THE DAY WE MET FELLINI

It was a normal day at Cinecittà film studios sometime in 1978. I was working with my friends Paolo, Sandro and Fabio out of Teatro Cinque (sound stage No. 5). We were part of the special effects department specialising in model making, stop frame filming and photography.

We were getting on with our work when, completely unannounced, Federico Fellini decides to come and pay us a visit. He probably wanted to see who was invading his beloved studio space. Teatro Cinque was the biggest sound stage in Europe at the time and was considered Fellini’s home at Cinecittà where he made the majority of his films.

My friend Sandro was completely awestruck by Fellini’s presence. When answering any questions that the great man would ask Sandro he would always respond with a “Sì Maestro” or a “No Maestro”, the recollection of which makes me smile to this day. I recently reminded Sandro about this and he recalls the encounter very well.

A few years ago I went back to Cinecittà to have a look around and remind myself of the place I used to work.

I went to see Adriano De Angelis at the sculpture department. Four generations of the De Angelis family have been making sculptures for films at Cinecittà since 1932. I first went there to have some bas relief panels made when I was at art school in the mid 1970s. The workshop is packed with statues from decade’s worth of films. I recognised sculptures from the film Ben Hur as well as many others. Cinecittà was famous for making what the Italians called “colossal” movies such as The Ten Commandments and Cleopatra where thousands of film extras appeared in an era long before computer generated images.

The photograph above that accompanies this article was a drawing that Fellini made and gave to De Angelis years ago. It shows Fellini at Teatro Cinque as a puppeteer. De Angelis told me that Fellini could sometimes difficult to deal with as he would often change his mind about what he wanted De Angelis to do, usually once work had already commenced or was nearing completion.

The Fellini encounter years ago is etched in my memory. I’m pretty sure I took photographs on that day, but have gone through many boxes of negatives without finding any trace.

As footnote, my friend Fabio’s grandmother was Neapolitan actress Pupella Maggio, who starred in Fellini’s film Amarcord as well as Giuseppe Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso. His father was also a special effects man who had worked on William Wyler’s epic Ben Hur in 1959 at Cinecittà that was nicknamed “Hollywood on the Tiber” at the time.

During my visit I noticed a lot of young people rushing around. I wondered to myself where all the grown ups were. I then remembered that when I worked at Cinecittà I was also in my early 20s. How time flies!