were captivated. The artist only has to be discovered once, and when fame comes, there's this arrogant assumption it was inevitable. But great art must be continually searched for. And if flipping channels is a good way to sort through the noise to find the signal, that's what people will do. Or they'll browse Netflix, or sort through TH-cam to find the hidden gems. This is how it's done now. And when it changes again, I won't complain that it was better in my day. That's never true.
@@rottensquid I partly agree with you, but its a double edge sword, it can also acustom people (and I include myself in this) into short attention spans, and instant gratification, just have to look a today social networks and how them exploit people needs for flashy stuff... I am from the generation where doing a zapping was the norm, and its true that we discovered works that usually we would't otherwise, the thing is having time and the patience to give the work a shot, in a world where everybody is in a hurry
@@LukRoes True, but at the same time, the stuff that's truly good tends to stick, while the mediocre will ultimately be forgotten. Instant gratification doesn't explain how long-form TV is binged nowadays, telling rich, nuanced stories over years. No such thing existed back in the 70s and 80s. It was assumed that the audience wouldn't have the attention span. One of the weird things about getting older is watching everything change for the better and the worse simultaneously. Whatever bad changes happen through social media, TikTok, etc, there's an amazing change happening at the same time. It's really just a matter of what we prefer to dwell on, the things that are getting worse, or the things that are getting better. I always prefer the latter.
@@rottensquid That's the thing, you got to be aware of both, the things that are getting worse and the ones that are getting better, Giorgio Agamben has an interesting read about this, its called "what is the contemporary", beautifull read, very deep, and very thought provoking
He’d have to overcome an intense desire to be the Zodiac killer. He’d struggle to find his better angels. But he would overcome. He’s a good soul of good breeding and varied past lives.
love the fact that he mentions films and everything else as "CONTENT" as a derogatory term. In the same way Martin scorcese also talked about movies being reduced to content in his article "Fellini and the lost magic of cinema".
In official network lingo now, the COMMERCIALS are the Content and the programs are "fill." I kid you not. And it shows, eh? Even the great Rod Serling quit when the networks told him to dumb down his scripts because they were making the commercials appear as stupid as they really are. (His words!)
@@leonconnelly5303 No he's not ("lol"--DUH). He's talking about commercialism and its technologies destroying both sensibility and the old "community ritual" of classic film. And he's right, witness the vulgar stupidity of most Americans now, who can hardly share a meal without some empty-headed "device" in their hands to help them ignore how bored they are with each other and real life, unable to address their own loneliness. Look at the "selfie stick" when a generation ago you actually had to talk with somebody to take your vacation photo. They're not "communication devices" when they make you more alone and less able to communicate. Poor little emperor-egos whose only half-wit concern is what will "entertain" them for the next 60 seconds.
@@leonconnelly5303 Firstly, that is not what he is talking about. He liked Scorsese, as they usually spoke whenever he visited Rome. They were also working together on a project for Fellini to direct while Scorsese produced & got the funding, but sadly, it never materialized because of Fellini's ill health & passing away. Secondly, Scorsese has made quite a few non violent films such as Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, New York New York, After Hours, The King of Comedy, The Age of Innocence, Bringing Out The Dead, The Aviator, & Hugo for example (some of these films have violence in them, but not in anywhere near the way there is in films like Goodfellas or Casino).
This initial reaction and feeling that he's conveying here through his own personal experience and point of view is invaluable. He makes you remember the feeling even if you weren't there.
Well, I'm thankful. To have been able to still see "new" Fellini movies in my lifetime was a pretty cool trade-off with being all old and rickety now. Not on tv but in theaters. I would even go BACK and see the movies againl
An absolute genius. He was fortunate to have not been around to see the cesspool of the human mind manifested through internet connected cellphones. Thank you for the upload and translated subtitles.
What a brilliant man, and a crucially important message. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to see what other videos are in my feed today. On the one hand, I understand the importance of his message, and wish I could do away with the yt feed. On the other hand, I can’t, try as I might, pull myself away from the scrolling. The novelty. The “huh, didn’t realize that”. My feed BROUGHT ME TO THIS VIDEO. I would surely have never seen this. How. How could I stop feeding the feed now, when it brought me here, and to so many other interesting, novel, insightful videos? The irony is staggering, mind-blowing.
I think you expressed a really interesting concern.. I also discovered wonders through TH-cam videos and feed, and I also hate the permanent connection we share with devices, especially considering their utility, for example the OTP codes without I could not log in work websites.. I have no answer to this dilemma
Fellini is so correct here. Nietzsche also greatly worried about these changes so damaging to our sensibilities, as he realized what Wagner's music and operatic staging really were about, an almost farcical boom-boom pounding on the audience and a level of sensory assault that left one vulgarized and deadened---which is exactly what modern Business wants to make of people. Murderous combat, chase-scenes, explosions, these are supposed to tell us that something important is at stake. All they do is destroy what's left of our ability to listen and participate with all our faculties.
