‘When peo­ple came to Rome, they only want­ed to meet the Pope and Fellini’

While La Dolce Vita is back in UK cin­e­mas to mark the cen­te­nary of his birth, there’s a chap­ter of Fed­eri­co Fellini’s film­mak­ing career which is often over­looked. A two-month ret­ro­spec­tive at BFI South­bank affords an oppor­tu­ni­ty to see the five films (start­ing with 1980’s City of Women) from his neglect­ed late peri­od, back where his sin­gu­lar visions belong.

One per­son who remained close to Felli­ni dur­ing this time was Fiammet­ta Pro­fili, who worked as his per­son­al assis­tant from the ear­ly ​’80s through to his death in 1993. We gave her a call at her home in Rome to chat about the final decade of arguably the best-known name in world cinema.

LWLies: Tell us about your first encounter with Fellini.

Pro­fili: The first time I met him, I was work­ing in a the­atre and he’d come to see an actor, the guy who’d dubbed Don­ald Suther­land in Casano­va. Of course, I was absolute­ly in awe because he was a very charis­mat­ic char­ac­ter. The first thing we all noticed, straight away, was the fact that he had an incred­i­ble sense of humour.

How did you come to work with him?

Well, three years went by because he already had a per­son­al assis­tant, who then left to go do some­thing else, so he was look­ing for some­one. It began because he need­ed to trans­late a treat­ment of [his 1983 film] And the Ship Sails On into Eng­lish. He knew that I spoke Eng­lish so he asked me to do that trans­la­tion. Before tak­ing me to Cinecit­tà where he would open his office for the prepa­ra­tion of the film, he took me to din­ner with his wife Giuli­et­ta Masi­na, to ask her if it was a good idea to hire me as his new per­son­al assistant.

What did a typ­i­cal day look like for you?

Felli­ni didn’t shoot films one after anoth­er because they would take so long to make, so there was a lot of down time between pro­duc­tions. When we weren’t actu­al­ly mak­ing a film, I’d work with him on the cast­ing before pro­duc­tion and then post-pro­duc­tion would begin. He’d receive moun­tains of mail, which he was adamant about answer­ing per­son­al­ly, so we’d have to work on that. Then he’d have ideas about pos­si­ble projects which he’d dic­tate to me. Of course there were no com­put­ers at the time, so that would all be done on a type­writer. We’d have meet­ings with pro­duc­ers and the many stars and per­son­al­i­ties who, when they came to Rome, would only want to meet the Pope and Fellini.

So were you based at Cinecittà?

Only dur­ing pro­duc­tion and maybe a bit of post-pro­duc­tion. Oth­er­wise he kept an office in Rome.

His 1987 film Inter­vista was shot at Cinecit­tà and shows the stu­dio in its all its fad­ed glo­ry. What was it like work­ing there in the 1980s?

Well, Felli­ni just couldn’t ever imag­ine film­ing on loca­tion. What­ev­er he want­ed to por­tray he had to build so he could have it just the way he want­ed it. Rim­i­ni and Venice were built there from scratch, as was the entire ship in And the Ship Sails On, on a sea made of plas­tic. It was impor­tant for his vision to get these things exact­ly as he saw them in his mind. So Cinecit­tà was his king­dom where he could put all of this into prac­tice. He only real­ly lived when he was film­ing or prepar­ing. When he came to the stu­dio it meant that he was final­ly start­ing a film, and that was the best time of his life.

The ​’80s were a dif­fi­cult time for Felli­ni, with those lat­er films not being as well received as his ear­li­er, canon­i­cal pic­tures. Did he strug­gle to get those films made, espe­cial­ly giv­en his demands to build every­thing from scratch, pre­sum­ably at great expense?

Things were made even worse by the fact that, as he went on with his career, he got into the habit of not writ­ing scripts at all. He’d write a few pages, just the idea, and that was it. So, of course this made it almost impos­si­ble for him to find pro­duc­ers who would give him mon­ey with­out know­ing how much the final cost would be. It got hard­er and hard­er for him, and he final­ly had to rely on pro­duc­ers who had lots of mon­ey and just want­ed the pres­tige of say­ing they’d pro­duced a film by Fellini.

Was there much ten­sion or com­pe­ti­tion for space at the stu­dio between him and Dino de Lau­ren­ti­is, who was also mak­ing huge pro­duc­tions there at the time?

