Anita and Federico
Anita and Federico
Anita Ekberg's relatively brief appearance enjoying a couple of days in Rome as part of La dolce vita provides the best-known images of her career and that of director Federico Fellini. La dolce vita was the first of four appearances Ekberg made in Fellini's films, and each one marked a turning point in the director's career. Ekberg was one of Fellini’s most frequent star collaborators, surpassed only by Fellini’s alter-ego Marcello Mastroianni and wife Giulietta Masina, yet it is not a collaboration that has ever been given sustained attention.
By discussing the role Ekberg played in Fellini's oeuvre, I take issue with a critical tendency either to ignore her entirely or to treat her with disparagement. I connect this to a more general need expressed in popular and critical culture to disavow the sheer spectacular power of her image, a tendency that stunted the further development of her career after her appearance in La dolce vita. Fellini's cinema initially appears to treat her in the same way, only however to develop a very different interpretation of her star image: one that reveals her to hold a unique, but emblematic, function in the creation of visual pleasure and the problems of subjectivity that preoccupied Fellini throughout his films.
Anita Ekberg, Federico Fellini, Stardom, art cinema, European cinema, Italian cinema, La dolce vita
Bayman, Louis
4ac4c78c-a62e-43a4-aa70-497ab56dcad4
Bayman, Louis
4ac4c78c-a62e-43a4-aa70-497ab56dcad4
Bayman, Louis
(2024)
Anita and Federico.
In,
Dyer, Richard, Soila, Tytti and Wallengren, Ann Kristen
(eds.)
Anita Ekberg: International Blonde.
Edinburgh.
University of Edinburgh.
Record type:
Book Section
Abstract
Anita Ekberg's relatively brief appearance enjoying a couple of days in Rome as part of La dolce vita provides the best-known images of her career and that of director Federico Fellini. La dolce vita was the first of four appearances Ekberg made in Fellini's films, and each one marked a turning point in the director's career. Ekberg was one of Fellini’s most frequent star collaborators, surpassed only by Fellini’s alter-ego Marcello Mastroianni and wife Giulietta Masina, yet it is not a collaboration that has ever been given sustained attention.
By discussing the role Ekberg played in Fellini's oeuvre, I take issue with a critical tendency either to ignore her entirely or to treat her with disparagement. I connect this to a more general need expressed in popular and critical culture to disavow the sheer spectacular power of her image, a tendency that stunted the further development of her career after her appearance in La dolce vita. Fellini's cinema initially appears to treat her in the same way, only however to develop a very different interpretation of her star image: one that reveals her to hold a unique, but emblematic, function in the creation of visual pleasure and the problems of subjectivity that preoccupied Fellini throughout his films.
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More information
In preparation date: 2024
Keywords:
Anita Ekberg, Federico Fellini, Stardom, art cinema, European cinema, Italian cinema, La dolce vita
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 482053
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/482053
PURE UUID: 9facbec7-6d13-466c-ba65-83bbf5ae35d1
Catalogue record
Date deposited: 18 Sep 2023 16:42
Last modified: 01 Feb 2024 02:46
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Contributors
Editor:
Richard Dyer
Editor:
Tytti Soila
Editor:
Ann Kristen Wallengren
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