What I love about Fellini's films is that I experience them as if they were these sensual spells. I don't just watch a Fellini film, I feel it in my body. I think what he's saying here is that films shouldn't just be viewed as your two eyes in your head watching images on a screen, which is why I feel that with an ever increasing industry of streaming services and film content being produced at a rapid pace, people are just experiencing film in the head too much. Downloading too much data and experiencing system overload. But experiencing a film, as Fellini said "Ritually, reliogously," you're experiencing a Shaman's vision onscreen. THAT is the beauty of his films. You participate in another world filled with archetypes and spirits.
fast forward and Tiktok has replaced the attention span of the television and even the youtube viewer with an even more diluted one. The more things change the more they stay the same. The thing Fellini is expressing here is a generational concern which (quite ironically) passes from one generation to the next. The anxiety of being replaced and outmoded by an apathetic consumerism
It's funny how critics were absolutely correct to deride television as the idiot box it was at the time - degrading attention spans and dumbing down messages and removing all the profundity that comes from space and silence in storytelling - and now it seems almost hopelessly quaint to expect modern viewers to have the sophistication to be able to enjoy a full television program these days. I'd like to think that internet shorts are reaching the physical limits of what could even be called communication at all without just becoming white noise. Certainly, I've had experiences with zoomers sticking their phone in my face to show off a TikTok feed for a few minutes only to think "This must be what having a panic attack feels like." But life has taught me that it's quite hard to underestimate human ignorance, and we might always be made to fall lower, especially in pursuit of exploitation and profit.
fellini, my favorite artist explains well why i still go to the movies at least once a week, for full absorption. though the shared cultural experience he references often isn't there.
People felt that way about movies too, and refused to even consider it an art form until the 50's. Fellini was a great, great filmmaker, but what he's saying here is what every old man has been saying for literally thousands of years. Without being able to cite them, I've been told that the classic Greek texts included complaints about the youth of the time. And I intend to be no different when I get my chance to go "things were so much better in my day"
Si Fellini pensaba asi de la television y los controles remotos como aparatos que promulgaban la incapacidad de concentracion y retencion del espectador que diria de la situacion actual con los celulares y esta locura en la que estamos metidos donde vemos 10 segundos de algo y ya tenemos que cambiar
Maybe TV was different back then, and in Italy, but in my experience, the main way people end up watching four movies at once is because they change the channel when a commercial starts, not because they don't like the scene. Of course that does happen too
This aired in the 1980s, I believe, and Fellini is right in so many ways. Yet, since then, we have had brilliant artists, filmmakers, like Paul Thomas Anderson, Christopher Nolan. And before them, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola. The lists go on! So, to say it is gone completely is to be logically wrong, but that's all the more reason to be fighting for great cinema and visual literacy, understanding exactly the piecing together of images and sounds that can create glorious dream-like scenes and films such as '81/2'. Humans never really change. Great people and great works will come again. They feared this then and the fact that we still fear it now just goes to show all this.
For all of history, competition has existed. Some people want to be great artists but most want to win the competition. The accessibility of media has allowed artists to flourish with minimal resources but it has also made the competition more frantic. So many people want a piece of the pie and everyone has access to so much. The people who win by pandering to the audience do so because the audience let's them. I don't think the means of viewing is to blame. People are to 'blame' for not being discerning enough. Many people appear to be happy channel chopping and doom scrolling. They like it. That is the sad reality. These things emerge because of human nature and technology only facilitates. But it is in some people's nature to be discerning, honest, expressive and artful and technology has facilitated this too. The people who want this kind of media will wade through the noise to find it. Fortunately there are still plenty of people who do.
@@CastleHassall I'm not mocking anybody and nor do I think it's not good enough. I'm saying, if anything, that people who aspire to something different shouldn't blame technology for something that is in human nature. I can find it isolating that more of the people in my immediate life have little to no appreciation for and drive to discover outstanding art. I find it sad for that reason. But I don't mock them and I recognise that, for them, it is good enough and they are happy and I would never dream of trying to ruin that by imposing my views on them. I do think they are missing out but it's all there for them to experience already - they don't need me to impose it on them.
@@opwave79 - oh yeah he was the co-founder of instagram who certainly wasn't the director of La Dolce Vita. Also there is this thing called saying something with mood of ironic concern or dismay. Look it up. It will do you a ton of good.
