Portrait for a friend: 'How Strange to Be Named Federico'

 

Ettore Scola on the set of 'How Strange to Be Named Federico'

A sentimental portrait for a friend, Ettore Scola’s 2013 “Che strano chiamarsi Federico” (“How Strange to Be Named Federico”) is both a tribute to Federico Fellini and a reflection on friendship, and an artist’s passion for filmmaking. 

Scola created a personal and imaginative film that moves between documentary, fiction, memory, and fantasy, bringing to life important moments he shared with Fellini during their decades-long friendship as well as highlights from Fellini’s own life and career while showing how deeply Fellini influenced Scola himself. The result is an inviting, nostalgic, and at times playful portrait of one of Italy and the world’s most beloved filmmakers.

The film opens on the beach where a figure depicting Fellini sits in a director’s chair and watches performers audition for him. The beach is likely symbolic of Fellini’s roots in the seaside town of Rimini and his beach-going days on the coast of Ostia, where it has been said he first met Marcello Mastroianni and offered him the role in “La Dolce Vita.”

The film is structured around Scola’s memories of meeting Fellini when they were both working at the satirical magazine Marc’Aurelio in Rome. An actor portrays Fellini arriving as a young man to Rome at the beginning of his career as a writer and cartoonist with a narrator telling his story with actual photos of Fellini. Scola was a younger writer who would eventually become an important screenwriter and director in his own right. The beloved filmmaker Steno also had beginnings at Marc’Aurelio, which we see in the film. Scola and Fellini’s relationship developed over many years, and so Scola presents Fellini as a filmmaker, friend, and colleague. This personal touch combined with the photographs makes the film feel less like a biography or documentary and more like someone reminiscing.

Scola created film sets where he stages scenes from Fellini’s life. These recreations sometimes look deliberately artificial, which is appropriate because Fellini often walked the thin line between reality and imagination, as he was known for making up fantastical stories and white lies.

The film also captures the atmosphere of postwar Rome and the importance of Marc’Aurelio to Italian popular culture. That’s why this film is perfect to watch after seeing Scola’s “A Special Day,” which takes place during the heyday of Mussolini’s Rome. Marc’Aurelio was filled with cartoons, jokes, caricatures, and satire, and it proved to be a launching pad for several important Italian writers and filmmakers. Scola uses this environment to show where Fellini's imagination developed. Before becoming the director of films such as “La Strada” and the aforementioned “La Dolce Vita” and “8½,” Fellini was already an observer of human behavior. He had an extraordinary ability to notice and appreciated unusual characters and interpret their eccentricities for the big screen.

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Scola creates scenes and images that evoke Fellini’s cinema, including Cinecittà studios, representing the magical world where Fellini transformed ordinary life into something dreamlike or “Felliniesque.” Scola adopts the same dreamlike vibe, prompting the viewer to question whether what is being shown is history, memory, or fantasy.

Many scenes take place in a car driving around Rome. Through the windows, you can see the landmarks, the fountains, the piazzas and of course, the Romans. “Fellini loved driving, and he treated his insomnia by taking his friends out in turns for midnight drives: true and tried kidnappings,” the narration states. “He’d pick up drunks, compulsive liars, dethroned princes, even a few streetwalkers, out of curiosity, out of an uncontrollable love for life. And with him, that car became a confessional booth. Life was a party, he loved to say, so why not live each moment as one?”

It is noted that “Fellini adopted Mastroianni as an ideal alter-ego in his main films. In fact, he took better care of him than he did himself: forcing physical exercise and diets on him that he himself never did.” In fact, Fellini felt uncomfortable in front of the camera. Scola recalls how “it took many car rides and convincing to get Fellini to play himself in Scola's 1974 ensemble masterpiece, "C'eravamo tanto amati" (We all loved each other so much). When he did finally accept the offer, it was on the condition that he wouldn’t be filmed from behind, “so no one sees my bald spot.” 

Several actors, including Alberto Sordi and Orson Wells, appear in archival footage giving their take on Fellini. Actor Sergio Rubino, who played a reporter in Fellini’s 1987 “Intervista,” has a role in Scola’s film as street artist Fellini picks up during one of his overnight drives through Rome. The narrator also talks about the silent role Fellini had in Roberto Rossellini’s 1950 “Amore” opposite Anna Magnani in which he played a vagabond shepherd. Scola uses footage of Rossellini’s film and we see a dashing young Fellini with a full head of long thick blond hair.

Scola beautifully ended "How Strange to Be Named Federico" with Nino Rota’s signature circus-like melody that he composed for “8 ½” set against a collage of powerful images from Fellini’s films with Alberto Sordi and Mastroianni. 

The film is available to stream on Kanopy, which is free with a library card or university email account. 

- Written by Jeanning Guilyard for Fra Noi Magazine, Click here to subscribe.