抄録
The purpose of this essay is to reconsider auteurism in the cinema, focusing on the Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini (1920-1993). Fellini expressed himself ironically both inside and outside his films. I Vitelloni, 8 ½, and Amarcord were often “misread” as autobiographies, and his self-representation in his own films (Director’s Notebook, I Clowns, Roma, Intervista) blurred the distinction between character and actor. Fellini’s meta-films performed a similar meta-representation of the documentaries of his behind-the-scenes films (Ciao Federico! The Making of Satyricon, Zoom su Fellini, Fellini racconta: Diario di un Film).
This essay traces how Fellini asserted his authorship through these practices. First, after delineating the premise of auteurism in the cinema, I suggest that Fellini’s hyperbolic authorship does not fit into existing frameworks of auteurism. Then I turn to examine Fellini’s specific claims upon authorship in La Strada, 8 ½, and TV movies, drawing on Cecilia Sayad’s concept of “performing authorship” and Judith Butler’s work on performativity. I conclude by discussing the position Fellini the author took in light of Foucault’s classifications, especially his idea of the author function. Fellini’s exposure of his “body” through self-performances and on-set interventions provokes us to reconsider this function, especially the relationship between film and author. Fellini’s inscription of his authorship through his embodied, performative interventions constitutes a survival strategy for him in the era of the postmodern “death of the author.”