L'avrebbe adorato avrebbe abbandonato la regia cinematografica avrebbe cambiato il suo nome in federiktoko avrebbe costretto mastroianni Sandra milo e Giulietta masina a farsi un account avrebbe conquistato il mondo con la sua viralità
TV remote control was a great invention. In the past, I had to get up from the couch to lower someone's voice on TV or shut them up. Now, with voice remote control, I can simply order Trump to leave my house immediately. Like all good inventions, TV remote can also be used by idiots who only like seeing flying cars on fire, but it's not the gadget's fault. I don't miss the old ritual of going to the cinema that Fellini talks about. Sessions were often interrupted by people leaving the room or coming in late. Compulsive popcorn eaters near us could completely ruin a movie.
Of course somebody like you has to bring up Trump in every conversation. You said you don't like the generalization of the TV remote being a bad thing, but then you generalize all cinema experiences as terrible because of rude people. Typical Brandon lover. Stick to watching The View gushing over the cackling hyena Harris.
Well people are less appreciative of film perhaps and others they bore easily now or have Attention deficit disorders. This reminds me of David Lynch annoyed people watch movies on their phones too that's not how the experience was intended to be either.
he would be greatly disappointed if he saw how my father wacthes films nowadays on the phone playing games or wasting money on whatever chinese market while watching a movie with a remote and muting during the ads only to miss when the film continues again because of the phone
Sorry for the "mascherina" translation, thanks to a TH-cam commentator here I've learned it means the staff in the cinema hall. Please correct the other wrong translations if you have time, I'm not a native speaker nor of Italian nor of English, thanks!
@@oksimoronkoI don't speak Italian, but I can correct some obvious things: - "the courtain opens" should be "the curtain opens" - "the revelation starts, the massage" should be "the revelation starts, the message" -"it's forms and ways" should be "its forms and ways".
Let's not be too pessimistic. In the atomization, there lies the hidden ability to "go deeper". What happens when you break a Fellini film or any other piece for thst matter, down into discrete entities, while maintaining an understanding of the piece as it may have appeared as a whole? Now the commentary appears beneath it can come from diverse perspectives, (sometimes multiple within one person) and then related not only as a network of connnective tissue beneath the visible iceberg of the piece as it may have been perviously understood, but each discrete noema of commentary may then be related to the network of interrelated perspectives and the connections that obtain betwen them. The opinion of the director/writer dwarfs in comparison, and the idea that someone has the "right" understanding of a piece changes. I don't blame him. Watching this change probably felt like seeing everything he worked for crumble. So it is for any seed that becomes a tree.
"as soon as the content doesn't have a sensationalistic hook, you switch immediately" Funny how this critique would come from the more sensationalist one of the great filmmakers.
Maybe, but could we really call Fellini's work sensationalist? Is he exploitative? A little, perhaps, but not to a sensationalist level. He's not Russ Meyer or Jon Waters. Controversial? Maybe if you get into a debate about what his films mean. Does he use flashy ideas to hook audiences? I suppose, but not the way other filmmakers do. At the time of the interview, sensationalist films like Star Wars or Exorcist or Deathwish or Jaws were coming out. That's the kind of sensationalism he's talking about, a big, broad, simple concept that defines the film, so audiences don't have to spend 15-20 minutes getting to know the characters before they can pick up with the film is laying down. Hell, La Strada is anything but sensationalist. It spends the entire run-time building the mystery of what kind of film it is. A meet-cute? A redemption story? Love conquers brutishness? A girl wises up? It's not until literally the final shot at the very end of the film that the whole thing defines itself as an awakening. And not with fireworks or an epic set piece like modern films, just a closeup of a human being. I think Fellini himself changed his style to look and feel more captivating from shot to shot. Certainly, a few years ago when I hosted a cocktail party and put on 8&1/2 on silent in the living room background, people couldn't take their eyes off it. Whereas I doubt they would have been drawn in by La Strada in the same way. But the reasons why are hard to pin down. La Strada asks "what will happen, how will this go?" While 8&1/2 asks "What is happening here, and what does it mean?" It's easier to give up on La Strada, because we know the answers aren't coming any time soon. But 8&1/2 offers answers immediately, if you read it deeply enough. It's a film happening in the ongoing now. But does that make it sensationalist? I think it just makes it rich, because the fireworks are deep within the layers of story, while the shark in Jaws is right there on the surface. You don't have to dig into a film to find its sensationalism. But you have to dig into every Fellini film to get the gold.
Fellini probably would’ve hated this being a 2 minute clip..
JAJAJA
For sure
lmaao 🤣
I agreed with him then skipped it at 1 minute
He would’ve hated me scrolling through the comments while watching it
Never thought about the remote controller that way before. It really was like the original "scrolling" through your feed.
The fact that it's called 'feed' brings to mind how they consider us as herd.
