Federico Fellini
Italian filmmaker (1920–1993)
A director's score is the sum of their films' composite canon scores — methodology.
- Born
- January 20, 1920 · Rimini
- Died
- October 31, 1993 · Rome
- Nationality
- Italy
- Work
- film director, screenwriter, satirist, writer
The man who became an adjective
Very few directors turn their surname into a word the rest of the language needs. "Felliniesque" now stands for any extravagant, dreamlike, faintly grotesque procession of images, in cinema and well beyond it — which is both the measure of the achievement and the trap laid for it. The word flattens him into carnival and excess, when the real accomplishment was structural: Fellini took the sober, on-the-street grammar of Italian neorealism, the tradition he was trained inside, and bent it until it could carry a dream. He is the filmmaker who proved the camera could report on the inside of a head as faithfully as it reported on a bombed street.
Rimini to Cinecittà
Born in Rimini on January 20, 1920, he came to film through drawing and print, not the set: a caricaturist and gag writer who worked as a humorist for the magazine Marc'Aurelio from 1939. He entered cinema sideways, contributing dialogue and gags to Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City (1944) — the founding neorealist document — which earned him a share of an Oscar nomination in 1947. He co-directed Variety Lights (1950) with Alberto Lattuada, took sole command with The White Sheik (1952), and broke through internationally with I Vitelloni (1953), which won the Silver Lion at Venice. Then the run that reordered postwar cinema: La Strada (1954) and Nights of Cabiria (1957), both built around his wife Giulietta Masina, whom he married in 1943; La Dolce Vita (1960), which took the Palme d'Or and gave English the word "paparazzi"; and 8½ (1963), the film about a director who cannot make his film. His late work — Amarcord (1973), the memory-Rimini idyll, and on through Intervista (1987) — kept faith with the dream logic. He won four Academy Awards, all in the Best Foreign Language Film category, among them Nights of Cabiria, 8½, and Amarcord, plus an Honorary Award the year he died in Rome, October 31, 1993. His scores were almost all Nino Rota's; his onscreen surrogate was usually Marcello Mastroianni.
What the numbers say
Our library ranks Fellini #14 among all directors, composite 22.61 across 19 films — high, and clear of the neorealist-descended peers he's usually shelved with. The internal order is where it gets interesting. His top film here is 8½ at #32 (4.58), just ahead of La Dolce Vita at #48 (4.24) — the order the canon would predict, since 8½ draws more citations from our sources (13 to La Dolce Vita's 10) and is the film Sight & Sound has placed among the ten greatest ever made. Here the composite and the poll say the same thing: reputation concentrates on 8½ as the reflexive art object, and the aggregate agrees, if only by a nose. Below them the curve drops steeply — La Strada at #197, Amarcord at #246, Nights of Cabiria down at #631 — the shape of a director carried by two towering titles rather than a broad plateau, closer in profile to Godard than to the deep-benched Americans like Scorsese who count him an influence.
Where to start
La Dolce Vita for the long Roman night and the sweetness curdling inside it; 8½ for the most honest film ever made about not being able to work; Amarcord for the warmth, when you want the carnival without the dread. Nights of Cabiria last — the smallest and, to my eye, the least dated of them.
Films in our library, ranked
Ranked by composite canon score across 20+ authoritative lists, awards and polls — our ordering, with every placement citing its evidence on the film's page.
- 1
1963 · Italy / France · comedy, drama, fantasy
Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #6 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1965 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #31
4.5813 citations - 2
1960 · France / Italy · comedy, drama
Palme d'Or winner 1960 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1960 #2 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #35
4.2410 citations - 3
1954 · Italy · drama
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1957 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #38 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1955 #7
2.748 citations - 4
1973 · France / Italy · comedy, drama
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1974 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #157 · Siskel's annual top 10 1974 #3
2.458 citations - 5Nights of CabiriaLe notti di Cabiria
1957 · France / Italy · drama
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1957 #3 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1957 #7 · Letterboxd Top 250 #58
1.496 citations - 6SatyriconFellini Satyricon
1969 · France / Italy · fantasy, drama, comedy
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1970 #2 · NYT Best 1,000 Movies · Criterion Collection spine #747
1.104 citations - 7
1972 · France / Italy · comedy, drama
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1972 #2 · Criterion Collection spine #848 · Ebert's annual top 10 1973 #9
1.054 citations - 8
1987 · Italy · biography, drama
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1987 #2 · Sarris's annual top 10 1992 #12
0.772 citations - 9
1955 · Italy / France · drama, crime
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1956 #7 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1958 #7
0.672 citations - 10Juliet of the SpiritsGiulietta degli spiriti
1965 · France / Italy · fantasy, comedy, drama
NYT Best 1,000 Movies · Criterion Collection spine #149 · Roger Ebert's Great Movies
0.574 citations - 11Spirits of the DeadHistoires extraordinaires
1968 · France / Italy · horror, drama
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1968 #4 · Edgar Wright's 1,000 favorite movies
0.542 citations - 12
1953 · France / Italy · comedy, drama
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1954 #6 · Criterion Collection spine #246
0.522 citations - 13And the Ship Sails OnE la nave va
1983 · France / Italy · comedy, drama, musical
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1984 #7 · Criterion Collection spine #50
0.492 citations - 14The ClownsI clowns
1970 · Italy / France / Germany · fantasy, documentary, comedy
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1976 #9
0.301 citation - 15Fellini's CasanovaIl Casanova di Federico Fellini
1976 · Italy · biography, comedy, drama
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1980 #9
0.301 citation - 16The White SheikLo sceicco bianco
1952 · Italy · drama, comedy
Criterion Collection spine #189 · Rosenbaum's Essential Cinema
0.272 citations - 17City of WomenLa città delle donne
1980 · France / Italy · fantasy, comedy, drama
Sarris's annual top 10 1981 #4
0.221 citation - 180.161 citation
- 19Orchestra RehearsalProva d'orchestra
1978 · Italy / Germany · comedy, drama
Sarris's annual top 10 1979 #11
0.141 citation
Complete filmography
All 27 directorial credits recorded on Wikidata, in chronological order; films in our library link to their canon-score page.
- 1950Variety Lights
- 1952The White Sheik
- 1953I Vitelloni
- 1953Love in the City
- 1953Marriage Agency
- 1954La Strada
- 1955Il bidone
- 1957Nights of Cabiria
- 1960La Dolce Vita
- 1962Boccaccio '70
- 1962The Temptation of Dr Antonio
- 19638½
- 1965Juliet of the Spirits
- 1968Spirits of the Dead
- 1968Toby Dammit
- 1969Fellini: A Director's Notebook
- 1969Satyricon
- 1970The Clowns
- 1972Roma
- 1973Amarcord
- 1976Fellini's Casanova
- 1978Orchestra Rehearsal
- 1980City of Women
- 1983And the Ship Sails On
- 1985Ginger and Fred
- 1987Intervista
- 1990The Voice of the Moon