ABSTRACT
Film students are naturally interested in gaining some insight into Federico Fellini's specific dilemma, in which they hope someday to be embroiled themselves. This chapter looks at how deliberate Fellini is in "signaling" the onset of a new mode of reality during Acts One and Two. In Act Three, the "walls" between what is real and what is not become blurred. This lack of clear transitions between the different modes of reality is used by Fellini to go beyond the logic of linear narrative to reach a more powerful resolution to the story. Fellini's imagination was filled with images from his dream life, and these images appear throughout the film. To a large extent they dictate the choice and design of much that we see in the film. Fellini's style, and hence that of the objective narrator, is to articulate narrative beats through staging–with a minimum of cutting.
