Fellini: The Biography

Flamboyant Italian director Federico Fellini kept a detailed dream diary which became the source for nearly all his later films, among them Casanova and 81/2. His immersion in Carl Jung's theories, obsession with the occult and reliance on psychics are among the revelations in Baxter's disarming, captivating biography. Drawing on interviews with Fellini (who died in 1993 at age 73) and his colleagues and friends, Baxter limns a self-doubting director, autocratic on the set and in his personal relationships, jealous of the success of his actress wife Giulietta Masina, and beset by anxiety about his public image, eventual death and sexuality. Son of an unresponsive father who was a traveling coffee salesman, Fellini was reared largely by dominating women. We learn that he and Giulietta led distant lives in a jaded marriage, and that he pursued passionate, nonphysical love relationships with Roberto Rossellini, Marcello Mastroianni and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Puncturing Fellini's self-mythologizing, Baxter links the soaring screen fantasies to the frustrated private individual. Photos. (Oct.)