Federico Fellini brings Edgar Allen Poe tale to life in "Toby Dammit"

Terrance Stamp in a scene from Fellini's "Toby Dammit"

Long before he portrayed General Zod in the first two “Superman” movies, English actor Terence Stamp lived in Italy and collaborated with some of the country's most renowned filmmakers, including Federico Fellini, Silvana Mangano, Monica Vitti and Pier Paolo Pasolini. The actor died in August at age 87, so to pay homage to his extraordinary six-decade-long career, we are spotlighting his collaboration with Fellini on a short film that served as the final segment in a three-part film inspired by Edgar Allen Poe tales.

Loosely adapted from Poe’s story “Never Bet the Devil Your Head,” Fellini’s contribution to the 1968 “Spirits of the Dead” is notable for being as close to a horror film as Fellini ever created. A 40-minute frenzy of celebrity, decadence and damnation, his “Toby Dammit” appears along with contributions by Louis Malle and Roger Vadim, and stands out as the film’s most imaginative, unsettling and impactful segment.

Fellini moves Poe’s morality tale to the surreal, neon-lit Rome of the 1960s, turning it into a grotesque satire of fame and spiritual emptiness. The story follows Toby Dammit, a washed-up British actor lured to Rome with the promise of a Ferrari. He arrives to star in a vague “Catholic Western” and is immediately engulfed by press conferences, media spectacles, pretentious filmmakers and phony socialites. Fellini’s Rome is exaggerated, distorted and carnivalesque, filled with his trademark eccentric cast of zany characters, as the film shifts between comedy and nightmare. 

Almost immediately after Toby lands in the Eternal City, he begins to unravel. Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport served as the location for the opening scenes, when Stamp arrives and is immediately mobbed by paparazzi. He doesn’t make it down the escalator before being blinded by an explosion of flash bulbs.

A creature of the shadows, Toby abhors both the flashes of the paparazzi’s cameras and the sunlight, and so we see him mostly at night in the Roman countryside, trying to escape the shallow characters who won’t leave him alone. Never far from Toby is a little girl in white with a bouncing ball. Both innocent and sinister, she maintains a silence that is more haunting than words. Toby’s final, reckless drive through the outskirts of Rome, instigated by the little girl, ends in doom, culminating in one of Fellini’s most chilling endings: a collision of the surreal that feels inevitable but shocking, nonetheless.

There are foreshadowings of Fellini’s 1980 “City of Women” in “Toby Dammit,” as the main character drives along a single-lane road surrounded by the sprawling countryside. You’ll also find the chaos of the city as depicted in the 1990 “La voce della luna” (“The Voice of the Moon”).

Nino Rota composed the soundtrack, with echoes of “8½” (1963) and “La Dolce Vita” (1960) while Giuseppe Rotunno did the cinematography, both enhancing the film’s Felliniesque atmosphere. Wide-angle lenses, disorienting camera movements, and Rota’s eerie, circus-like score immerse viewers in Toby’s fragile psyche. Exterior scenes glow orange, as if an endless sunset burns on the horizon. Interiors are chaotic, with blinding television lights heightening Fellini’s theme of superficiality in a celebrity-obsessed world.

“Toby Dammit” is just one chapter in Fellini’s life-long commentary on celebrity culture, modern corruption and the emptiness of the material world. Intense and unsettling, Stamp’s performance anchors the film and gives a human face to Fellini’s vision of damnation. Even today, the film continues to captivate audiences with its unique blend of excess and despair. It is much less mainstream than “8½” or “La Dolce Vita,” but just as rich and daring. It is a condensed masterpiece in which Fellini’s distorted world of cinema meets Poe’s dark imagination. It is a must-see for anyone who enjoys Fellini’s higher profile works.

Click here to stream “Toby Dammit” on the Criterion Channel, which also features a short commentary video by American director James Gray, who called the film “underseen” and “one of Fellini’s greatest achievements.”