FLAIANO, Ennio, and Tullio PINELLI

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FLAIANO. Writer. Nationality: Italian. Born: Pescara, 5 March 1910. Education: Studied architecture in Rome. Career: Architect; then journalist; drama critic, Offi; contributor to Mondo; 1942—film writing debut for La danza del fuoco. Died: 20 November 1972.

PINELLI. Writer. Nationality: Italian. Born: Turin, 24 June 1908. Education: Degree in law. Career: Attorney until 1942; also playwright in Turin dialect (plays produced include 'L Sôfà d'la marchesa 'd Mômbarôn, 1932; I porta, 1936; Crotta, lupo, Pegaso, and Lo Stilita, 1938; L'arcidiavolo di Radicofani and I padri etruschi, 1941; Il padre nudo and Lotta con l'angelo, 1942; La leggenda dell'assassino, 1949; Gorgonio, 1952; Mattutino and L'inferno, 1954; Ciarlatano, 1967; Santa Marina, 1970; Giardino delle Sfingi, 1975); film writer from 1945. Awards: Ufficiale di Cavalleria. Address: Via Lucio Cassio 13, Rome 00189, Italy.

Films as Writers:

1950

Luci del varietà (Variety Lights) (Fellini and Lattuada)

1952

Lo sceicco bianco (The White Sheik) (Fellini)

1953

I vitelloni (Fellini); Riscatto (Girolami)

1954

La strada (Fellini)

1955

Il bidone (The Swindle) (Fellini)

1956

Le notti di Cabiria (The Nights of Cabiria; Cabiria) (Fellini)

1957

Fortunella (De Filippo)

1960

La dolce vita (Fellini)

1962

"La tentazioni di Dottor Antonio" ("The Temptations of Dr. Antonio") ep. of Boccaccio '70 (Fellini)

1963

8½ (Otto e mezzo) (Fellini)

1965

Giulietta degli spiriti (Juliet of the Spirits) (Fellini)

Films as Writer—Flaiano:

1942

La danza del fuoco (Simonelli); Pastor Angelicus (Marcellini)

1943

Inviati speciali (Marcellini); L'abito nero da sposa (Zampa)

1945

La freccia nel fianco (Lattuada)

1946

Roma città libera (La notte porta consiglio) (Pagliero); L'ultimo paradiso (Quilici)

1948

Fuga in Francia (Flight into France) (Soldati)

1949

Cintura di castità (Mastrocinque)

1951

Parigi è sempre Parigi (Emmer); Guardie e ladri (Cops and Robbers) (Steno)

1952

Fanciulle di lusso (Luxury Girls) (Vorhaus and Mussetta); "Elizabeth" ("Due donne") ep. of Destini di donne (Daughters of Destiny) (Pagliero); Il mondo le condanna (Franciolini)

1953

Dov'è la liberta? (Rossellini); "Scene all'aperto" ep. of Temip nostri (Blasseti); Canzoni, canzoni, canzoni (Paolella); Vesire gli ignudi (Pagliero); Villa Borghese (It Happened in the Park) (Franciolini)

1954

La donna del fiurne (Soldati); Camilla (Emmer); Peccato che sia una canaglia (Too Bad She's Bad) (Blasetti); La romana (Woman of Rome) (Zampa); La vergine moderna (Pagliero)

1955

Totò e Carolina (Monicelli—produced 1953); Il segno di Venere (The Sign of Venus) (Risi); La fortuna di essere donna (Lucky to Be a Woman) (Blasetti)

1956

Calabuch (Berlanga); Terrore sulla città (Majano)

1958

Un ettaro di cielo (Casadio); Racconti d'estate (Love on the Riviera; Summer Tales) (Franciolini)

1960

La ragazza in vetrina (Emmer); Un amore a Roma (Love in Rome) (Risi); Fantasmi a Roma (Pietrangeli); La notte (The Night) (Antonioni)

1962

Hong Kong un addio (Polidoro)

1963

El verdugo (Not on Your Life) (Berlanga)

1964

Tonio Kroger (Thiele)

1965

Una moglie americana (Run for Your Wife) (Polidoro); La decima vittima (The 10th Victim) (Petri); Rapture (Guillermin)

1966

Io, io, io . . . e gli altri (Blasetti)

1967

"Ere préhistorique" ("Prehistoric Era") and "Nuits romaines" ("Roman Nights") eps. of Le Plus Vieux Métier du monde (The Oldest Profession) (Indovina and Bolognini); I protagonisti (Fondato)

1969

Vivi, o preferibilmente morti (Tessari); Colpe rovente (Zuffi); Red (Carle)

1972

La Cagna (Liza) (Ferreri)

1987

L'inchiesta (The Inquiry) (co)

Films as Writer—Pinelli:

1945

L'adultera (Coletti)

1946

Le miserie del signor Travet (Soldati)

1947

La figlia del capitano (Camerini); Il passatore (Coletti)

