Fellini’s Films and Commercials: From Postwar to Postmodern

Federico Fellini’s distinct style delighted generations of film viewers and inspired filmmakers and artists around the world. In Fellini’s Films and Commercials, renowned Fellini scholar Frank Burke presents a film-by-film analysis of the famed director’s cinematic output from a theoretical perspective. He explores Fellini’s movement from relatively classic filmmaking to modernist reflexivity, and then to postmodern reproduction. Burke moves from analysis of stories told from a relatively objective standpoint, to increased concentration on Fellini-as-author and on the cinematic apparatus, to Fellini’s dismantling of authorship and the cinematic apparatus, to his postmodern signifying strategies. Grounded in poststructuralist approaches to texts and signification, Burke shows that Fellini is profoundly readable, if extremely complex.

Revisiting Burke’s 1996 monograph, this revised and updated edition includes a new preface and an additional chapter on the filmmaker’s work on commercials. Elegantly written and thoroughly researched, this book is essential reading for any Fellini fan or scholar.