@@MassimoDiLello Lol how tragically poetic
Idk I feel like it could go back to books
@@Cheesepuff8reading can still be mindless 😕
Except the feed wasn't as endless and as tailored to our individual
tastes
Take this as you will, I see this as a largely optimistic relic. Even 70 years ago people were decrying television as the DEATH of cinema, then it was home video, then internet piracy, then steaming, then COVID literally shuttering cinemas as the end. But here we are, thousands of us who still listen and hold a master like Fellini in regard. There's always been bad audiences, people who just aren't wired to enjoy cinema as some aren't wired to enjoy sports or written poetry. There's always an enemy, but the stubborn persistence of, as Fellini puts it, people who park there car and line up for a ticket etc.. it's that persistence where lies the art
I mean, Cinema has always been dying. It had its death decried when it was born. It also had a death when sound came on. It's not that Cinema is dying per se, but ways of doing films are dying.
Everything is dying if you look at it that way. Celebrate the life of cinema and ourselves. Glass is half full. @@heitorsantoslima9289
The phrase "the death of cinema" usually means cinema as the primary means of entertainement. Of something that the common folk could go to see maybe everyday after work, getting entertained and socializing with some friends. In a social level, a death of something rarely means that the thing completely disappears. But it has been decades since going to the movies has been the primary means of entertainment for hundreds of millions of people.
What Fellini talks about is kinda how convenience always wins. Staying in your house and getting your laughs and gasps from the confort of your home trumps the quasi-religious experience of going to the movies. Now even more with a device that can spare you from even getting up from your couch.
Art in cinema is more accessible than it's ever been. While it's still ignored by the masses with their distractions, it's still likely that there're more cinephiles than ever, with the ability to find the films we're looking for rather than be stuck to what our local theater offers.
Agreed, I don't think that cinema will ever truly die. I can see it reducing and collapsing within certain areas, but like with opera houses, it'll always have an audience
His words are so timeless that it seems like he's talking about our phones, not about television.
It's as if he is speaking today !! Right now !! As if it's going on and I am watching him live !! It's that relevant !!
well, the collapse started around those times I guess, or it seems like looking at how relevant Fellini's words are still today. very scary to see.
@@mrsinkaya It's not really a collapse. It's the way things have always been. In neolithic times, I imagine old poets and tale masters would complain that no one listened to the great stories anymore, ya know, the stories about Zeus or Thor or Anansi, or whatever other prehistoric myth. And yet those myths still pervade the culture. What they mean is, "they don't do it like I did it." And every generation says that. Fellini fell in love with cinema, but in his parents' time, it was considered a low-brow medium compared to books. And the novel was considered low-brow and disreputable when it first appeared. Shakespeare lived to see the puritans close down the theaters of England, claiming them to be a profane affront to moral values.
And yet, in Fellini's day, they didn't have these long-form serial TV shows telling a single story over years. From that point of view, a film only requires a goldfish's attention span. I can only assume, were he alive now, he'd see the obvious worth of TV shows like Mad Men, or Russian Doll, or The Last of Us, that take the time to explore deep emotions. That kind of TV content wasn't an option in the 70s when this interview was recorded.
Every generation seems to claim the sky is falling, even the geniuses of that generation. Christopher Nolan is freaking out because the cinema is dying off. And that's happening because you can get cinema-level quality playback and sound in your own home, without getting gouged on popcorn. It's not the same as the theater experience, but in some ways, it's better. Change is sometimes good and sometimes bad, and sometimes both at the same time. But it always comes. Complaining about it like this serves no one.
He's right that the ritual changed from the time he was a kid. TV changed it. But the ritual isn't the meaning of the ritual. And it is the foolishness of age that assumes the trappings of ritual and its purpose are the same thing. He judges the people he's complaining of without really understanding them. Those of us who grew up flipping channels found our Fellini films that way. David Lynch and the Coen Brothers, two heirs to the Fellini mode of cinema, rose to fame through flipping cable channels, not box office success. Most cult hits were born that way, from the ashes of bad box-office through the womb of cable. The greatest cinematic works of the 80s were largely flops that found new life because enough people who'd initially dismissed them found them by chance cable and were captivated.
The artist only has to be discovered once, and when fame comes, there's this arrogant assumption it was inevitable. But great art must be continually searched for. And if flipping channels is a good way to sort through the noise to find the signal, that's what people will do. Or they'll browse Netflix, or sort through TH-cam to find the hidden gems. This is how it's done now. And when it changes again, I won't complain that it was better in my day. That's never true.