Not at all. Dino de Lau­ren­ti­is just kept send­ing Felli­ni scripts, for every sin­gle film he made in those years. They’d all be Amer­i­can block­busters so Felli­ni would just laugh and that would be that. But Dino want­ed Felli­ni for every­thing. He sent him one script, which Felli­ni gave to me to read, say­ing, ​‘Tell me what you think.’ I told him it was real­ly the most ridicu­lous sto­ry I’d ever read, about some girl who works in a steel fac­to­ry and dances, it was real­ly crazy. It turned out to be Flash­dance, which he nev­er would have direct­ed, but turned out to be this huge suc­cess. Felli­ni always used to make fun of me and my com­mer­cial intu­ition afterwards.

You received a cast­ing cred­it on both Gin­ger and Fred and Voice of the Moon. Felli­ni is famous for the faces in his films, so how did that process work?

All we had to do was spread the word that Felli­ni was cast­ing at Cinecit­tà and peo­ple would just start flock­ing in. Peo­ple knew that he often worked with non-pro­fes­sion­al actors, so they’d just come and say things like, ​‘Peo­ple tell me I have a Felli­ni face, so here I am.’ He’d try to get as many of those peo­ple into the films as he could. I’d try to screen peo­ple first, but he just want­ed to see every­one. He enjoyed the inter­ac­tion immense­ly and had this spe­cial gift where he would say, ​‘I have cho­sen you as the per­son who owns the restau­rant,’ and this per­son would sud­den­ly say, ​‘That’s incred­i­ble because my father used to own a restau­rant and I grew up work­ing in one.’ He always used to be able to guess some­thing about these peo­ple that had some­thing to do with their real lives.

There’s a sequence in Inter­vista where Felli­ni – play­ing him­self – is cast­ing the role of Brun­hilde in the fake pro­duc­tion of Kafka’s Ameri­ka. He cer­tain­ly had a type when it came to cast­ing women…

He was just fas­ci­nat­ed by women. He was end­less­ly curi­ous about all the dif­fer­ent types of women – the dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ties and thought process­es. When a woman turned up he’d per­haps stay and speak with her for longer. He had this gift where when he was speak­ing to you he made you feel that you were one of the most impor­tant peo­ple in the world. They all came out feel­ing so flat­tered and excit­ed by all the atten­tion he’d giv­en them.

You had the chance to work with Mas­troian­ni on Gin­ger and Fred.

They were just so close. They’d not be in touch for maybe a cou­ple of years and then they’d meet again and it’d be like they’d nev­er been apart. Mas­troian­ni had com­plete trust in Felli­ni, he’d do what­ev­er he told him and didn’t care about read­ing a script before. For Gin­ger and Fred, where he played the alter-ego of Felli­ni, he had to deal with Fellini’s prob­lem of los­ing his hair. Felli­ni asked him to pluck out his hair so that he’d appear more bald, and Mas­troian­ni just did it – an actor, at his age, pluck­ing his hair out with the risk of it not grow­ing back – it’s amaz­ing, I think. He was such a good man, so easy about everything.

The oth­er face in Gin­ger and Fred is per­haps just as emblem­at­ic of the Ital­ian cin­e­ma, that of Fellini’s wife Giuli­et­ta Masi­na. It had been more than 20 years since they’d worked togeth­er by that point.

There real­ly wasn’t a role for her in the films in between, and he used to be very impa­tient with her on the set. He’d excuse him­self by say­ing, ​‘Giuli­et­ta was so much a part of me, like my arm or my hand, that I shouldn’t need to explain any­thing. She should know what to do with­out me hav­ing to tell her.’

Was she around dur­ing the oth­er pro­duc­tions dur­ing those lat­er years?

She’d come and vis­it for the day some­times, but that’s about it.

What do you think it was about the lat­er films you worked on with Felli­ni that meant they didn’t real­ly con­nect with audi­ences and crit­ics at the time?

Felli­ni was very upset about grow­ing old. He thought he was age­ing even when he wasn’t that old, and it cer­tain­ly changed his char­ac­ter and his mood. He kept his incred­i­ble sense of humour up until the end, but he was def­i­nite­ly a bit more pes­simistic in his lat­er years, which must have affect­ed his cre­ativ­i­ty in some ways.

One of the great­est moments in all of the lat­er films is the won­der­ful reunion between Felli­ni, Mas­troian­ni and Ani­ta Ekberg in Inter­vista, where the two stars dance in sil­hou­ette behind a pro­jec­tion of them danc­ing three decades ear­li­er in La Dolce Vita. Do you remem­ber the day that was shot?

It was very emo­tion­al. We were there in Anita’s house, and every­one had the feel­ing that we were doing some­thing real­ly spe­cial. She was so hap­py to have this oppor­tu­ni­ty, and it was just incred­i­ble to be a part of that moment.

La Dolce Vita is in cin­e­mas nation­wide now. A two month ret­ro­spec­tive of Fed­eri­co Fellini’s films plays through Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary at BFI Southbank.