Page "Federico Fellini" Paragraph 3

Enrolled at the Ginnasio Giulio Cesare in 1929, he made friends with Luigi ‘ Titta ’ Benzi, later a prominent Rimini lawyer ( and the model for young Titta in Amarcord ( 1973 )).

In Mussolini ’ s Italy, Fellini and Riccardo became members of the Avanguardista, the compulsory Fascist youth group for males.

He visited Rome with his parents for the first time in 1933, the year of the maiden voyage of the transatlantic ocean liner SS Rex ( which makes an appearance in Amarcord ).

The sea creature found on the beach at the end of La Dolce Vita ( 1960 ) has its basis in a giant fish marooned on a Rimini beach during a storm in 1934.

Although Fellini adapted key events from his childhood and adolescence in films such as I Vitelloni ( 1953 ), 8½ ( 1963 ), and Amarcord ( 1973 ), he insisted that such autobiographical memories were inventions: " It is not memory that dominates my films.

To say that my films are autobiographical is an overly facile liquidation, a hasty classification.

It seems to me that I have invented almost everything: childhood, character, nostalgias, dreams, memories, for the pleasure of being able to recount them.