# The Cinecitta Studios *A Biography of Federico Fellini* — Legendary Biographies No. 233 - **Subject:** Federico Fellini - **Written by:** Donovan Hadley - **Shelf:** Screen & Stage / Film - **Published:** 2026 - **Extent:** 202 pages, 6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink - **EPUB:** $3.99 — EPUB 3 · DRM-free · reads on Kindle, Kobo and Apple Books (ISBN 979-8-90623-514-5) - **Audiobook:** $5.99 — Unabridged · measured from the masters · read by Camille Rhodes (ISBN 979-8-90623-626-5) Buy it, or read the opening free: volumes/233-the-cinecitta-studios.html ## About this book The Cinema Fulgor, Rimini, 1926: a Maciste serial running on the screen, and somewhere in the dark the eldest of three children of a Romagnese travelling salesman and a Roman shopkeeper's daughter. Federico Fellini had been born in that town on the Adriatic coast on January 20, 1920. At nineteen he left it for Rome and drew caricatures for the satirical magazine Marc'Aurelio. The films came out of that. He co-wrote Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City (1945) and Paisan (1946), the foundational films of Italian neorealism, and then directed I Vitelloni (1953), La Strada (1954, with his wife Giulietta Masina), La Dolce Vita (1960), 8½ (1963), Amarcord (1973) and Ginger and Fred (1986). Five Academy Awards followed: four for Best Foreign Language Film, and an Honorary Oscar in 1993. The Palme d'Or at Cannes went to La Dolce Vita in 1960. He suffered a stroke on August 3, 1993, and a second on October 17, and died at the Policlinico Umberto I in Rome on October 31, at seventy-three. Giulietta Masina died of lung cancer on March 23, 1994. Donovan Hadley's biography opens earlier and follows the arc with the documentary patience the work rewards: the Rimini childhood and the Fulgor; the Marc'Aurelio satirical years and the early Rossellini collaborations; the long screenwriting partnerships with Pier Paolo Pasolini, Tonino Guerra and Bernardino Zapponi; the Cinecittà Studios years and the Nino Rota scores; La Dolce Vita as the cultural event of 1960; the meta-cinema of 8½ in 1963; the reception of the late Casanova (1976) and And the Ship Sails On (1983); the Pomodoro sepulchre at the Cimitero Monumentale di Rimini; and the funeral, with Masina and the trumpet of Improvviso dell'Angelo. What emerges is a portrait of a forty-year career that became the foundational body of post-neorealist European cinema, and of a marriage to Giulietta Masina that ran the entire fifty years of it. ## Contents 1. The Fulgor 2. Marc'Aurelio 3. Giulietta and the War 4. Rossellini 5. Variety Lights 6. The White Sheik 7. I Vitelloni 8. La Strada 9. Il Bidone 10. Nights of Cabiria 11. La Dolce Vita 12. 8½ 13. Juliet of the Spirits 14. Mastorna 15. Toby Dammit and Fellini Satyricon 16. The Clowns and Roma 17. Amarcord 18. Casanova 19. Orchestra Rehearsal and City of Women 20. And the Ship Sails On and Ginger and Fred 21. Intervista and The Voice of the Moon 22. Teatro 5 23. The Oscar and the Stroke 24. The Funeral ## Questions **Who is The Cinecitta Studios about?** Federico Fellini. The title never carries the subject's name: it names one concrete thing out of the life — in this case The Cinecitta Studios — and the name goes on the line underneath. **Is this an authorised biography?** No. No subject, estate, label or foundation had approval over the text, and none paid for a word of it. The cost of that independence is that no new interviews were conducted for the book; it is built from the public record, and it says on the page where a scene is reconstructed rather than documented. **Can I read some of it before buying?** Yes — the whole opening chapter and the writer's foreword, free and in full, with no email address and no account. That is 4,862 words of the book. **How long is it?** About 61,500 words, 24 chapters, 202 pages in the paperback. ## The writer Donovan Hadley is a Manchester-based culture writer for The Guardian and Sight & Sound. His biographies cover the film, theatre, and television figures whose work shaped the British and American midcentury. He spends his time researching archives to reconstruct the quiet moments behind major cultural milestones. His published work includes titles like The Nightmare Man, Frequency, and The Gap Year. He has also explored midcentury creative communities in books such as The Fifty Million Dollar Man, The USC Film School, Apartment Five C, Room 607, and The First Cast. He lives in Manchester, England, where he spends his weekends browsing local independent cinemas and collecting vintage film reels.