1948

Senza pietà (Without Pity) (Lattuada); "Il miracolo" ("The Miracle") ep. of Amore (The Ways of Love) (Rossellini); Come persi la guerra (Borghesio)

1949

Il mulino del Po (The Mill on the Po) (Lattuada); In nome della legge (In the Name of the Law) (Germi)

1950

Il cammino della speranza (The Path of Hope) (Germi)

1951

La città si difende (Germi); Cameriera bella presenza offresi (Pastina)

1952

Wanda, la peccatrice (Coletti)

1953

"Un' agenzia matrimoniale" ep. of Amore in città (Love in the City) (Fellini); Pieta per chi cade (Costa); Traviata '53 (Cottafavi)

1954

Sinfonia d'amore—Schubert (Pellegrini); Gli amori di Manon Lescaut (Costa)

1960

Adua e le compagne (Love à la carte) (Petrangeli)

1961

Senilita (Bolognini)

1963

Le steppa (The Steppe) (Lattuada)

1965

"Il trattato di eugenetica" ("Treatise in Eugenics") ep. of Le bambole (Comencini)

1966

San Francesco (Cavani)

1967

L'immorale (The Climax) (Germi)

1968

Galileo (Cavani); Serafino (Germi)

1970

Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini (The Garden of the Finzi-Contini) (De Sica)

1973

Alfredo, Alfredo (Germi)

1975

Amici miei (My Friends) (Germi and Monicelli)

1976

Per le antiche scale (Down the Ancient Stairs) (Bolognini)

1978

Viaggio con Anita (Travels with Anita) (Monicelli)

1980

Cristoforo Colombo (Lattuada)

1983

Amici miei atto II (Monicelli)

1984

Amici miei III (Loy)

1985

Speriamo che sia femmina (Monicelli)

1986

Ginger e Fred (Fellini)

1990

La voce della luna (The Voice of the Moon) (Fellini)

Publications

By FLAIANO and PINELLI: books—

With others, La dolce vita (script), edited by T. Kesich, Rocca San Casciano, 1959, translated as La Dolce Vita, New York, 1961.

With others, Juliet of the Spirits (script), New York, 1965.

Three Screenplays by Federico Fellini (includes Il bidone [The Swindle], The Temptations of Doctor Antonio, and I vitelloni), New York, 1970.

With Federico Fellini, Moraldo in the City (script), edited by John C. Stubbs, Urbana, Illinois, 1983.

By FLAIANO: books—

La guerra spiegata ai poveri (play), Turin, 1946.

Tempo di uccidere (novel), Milan, 1947, as Miriam, London, 1949.

Diario notturno (novel), Milan, 1956.

La donna nell armadio (play), Turin, 1957.

Una e una notte (novel), Milan, 1959.

Un marziano a Roma (play), Turin, 1960.

With Antonioni and Tonino Guerra, La notte (script) in Screenplays by Michelangelo Antonioni, New York, 1963.

Il gioco e il massacro (novel), Milan, 1970.

Opere, Milan, 1970.

La conversazione continuamente interrotta (play), Turin, 1972.

Le ombre bianche, Milan, 1972.

La solitudine del satiro (novel), Milan, 1973.

Autobiografia del Blu di Prussia, Milan, 1974.

Diario degli errori, edited by Emma Giammattei, Milan, 1976.

Lettere d'amore al cinema, edited by Christina Bragaglia, Milan, 1978.

Melampo, Turin, 1978.

Storie inedite per film mai fatti, Milan, 1984.

By PINELLI: books—

Re Hassan (libretto), Milan, 1938.

La pulce d'oro (libretto), Milan, 1940.

La croce deserta (libretto), Milan, 1950.

With Fellini, La strada (script), in Cinema Nuovo (Turin), September/October 1954.

With others, Otto e mezzo (script), edited by Camilla Cederna, Bologna, 1965.

Il giardino della sfingi e altri commedie, Turin, 1975.

With L. Benvenutti and P. De Bernardi, Amici miei (script), Milan, 1976.

By PINELLI: article—

Positif (Paris), no. 351, May 1990.

CinémAction (Courbevoie), January 1994.

Positif (Paris), July-August 1995.

Filmvilag (Budapest), vo. 38, no. 2, 1995.

On FLAIANO: book—

Berterelli, Gian Carlo, and Pier Marco de Santi, Omaggio a Flaiano, Pisa, 1986.

On FLAIANO: articles—

Cineforum (Bergamo, Italy), vol. 23, no. 221, January/February 1983.

Revue de la Cinémathèque (Montreal), December 1990/January 1991.

On PINELLI: articles—

Barbetti, E., in Teatro, vol. 2, 1950.

Tassone, in Positif (Paris), July 1985.

Chion, Michel, "Fellini roman," in Cahiers du Cinéma (Paris), December 1993.