@@rottensquid I partly agree with you, but its a double edge sword, it can also acustom people (and I include myself in this) into short attention spans, and instant gratification, just have to look a today social networks and how them exploit people needs for flashy stuff... I am from the generation where doing a zapping was the norm, and its true that we discovered works that usually we would't otherwise, the thing is having time and the patience to give the work a shot, in a world where everybody is in a hurry
@@LukRoes True, but at the same time, the stuff that's truly good tends to stick, while the mediocre will ultimately be forgotten. Instant gratification doesn't explain how long-form TV is binged nowadays, telling rich, nuanced stories over years. No such thing existed back in the 70s and 80s. It was assumed that the audience wouldn't have the attention span. One of the weird things about getting older is watching everything change for the better and the worse simultaneously. Whatever bad changes happen through social media, TikTok, etc, there's an amazing change happening at the same time. It's really just a matter of what we prefer to dwell on, the things that are getting worse, or the things that are getting better. I always prefer the latter.
@@rottensquid That's the thing, you got to be aware of both, the things that are getting worse and the ones that are getting better, Giorgio Agamben has an interesting read about this, its called "what is the contemporary", beautifull read, very deep, and very thought provoking
It’s sort of grounding to know that people were worried about waning attention spans even 50+ years ago
God Fellini would have a heart attack now.
He’d have to overcome an intense desire to be the Zodiac killer. He’d struggle to find his better angels. But he would overcome. He’s a good soul of good breeding and varied past lives.
He had a heart attack then
Imagine him finding out about Netflix..
Or Tiktok
@Kroulik-sz8lr A surreal killer. That’s the Zodiac. There’s a lot to hate about humanity these days. He might have been tempted.
Federico hit the nail on the head.
Yeah we all know commercials are fun and interesting.
love the fact that he mentions films and everything else as "CONTENT" as a derogatory term. In the same way Martin scorcese also talked about movies being reduced to content in his article "Fellini and the lost magic of cinema".
In official network lingo now, the COMMERCIALS are the Content and the programs are "fill." I kid you not. And it shows, eh? Even the great Rod Serling quit when the networks told him to dumb down his scripts because they were making the commercials appear as stupid as they really are. (His words!)
Violent Movies like Scorsese films are what he's talking about lol
@@leonconnelly5303 No he's not ("lol"--DUH). He's talking about commercialism and its technologies destroying both sensibility and the old "community ritual" of classic film. And he's right, witness the vulgar stupidity of most Americans now, who can hardly share a meal without some empty-headed "device" in their hands to help them ignore how bored they are with each other and real life, unable to address their own loneliness. Look at the "selfie stick" when a generation ago you actually had to talk with somebody to take your vacation photo. They're not "communication devices" when they make you more alone and less able to communicate. Poor little emperor-egos whose only half-wit concern is what will "entertain" them for the next 60 seconds.
@@leonconnelly5303 He's not talking about any specific sort of film, but not being able to be immersed in one.
@@leonconnelly5303 Firstly, that is not what he is talking about. He liked Scorsese, as they usually spoke whenever he visited Rome. They were also working together on a project for Fellini to direct while Scorsese produced & got the funding, but sadly, it never materialized because of Fellini's ill health & passing away.
Secondly, Scorsese has made quite a few non violent films such as Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, New York New York, After Hours, The King of Comedy, The Age of Innocence, Bringing Out The Dead, The Aviator, & Hugo for example (some of these films have violence in them, but not in anywhere near the way there is in films like Goodfellas or Casino).
This initial reaction and feeling that he's conveying here through his own personal experience and point of view is invaluable. He makes you remember the feeling even if you weren't there.
"YOUR FILM MAKES ME DREAM EYES WIDE OPEN" ~ Fellini's telegram to Kubrik praising 2001: A Space Odyssey
Fellini, Kubrick = my two favorite filmmakers of all time :)
Well, I'm thankful. To have been able to still see "new" Fellini movies in my lifetime was a pretty cool trade-off with being all old and rickety now. Not on tv but in theaters. I would even go BACK and see the movies againl
An absolute genius. He was fortunate to have not been around to see the cesspool of the human mind manifested through internet connected cellphones.
Thank you for the upload and translated subtitles.
Are you on the internet living in your cesspool right now??
I love you Federico Fellini, for you changed my mental world for better.
This was beautiful.
Gosh do I wanna start learning Italian now, what a beautifully sounding language
As italian, that kind of elegant language and way of speaking is lost from decades. Right now italians have a really limited language than that of 60s
@@entityyyy3312The same linguistic decline has been observed of the English language, sadly.
What a brilliant man, and a crucially important message.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to see what other videos are in my feed today.
On the one hand, I understand the importance of his message, and wish I could do away with the yt feed. On the other hand, I can’t, try as I might, pull myself away from the scrolling. The novelty. The “huh, didn’t realize that”. My feed BROUGHT ME TO THIS VIDEO. I would surely have never seen this. How. How could I stop feeding the feed now, when it brought me here, and to so many other interesting, novel, insightful videos? The irony is staggering, mind-blowing.
