Tullio Pinelli, Screenwriter for Fellini, Dies at 100 By BRUCE WEBER, NY Times Tullio Pinelli, whose prolific screenwriting career included a long partnership with the director Federico Fellini, with whom he wrote many of Fellini’s best-known works, including “I Vitelloni,” “La Strada,” “La Dolce Vita” and “8 ½,” died on Saturday in Rome. He was 100.
The death was confirmed by his son Carlo Alberto Pinelli. Mr. Pinelli, who helped write more than 70 films, had been a lawyer in Turin, his hometown, where he also wrote plays. Not until his late 30s did he devote himself to movies. One day in late 1946 his life changed. He was standing in the Piazza Barberini in Rome, reading a newspaper at a kiosk, when he began a conversation with a young man reading the same paper. It was Fellini, then a young screenwriter, and they immediately fell into a discussion of films, each expressing a desire to infuse poetry and lyricism into the political neo-realism then in vogue in Italian cinema. “Meeting each other was a creative lightning bolt,” he told a Fellini biographer, Tullio Kezich. “We spoke the same language from the start. We took a walk and ended up at his house on Via Lutezia.” He went on: “We were fantasizing about a screenplay that would be the exact opposite of what was fashionable then: the story of a very shy and modest office worker, who discovers he can fly, so he flaps his arms and escapes out the window.” Nothing came of the idea. But from that serendipitous meeting sprang a great friendship and one of the significant collaborations in movie history. Fellini and Mr. Pinelli began by working together as screenwriters for established Italian directors — Pietro Germi, Roberto Rossellini and Michelangelo Antonioni, among others. Mr. Pinelli, an intellectual with a firm grounding in formal dramatic writing, gave weight to Fellini’s most effervescent flights of fancy, and when the ambitious and impatient Fellini stepped behind the camera, Mr. Pinelli helped him build his memorable tales of exuberant longing, anguishing passion and fantastical sensuousness. The two men had help. Creating a story and a script was often a group effort in the Italian moviemaking of the day, and Fellini’s stable of collaborators included Ennio Flaiano and Brunello Rondi. But Fellini’s partnership with Mr. Pinelli was his longest lasting. From 1951 to 1965, when they had a disagreement over the nature of the title character in “Giulietta Degli Spiriti” (“Juliet of the Spirits”), the semisurreal portrait of a woman undone by suspicions of her husband’s infidelity, Mr. Pinelli worked with Fellini on a remarkable series of films. They included “I Vitelloni” (1953), an astringent, burlesque group portrait of indolent young Italians; “La Strada” (1954), about a warped but tender love affair between a circus strongman (Anthony Quinn) and a feeble-minded girl (Giulietta Masina, Fellini’s wife); “Le Notti di Cabiria” (“Nights of Cabiria”) (1957), the piquant and unsettling story of a prostitute (again, Masina); “La Dolce Vita” (1960), about a high-living journalist (Marcello Mastroianni) who craves life’s base pleasures and despairs over their meaninglessness; and “8 ½” (1963), Fellini’s autobiographical masterpiece, full of fantastical dream sequences and flashbacks, about a film director (Mastroianni) stymied in his work. “La Strada,” “Cabiria” and “8 ½” all won Oscars for best foreign film. “La Strada,” “8 ½,” “La Dolce Vita” and “I Vitelloni” were nominated for best screenplay. Mr. Pinelli was born on June 24, 1908, in Turin, where his father was a judge. According to family lore, he and his brother Carlo would stage elaborate puppet shows. Mr. Pinelli served in a cavalry regiment in the Italian Army, and loved riding all his life. He was literary by nature and had a close friendship with the Italian poet Cesare Pavese. An active anti-fascist, Mr. Pinelli was wounded fighting for the Resistance during World War II, his son said. He was doing legal work by day and writing plays at night when his theater work began to garner acclaim, and he was commissioned to write movie scripts. He moved to Rome in 1946. Mr. Pinelli’s first wife, Maria Cristina Quilico, died in 1987. In addition to his son Carlo, of Rome, he is survived by his wife, Madeleine LeBeau, an actress who played the jilted lover of Rick (Humphrey Bogart) in “Casablanca” and appeared in “8 ½”; another son, Fernando, who lives in Australia; and grandchildren and great- grandchildren. After his falling out with Fellini, Mr. Pinelli collaborated on many films with Germi (including the 1972 marital comedy “Alfredo, Alfredo,” starring Dustin Hoffman) and other directors. In 1985 he and Fellini finally reconciled. After that, they worked together on two films, including Fellini’s last, “La Voce Della Luna” (“The Voice of the Moon”), from 1990. The reunion came about when Fellini was making “Ginger and Fred” (1986), a sendup of Italian television starring Mastroianni and Masina as former dance-hall performers brought out of retirement to appear on a screwy television variety show. “One morning I heard the doorbell and it was Federico,” Mr. Pinelli recalled, some years later. “He’d come to ask me to read the story for ‘Ginger e Fred’ — as if we’d just seen each other the night before! And we got along famously.” --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Joe Bob's Trailer Park" group. 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