“La Bella Confusione”, by Francesco Piccolo: in 1962, the peak of Italian cinema

On May 9, 1962, filming began in Rome on 8 1/2 by Federico Fellini (1920-1993). Five days later, filming began in Sicily on The Leopard by Luchino Visconti (1906-1976). Both were completed in October. Two films that marked the peak of Italian cinema, whose cinema attendances had never been as high as that year. This cinema would remain immense until the early 1980s, but in retrospect, it can be said that it reached its peak here, as the Italian writer and screenwriter Francesco Piccolo shows in an account of the simultaneous production of these two masterpieces. La Bella Confusione is intended to be both a cultural and sociological history of Italy and an intimate text on the author's obsession with these two films.

Eight and a Half and The Leopard share the same actress, Claudia Cardinale . Luchino Visconti, after giving her a small role in Rocco and His Brothers (1960), already alongside Alain Delon, had no other face in mind to embody the young Angelica Sedara, who ends up marrying Tancred in a union sealing the disappearance of an aristocratic world in Italy in the second half of the ^19th century. Fellini is different. He only hired Claudia Cardinale very late for this autobiographical film, and rewrote her role according to the availability left by Visconti during his filming in Sicily, to allow him to escape to Rome. Visconti planned everything. Fellini lets himself be carried away by circumstances.

You have 53.9% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.