I think you expressed a really interesting concern.. I also discovered wonders through TH-cam videos and feed, and I also hate the permanent connection we share with devices, especially considering their utility, for example the OTP codes without I could not log in work websites..
I have no answer to this dilemma
Fellini is so correct here. Nietzsche also greatly worried about these changes so damaging to our sensibilities, as he realized what Wagner's music and operatic staging really were about, an almost farcical boom-boom pounding on the audience and a level of sensory assault that left one vulgarized and deadened---which is exactly what modern Business wants to make of people. Murderous combat, chase-scenes, explosions, these are supposed to tell us that something important is at stake. All they do is destroy what's left of our ability to listen and participate with all our faculties.
hvala ti na videu, pozdrav od zagrepčanca!
What I love about Fellini's films is that I experience them as if they were these sensual spells. I don't just watch a Fellini film, I feel it in my body.
I think what he's saying here is that films shouldn't just be viewed as your two eyes in your head watching images on a screen, which is why I feel that with an ever increasing industry of streaming services and film content being produced at a rapid pace, people are just experiencing film in the head too much. Downloading too much data and experiencing system overload.
But experiencing a film, as Fellini said "Ritually, reliogously," you're experiencing a Shaman's vision onscreen. THAT is the beauty of his films. You participate in another world filled with archetypes and spirits.
Ironic that whoever edited this, slowly faded Fellini out, tuning him out in the middle of a sentence, effectively proving his very point.🙈🙉😞
fast forward and Tiktok has replaced the attention span of the television and even the youtube viewer with an even more diluted one. The more things change the more they stay the same. The thing Fellini is expressing here is a generational concern which (quite ironically) passes from one generation to the next. The anxiety of being replaced and outmoded by an apathetic consumerism
Well Buddhists believe attachment is the cause of all suffering.
change is inevitable
@@HeroicHaroon the only constant. it is also, however, completely neutral. there's no law that change must be a step forward.
It's funny how critics were absolutely correct to deride television as the idiot box it was at the time - degrading attention spans and dumbing down messages and removing all the profundity that comes from space and silence in storytelling - and now it seems almost hopelessly quaint to expect modern viewers to have the sophistication to be able to enjoy a full television program these days.
I'd like to think that internet shorts are reaching the physical limits of what could even be called communication at all without just becoming white noise. Certainly, I've had experiences with zoomers sticking their phone in my face to show off a TikTok feed for a few minutes only to think "This must be what having a panic attack feels like." But life has taught me that it's quite hard to underestimate human ignorance, and we might always be made to fall lower, especially in pursuit of exploitation and profit.
Very depressing to read this, but well-stated nonetheless - I agree with everything you've said here.
fellini, my favorite artist explains well why i still go to the movies at least once a week, for full absorption. though the shared cultural experience he references often isn't there.
People felt that way about movies too, and refused to even consider it an art form until the 50's. Fellini was a great, great filmmaker, but what he's saying here is what every old man has been saying for literally thousands of years. Without being able to cite them, I've been told that the classic Greek texts included complaints about the youth of the time. And I intend to be no different when I get my chance to go "things were so much better in my day"
My Brother and i used to call the theater screen "The Great White God"
Everyone would come to stare at The Great White God" 😂
If you managed to see the whole video, you're already in the path of redemption.
"don't interrupt an emotion"
well, then don't interrupt fellini. where's the rest of the video?
It's behind a paywall.
@@DarkAngelEU can't really say I'm surprised :/
Si Fellini pensaba asi de la television y los controles remotos como aparatos que promulgaban la incapacidad de concentracion y retencion del espectador que diria de la situacion actual con los celulares y esta locura en la que estamos metidos donde vemos 10 segundos de algo y ya tenemos que cambiar
Thank you for that video 💙🤍
Fellini is my fav director but i wish there was a subway surfers video next to the interview so i could watch 🥺😔
0:28 Hold up!! His writing is this FIRE???
Much appreciated.
God knows what he would have thought about our current generation.
Now its the internet. The idea of walking around with a tiny computer. Has created a tide of impatient people squared.
Thanks 😊👍
Bravo 👏
prophetic words
Where can I find the full interview?
I don't know, sorry, I've found this on TH-cam and made subtitles for it.
th-cam.com/video/pSgOwDAhHtI/w-d-xo.html should be this one
Maybe TV was different back then, and in Italy, but in my experience, the main way people end up watching four movies at once is because they change the channel when a commercial starts, not because they don't like the scene. Of course that does happen too
This aired in the 1980s, I believe, and Fellini is right in so many ways. Yet, since then, we have had brilliant artists, filmmakers, like Paul Thomas Anderson, Christopher Nolan. And before them, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola. The lists go on!
