From Grand Hotel to Amarcord, here is the Rimini of Federico Fellini. With the memory of his granddaughter Francesca

"Every time I happen to go to the Grand Hotel, for some event or interview, where I tell about Uncle Federico, it seems to me that he never left and that if I look closely, there in the lobby on the sofa in front of the window, I can see him ’scribbling’ with markers on a notebook, the caricature of a gentle lady who arrived with her little dog and ten suitcases." Just reading these few lines, a scene in perfect amarcord style flows before her eyes; the memory of an uncle who for all the world will remain one of the greatest directors in the history of cinema, but who for her, the niece, will remain in her heart as Uncle “Chicco,” the man to whom she must say “thank you for infusing in me the magic dust of visionaries.” Telling us about Uncle Federico Fellini is his niece Francesca Fabbri Fellini, daughter of Maddalena, the director’s sister: Francesca is “the last heir by DNA of the Fellini family, the Ambassador to the world of his artistic legacy” as she calls herself, or “the 2.0 storyteller of the Fellini family.” She tries to tell it to young people, to those who did not get to know him when he was still alive. Not only as one of the most significant personalities of the Italian twentieth century, which he was, thanks to the creation of the greatest masterpieces of our cinema, such as La dolce vita, Le notti di Cabiria, La strada, 8½ and Amarcord, which earned him twelve Academy Award nominations , four wins (for La Strada in 1957, Le notti Cabiria in 1958, ½ in 1964 and Amarcord in 1975) and theAcademy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1993, as well as numerous other awards, but above all as “a humble and ironic man, with a veil of great sadness inside.”

A sadness that probably refers back to the central point of his entire career, which has lasted almost forty years, that is, remembrance: the memory of the Rimini of his childhood as the city with an almost mythical aspect, to which he always wishes to return, because it is linked to his most intimate and most emotional sphere, and to which when he returns he rediscovers the beauty and magic of its places, to which he is strongly attached. “How I like to remember more than to live. After all, what difference does it make?” he had Roberto Benigni say in The Voice of the Moon.

Federico Fellini at the Grand Hotel in Rimini in 1983 (photograph taken by Davide Minghini)

Francesca Fabbri Fellini

His is a visceral relationship with the city that gave him birth, so much so that, in Fellini’s films, Rimini is always evoked.

In Rimini, Fellini lived from 1920 to 1939, the year he decided to move to Rome: in the capital he began working as a journalist and as a cartoonist, began writing scripts and jokes for live shows, was called to work in radio; shortly thereafter he made his debut as a screenwriter, beginning his long career that will forever remain in the history of cinema.

But to his city he kept returning. “When he would go up to Rimini to visit his mother Ida, his sister Maddalena, me and dad Giorgio,” Francesca continues, "he would sleep at the Grand Hotel: his second home. In my dad’s car he would immediately ask for a nice ride along the waterfront, a little walk to the tip of the palata and then a nice lunch all together at Chez Vous or Embassy. These were the two restaurants in the Rimini that is no more that he loved very much." Therefore, his favorite places were the Grand Hotel, where Federico used to sleep in suite 316 every time he arrived in Rimini, the seafront up to the Palata, that is, the pier, but also the Fulgor, that is, the cinema where he saw the first film of his life, as well as the streets, squares and the Tiberius Bridge that spoke to him of his childhood and brought back endless memories. Points that are found reproduced especially in Amarcord, a 1973 film set in Rimini, but which was not actually filmed there. In fact, although his films evoke Rimini, no scenes were shot in the Romagna town.

The Grand Hotel of Rimini

Federico Fellini at the Grand Hotel in Rimini in 1983 (photograph taken by Davide Minghini)

Amarcord is considered Fellini’s most autobiographical film , as is clear from the title itself, which means nothing more than “I remember” in the Romagnolo dialect. The protagonist is Titta Biondi, who recounts, in the midst of his adolescence, life in the ancient village of the town, with its inhabitants, each with his own characteristics, and with its festivals and traditions. All indications are that Titta impersonates the very young Federico who recalls the age of his adolescence in Rimini. But, as already stated, the Rimini of memory was reconstructed in Cinecittà.

“Nothing is known, everything is imagined,” he said. And Fellini was able to create extraordinary imagery that is not to be understood, however, as mere invention out of thin air, but rather as an imagination that stems from a kind of “visionariness,” from “an imaginative interpretation” of the real world; he was able to elevate his Rimini to a city of dreams, where the most characteristic and, for the director, most intimate places took on a universal role of beauty. At the same time for Italy, Fellini represented it, especially in the most famous film starring Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg, as the country of the “dolce vita,” recounting precisely with his visionary tendency the Rome and more generally the Italy of the 1960s, the years of the economic boom and the exciting desire to enjoy life and beauty. That atmosphere of well-being in which carefree and fun was sought.

