Fellini and His Women

Through the magical vision of the late Federico Fellini, extraordinary women became sublime, and celluloid images became inspiration. HELMUT NEWTON pays homage to the master director and his larger-than-life heroines

HELMUT NEWTON

ANOUK AIMÉE

La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2

You see her looking into a mirror, touching her lower lip, and there is a clock in the background. Maybe; because of all we were feeling when we shot it, with Fellini just gone, it says something about time. Time passing Time passed.

'We have lost our maestro," Anouk Aimée told me over the telephone in late October, a few days after the death of Federico Fellini, who had directed her in La Dolce Vita and 8½. I was sympathetic; I admired Fellini. A lot of the scenes that I have photographed on the beach or by the sea were influenced by his movies. I loved the beach scenes! And the scenes in the popular, cheap restaurants—what we call the baraques, the little sheds that serve wonderful food—absolutely influenced me. In the 60s and 70s, I had a house in St.-Tropez and I did shoots on the beach all the time and I would never have observed what I photographed in quite the way I did if I hadn't seen Fellini's movies. The term "paparazzi," which refers to the photographers who buzz like pestering mosquitoes around the famous, was inspired by a character in La Dolce Vita, and after I saw the film I started to use actual paparazzi in the fashion shoots I was doing at the time. Nothing would have been the same without Fellini.

I love big women, tall women, powerful women. This is something that is very dear to my heart—and to Fellini's as well. As you go through his movies, there are these large women, these enormously breasted women, some of them almost caricatures, but very beautiful. He saw in them everything that one wants in a woman: sensuality, the mother, protection—everything! His women were never conventional. They were beautiful for all the things inside them that he allowed you to see. You want to keep staring into their faces. Time stops a little.

You know, there is a very famous scene in La Strada with Fellini's wife, Giulietta Masina, dancing in the village square, and watching it for the first time, I just broke down in tears there in the theater. I will never forget it. I just broke down into tears. And I am not the cryingtype.

HELMUT NEWTON

ANITA EKBERG

La Dolce Vita. Boccaccio 70, 1 Clowns

I've always liked photos of a woman looking out a window, over a wall; a woman looking outside from someplace inside. think those photographs often take you inside the woman through the eyes Fellini, of course, did that better than anyone. He took you right inside them through the eyes into the heart

DONYALE LUNA

Satyricon

I had a little daylight studio in Paris; and that is her little dog I have in my arms. We were just having fun after a sitting That's all She's been dead a long while now She died so young; she was 33 She did only one Fellini film

CLAUDIA CARDINALE

8 1/2

"The sets were never silent," Claudia said, remembering Fellini. "He loved confusion." The last time they spoke; he was in L.A. "He said to me that it was so silly that we are never together and he was missing all the people that he liked. In movies, we are always working and going all over the world. We miss so many things.