So, to say it is gone completely is to be logically wrong, but that's all the more reason to be fighting for great cinema and visual literacy, understanding exactly the piecing together of images and sounds that can create glorious dream-like scenes and films such as '81/2'.
Humans never really change. Great people and great works will come again. They feared this then and the fact that we still fear it now just goes to show all this.
lol, as if Nolan is anywhere near as great as those directors, let alone Fellini.
For all of history, competition has existed. Some people want to be great artists but most want to win the competition. The accessibility of media has allowed artists to flourish with minimal resources but it has also made the competition more frantic. So many people want a piece of the pie and everyone has access to so much.
The people who win by pandering to the audience do so because the audience let's them. I don't think the means of viewing is to blame. People are to 'blame' for not being discerning enough. Many people appear to be happy channel chopping and doom scrolling. They like it. That is the sad reality. These things emerge because of human nature and technology only facilitates.
But it is in some people's nature to be discerning, honest, expressive and artful and technology has facilitated this too. The people who want this kind of media will wade through the noise to find it. Fortunately there are still plenty of people who do.
at least those people you mock are doing what they feel they want to, even if you think it is not good enough
@@CastleHassall I'm not mocking anybody and nor do I think it's not good enough. I'm saying, if anything, that people who aspire to something different shouldn't blame technology for something that is in human nature.
I can find it isolating that more of the people in my immediate life have little to no appreciation for and drive to discover outstanding art. I find it sad for that reason.
But I don't mock them and I recognise that, for them, it is good enough and they are happy and I would never dream of trying to ruin that by imposing my views on them. I do think they are missing out but it's all there for them to experience already - they don't need me to impose it on them.
@@CastleHassall Pretty confident we can find entertainment products that you feel are a waste of your time. Dismount that high horse.
A lot of the old school filmmakers would be horrified if they lived long enough to see TikTok and social media reels
Please tell me that he never saw a TH-cam short or a tiktok. Some people are so good in their craft.
Do you even know who Fellini is?
@@opwave79 - oh yeah he was the co-founder of instagram who certainly wasn't the director of La Dolce Vita.
Also there is this thing called saying something with mood of ironic concern or dismay. Look it up. It will do you a ton of good.
PREACH
he made me watch till the end(ok maybe 10sec less)
In a few years we will just have 1 second flashbang xommercials and two second content
i wanted to keep hearing him talk
im glad he is not alive to witness tik toks with subway surfers in the back
Needed
i barely had the patients to watch this im depressed
pensa se avesse visto Tik tok
L'avrebbe adorato avrebbe abbandonato la regia cinematografica avrebbe cambiato il suo nome in federiktoko avrebbe costretto mastroianni Sandra milo e Giulietta masina a farsi un account avrebbe conquistato il mondo con la sua viralità
@@michelerusso9745federiktoko è bellino
modern movies thrive on visual shock & awe, not intellectual or emotional content & subtext
What would he say for 2024?
TV remote control was a great invention. In the past, I had to get up from the couch to lower someone's voice on TV or shut them up. Now, with voice remote control, I can simply order Trump to leave my house immediately. Like all good inventions, TV remote can also be used by idiots who only like seeing flying cars on fire, but it's not the gadget's fault.
I don't miss the old ritual of going to the cinema that Fellini talks about. Sessions were often interrupted by people leaving the room or coming in late. Compulsive popcorn eaters near us could completely ruin a movie.
Of course somebody like you has to bring up Trump in every conversation. You said you don't like the generalization of the TV remote being a bad thing, but then you generalize all cinema experiences as terrible because of rude people. Typical Brandon lover. Stick to watching The View gushing over the cackling hyena Harris.
Wait til he hears about the smartphone
Ye I don’t think attention spans are worsening really, I think they’re getting more impatient
And less willing to try things they might not like
This clip is too long.
Hahaha
He's right behind me isn't he?
It was big deal. I would hear:
“stop changing channels, and watch something”.
Also said about the radio.
And now we have TikTok.
TikTok is here now
imagine if he see tiktok
He would have gone depressive alive in this era of reels and tiktoks and youtube shorts.
Fellini would've loved tiktok.
Tv, the original brainrot
Only if he knew about TikTok
Now it is much worse with cell phones
TikTok and Fellini wouldn't have been a good match, me thinks (?)
Feel the same way bout gas .......dont interrupt a good fart .....its not everyday that great art comes'long
... E poi è arrivato tiktok
tiktok and off to a diaper comercial
prescient
Posts video decrying short attention spans.