In this view of the enjoyment of life, of economic well-being flowing into the purest glitz, the Grand Hotel in Rimini was a symbol of wealth, of the great luxury dreamed of. A place of forbidden desire in front of which Titta Biondi, the protagonist of Amarcord and alter-ego of the young Fellini, would spend hours spying, through the hedges, on the magical world of the rich. Through the unforgettable film, the building became world famous and even today everything speaks of the Fellini myth. Since its inauguration in July 1908, the Grand Hotel’s Art Nouveau facade facing the sea and its bright and opulent interiors, furnished with 18th-century Venetian and French pieces, huge Murano chandeliers and precious marbles, have told a long story of charm and elegance, and since 1994 it has been recognized as a national monument for being part of and still belonging to the history of Italy.

- fellini amarcord, amarcord, ekberg

Federico Fellini on the set of Amarcord in 1973 (photograph taken by Davide Minghini)

Federico Fellini on the set of Amarcord in 1973 (photograph taken by Davide Minghini)

Bruno Zanin and Magali Noël play Titta Biondi and Gradisca in Amarcord

Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg play Marcello Rubini and Sylvia in La dolce vita

La Palata was another place of dream and imagination: here, on the promenade favored by locals and tourists alike, the boats of the clam fishermen departed, and it was from here, in Amarcord, that boats departed to go and watch the nighttime passage into the Adriatic of the ocean liner Rex, the largest built in the 1930s and sunk in 1944 near Trieste.

But many other sequences from Amarcord illustrate glimpses of the city of Romagna: the cars that participated in the Mille Miglia raced from the Tiberius Bridge toward Corso d’Augusto; the squares of Cavour, Tre Martiri and Ferrari were the settings for famous passages in the film, such as the peacock on the Pigna fountain, the “moustaches” on bicycles, and the Monument to the Fallen of World War I.

And again, it is inside the Fulgor Cinema that Titta Biondi buffoonishly attempts to seduce Gradisca, a sensual and procubescent woman, played by Magali Noël, whom we all remember, wrapped in a white dress, watching the big screen while smoking. Recently restored to recreate both internally and externally the Fellini atmosphere, the Cinema Fulgor, in its Art Nouveau building, is where the young Fellini first became acquainted with the cinematic world, for it was here that he saw the first films of his life, first among them Maciste all’inferno. It was thus from the Fulgor that it all began: he would never again leave the world of cinema for the rest of his life. An evocative place that, following the staging designed by maestro Dante Ferretti, has been handed back to the people of Rimini, showing the historic cinema on Corso d’Augusto in the style most in vogue in the 1930s and 1940s.

“I don’t make a film to debate theses or support theories. I make a film in the same way I live a dream. Which is fascinating as long as it remains mysterious and allusive but which is in danger of becoming bland when it is explained,” said the director.

The Fulgor Cinema

Borgo di San Giuliano, mural featuring Federico Fellini

Borgo di San Giuliano, mural with Giulietta Masina as Gelsomina

Borgo di San Giuliano, mural with Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg

Characters and scenes from his best-known films appear on pastel-hued walls of houses in Borgo di San Giuliano, the old fishing village in Rimini that has now become distinctive for its Fellini murals. There is Gelsomina clinging to a pole, the young protagonist of La strada played by Fellini’s wife Giulietta Masina; there are Marcello and Anita in the very famous scene at the Trevi Fountain; Ginger and Fred. There is Fellini himself in the company of Mastroianni. Murals that began to be created by artists in 1994, after the director’s death, on the occasion of the Festa de’ borg: during the borgo festival held every two years, from its second edition in 1980, the walls of the houses were decorated with depictions of landscapes and local inhabitants to revalorize a working-class neighborhood considered infamous, but from the 1994 edition, entirely dedicated to the director, the scenes and characters depicted changed face, deciding to pay homage to the great director who celebrated Rimini in all his films. Although he himself called it “a mess, confused, fearful, tender, with this great breath, this open motion of the sea.”

The city’s view of the sea has been represented since 1948 by the Fellinia, the camera that is located in Federico Fellini Park, near the Grand Hotel. Everything is reunited with the great master, the immortal genius whose birth centenary will fall in 2020. The whole city will remember him through its places and through the exhibition that from December 14, 2019 to March 15, 2020 is set up in Castel Sismondo, Fellini100. Also, as a birthday present for his centenary, his niece Francesca will present the short film written and directed by her, entitled La Fellinette, after the pastel drawing her uncle “Chicco” made for her when she was five years old on the beach in Rimini.

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