* * *

Ennio Flaiano and Tullio Pinelli, important Italian playwrights and screenwriters each in his own right, are known internationally as collaborators with Federico Fellini on all of his first nine features and two shorts (though only Pinelli worked on the first of the latter), from Luci del varietà (1950) through Giulietta degli spiriti (1965). Fellini met Pinelli in 1947 as a fellow scenarist; they worked together on at least seven films for other directors, notably Roberto Rossellini and Alberto Lattuada, between 1947 and 1951. Flaiano joined the team for Fellini's first feature (co-directed by Lattuada). Both writers always received credit, listed after Fellini himself, for screenplay, and often one or the other for original story (again with Fellini) as well. Yet they never worked together on a film for any other director, with the exception of Eduardo De Filippo's Fortunella (1957)—on which Fellini worked as well.

Critics have been fond of neatly contrasting Pinelli and Flaiano as reflecting opposing sides of the master: e.g., as "respectively the devout mystical side and the skeptical, ironic side" of Fellini (Times Literary Supplement, 1961); or as his "mystical" (again) and "comical or irreverent" sides (Edward Murray, Fellini the Artist, 1976); or Pinelli as "methodical, rational, well-balanced . . . serious, dramatic and full of enthusiasm" and Flaiano as "casual and skeptical, hating vagueness and over-emphasis, in fact he is anti-poetic. It is he who has always played the part of the devil's advocate between Fellini and Pinelli, by avoiding excess lyricism and anchoring himself to reality. He suggests theories for social satire to Fellini" (Angelo Solmi, Fellini, 1962). Fellini himself, in a 1962 interview, while less neatly characterizing Pinelli as a "most serious" and "most fruitful" playwright and Flaiano "the subtle writer, the delicate humorist, the ardent chronicler of Italian life," agreed that the two were "temperamentally quite different but . . . basically complementary; that is, when they are working together, I feel that each is giving the best of himself."

It appears impossible to separate out the exact contributions of each to the final films because of the trio's informal working methods and Fellini's changes at the shooting stage, though it is sometimes on record as to who contributed dialogue to which scenes. (These working methods, it should be added, are fairly typical for the Italian film industry.) According to the director, he would typically get an idea, then tell his scenarists about it "without dramatizing it at all, just as if I were telling a story." At some point in this early stage one or more of the three would do "field research," whether interviewing swindlers for Il bidone, strolling on the Via Veneto for La dolce vita, or visiting spas for 8½. At later meetings "we behave in such a way as to avoid the heavy, formal atmosphere of a working session . . . we chat around the subject, and develop it. . . . Then, when the story begins to have a fairly precise thread in it, we often divide up the work. Pinelli takes some scenes, Flaiano others, and I take others myself, but we do all we can to give this creation . . . the greatest possible freedom . . . because I shouldn't be able to work with a very carefully constructed screenplay. . . . I need to be given freedom within an extremely elastic screenplay, not in order to improvise, exactly, but so that I can enrich a character or a situation while the film is actually being made."

Angelo Solmi's biography of Fellini provides glimpses of how the trio worked on two particular films. For La strada, Pinelli wandered on foot in the Turin region to observe gypsies at village fairs. The subsequent scenario he and Fellini devised was a "compromise between the carefree tone Fellini had in mind and Pinelli's more dramatic one," but still more "somber and legendary . . . magical" than the completed film was to be. Flaiano was then called in to "say derogatory things about La strada for three months. . . . I condemned a vagueness of atmosphere, certain affectations in the characters," and insisted the story should "come down to earth" and the "symbolism should be integrated with the narrative." Flaiano still gave Fellini the credit for balancing the neorealist and poetic elements of the film.

For Le notti di Cabiria each wrote dialogue for different scenes. Flaiano successfully fought to keep the episode with the film star, which Fellini had been inclined to remove. The final scene of the film originated when Flaiano recalled an actual murder of a prostitute and Pinelli suggested it be the model for the end of the film and of Cabiria; Fellini and Flaiano insisted that Cabiria should live, but it was Pinelli, bowing to their demand, who all the same was the one to develop the scene in detail.

During the making of Giulietta degli spiriti, Pinelli and Flaiano became increasingly alienated from the director's vision. By the time the film was completed Flaiano felt shabbily treated by Fellini and ceased to have any professional or social contact with him. Pinelli too, after nearly 20 years of working with Fellini, no longer collaborated with the director, who established a whole new team of artists and technicians for his later films, with the notable carryover of the composer Nino Rota. Yet 20 years after Giulietta, Fellini returned to Pinelli for assistance on the screenplay for Ginger e Fred and again for work on La voce della luna.

Recent biographies of Fellini (e.g., Hollis Alpert's 1986 Fellini: A Life) and studies of his films (Peter Bondanella's 1992 The Cinema of Federico Fellini) give more prominent attention to Pinelli than to Flaiano, if only because of the former's longer working relationship with the director and his continuing availability for interviews. Yet it may be fairly said of both men that however much in the service of Fellini's vision they worked, the two screenwriters made incalculably important contributions to an unbroken series of astonishingly fine, original, and varied films.

—Joseph Milicia