Fades video in the middle of a sentence.
💀
Well people are less appreciative of film perhaps and others they bore easily now or have Attention deficit disorders. This reminds me of David Lynch annoyed people watch movies on their phones too that's not how the experience was intended to be either.
he would be greatly disappointed if he saw how my father wacthes films nowadays
on the
phone playing games or wasting money on whatever chinese market
while watching a movie with a remote and muting during the ads only to miss when the film continues again because of the phone
People dont get what he means, hes saying that films now need to be sensationalist in terms of content to get people's attetion ie sex and violence.
So many mistakes in the subtitles
Sorry for the "mascherina" translation, thanks to a TH-cam commentator here I've learned it means the staff in the cinema hall. Please correct the other wrong translations if you have time, I'm not a native speaker nor of Italian nor of English, thanks!
@@oksimoronkoI don't speak Italian, but I can correct some obvious things:
- "the courtain opens" should be "the curtain opens"
- "the revelation starts, the massage" should be "the revelation starts, the message"
-"it's forms and ways" should be "its forms and ways".
@@antoinepetrov tnx! i'll use a spellchecker next time, may fellini forgive me this time!
Let's not be too pessimistic. In the atomization, there lies the hidden ability to "go deeper".
What happens when you break a Fellini film or any other piece for thst matter, down into discrete entities, while maintaining an understanding of the piece as it may have appeared as a whole?
Now the commentary appears beneath it can come from diverse perspectives, (sometimes multiple within one person) and then related not only as a network of connnective tissue beneath the visible iceberg of the piece as it may have been perviously understood, but each discrete noema of commentary may then be related to the network of interrelated perspectives and the connections that obtain betwen them.
The opinion of the director/writer dwarfs in comparison, and the idea that someone has the "right" understanding of a piece changes.
I don't blame him. Watching this change probably felt like seeing everything he worked for crumble.
So it is for any seed that becomes a tree.
Cosa lui vuol dire con "la mascherina"?
direi il sipario
Le maschere, maledetti zoomers, sono il personale di sala.
@@francesco3772 Grazie e scusa per la traduzione sbagliata, non sono madrelingua italiana. E sono un millenial. :-)
“Indifferent” yup
“Distracted” yeah!
“Slightly racist” wait wut
If you're constantly switching the channels and disengaging with certain works, you end up not challenging your worldview in any meaningful capacity
"as soon as the content doesn't have a sensationalistic hook, you switch immediately"
Funny how this critique would come from the more sensationalist one of the great filmmakers.
Maybe, but could we really call Fellini's work sensationalist? Is he exploitative? A little, perhaps, but not to a sensationalist level. He's not Russ Meyer or Jon Waters. Controversial? Maybe if you get into a debate about what his films mean. Does he use flashy ideas to hook audiences? I suppose, but not the way other filmmakers do.
At the time of the interview, sensationalist films like Star Wars or Exorcist or Deathwish or Jaws were coming out. That's the kind of sensationalism he's talking about, a big, broad, simple concept that defines the film, so audiences don't have to spend 15-20 minutes getting to know the characters before they can pick up with the film is laying down. Hell, La Strada is anything but sensationalist. It spends the entire run-time building the mystery of what kind of film it is. A meet-cute? A redemption story? Love conquers brutishness? A girl wises up? It's not until literally the final shot at the very end of the film that the whole thing defines itself as an awakening. And not with fireworks or an epic set piece like modern films, just a closeup of a human being.
I think Fellini himself changed his style to look and feel more captivating from shot to shot. Certainly, a few years ago when I hosted a cocktail party and put on 8&1/2 on silent in the living room background, people couldn't take their eyes off it. Whereas I doubt they would have been drawn in by La Strada in the same way. But the reasons why are hard to pin down. La Strada asks "what will happen, how will this go?" While 8&1/2 asks "What is happening here, and what does it mean?" It's easier to give up on La Strada, because we know the answers aren't coming any time soon. But 8&1/2 offers answers immediately, if you read it deeply enough. It's a film happening in the ongoing now. But does that make it sensationalist? I think it just makes it rich, because the fireworks are deep within the layers of story, while the shark in Jaws is right there on the surface. You don't have to dig into a film to find its sensationalism. But you have to dig into every Fellini film to get the gold.
@@rottensquidVery well said.
He means violence and special effects
@@rottensquidpeople don't realise he's talking about the kind of films they like like Scorsese and Speilberg
@@leonconnelly5303 How is that so obvious to you?
ok boomer
can someone please summarise this video for me, i can't be bothered watching him talk so much
thanks!
Old man yells at clouds.
Young man writes idiotic comments.
Great filmmaker, but as per usual, some of them are full of shit.
Any clue where can one find the full interview?