I'd like to hear how "Fellini Satyricon" comes across on the radio!

You are brilliant is my first reaction. My second ~ holy how did I miss most of this!
Watching Disney movies I guess. There is so much I need to learn!
Wow~ okay going to watch movies now.
HM~*

Thank you for highlighting Rota's genius. If you had never had the chance nor ability to see what Fellini had created, even such genius would not be enough to truly tell the story. This is why I hope people like me who do audio description/DVS for people who are visually-impaired are permitted to work on more films of the past and now: so more people really could watch more films on the radio.

A beautiful post and I'm looking forward to summon forth precious cinematic memories through these clips but with the eyes open.

he is great, but I like Moriccone more :)

Thanks for this most excellent collection. Simply superb.

Thank you so much for your kind comments. Our family appreciates it.

Ebert: It's amazing what your great-grandfather did just in the 1950s!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nino_Rota#1950s

Let me start by saying Fellini's 8 1/2 is my most favorite movie of all times. And as much as I truly do love Rico's music. While it is true many times you could close your eyes and imagine the movie, one cannot watch a Fellini movie with my eyes closed. Why?
To me Fellini is so utterly visual a filmmaker that I bed few could ever close their eyes and match what he has imagined.
I love the opening scene where the director of the science fiction movie which is supposedly being filmed, is trapped inside the car in this gigantic car jam with the windows of the car fogging over, leaving him and the viewer blind to the outside world, trapped, entombed, and going no where. In this opening scene, Fellini, cornered and nearing panic, does something totally Fellini and totally visually beautiful--he escapes his jam by going out of the car window, and floating upward, a sort of free floating black cloaked ghost, arms extended, weightless of the real, he is exuberant, and living now in his imagination, and so free.
I have not watched 8 1/2 recently, but if memory serves me right, there is no music during this opening scene--not in the flight part I do remember.
Perhaps I would imagine James Thurber like images. But I do not believe I could ever see these fantastical beautiful images. They are somehow the only ones that are right; I guess because they are Fellini images.
I would so have missed not seeing that opening scene. Like Scorsese's slow motion opening of De Niro's warming up for the boxing match, that opening is the movie. Wordless, totally visually the movie has already been given to you. And you have to SEE it.
My other absolute favorite scene in 8 1/2 is the end with the child, dressed up in the outfit of the schoolboy, playing the flute, "leads" the adults--the moneymen, the actors, the people of his past, his family, and his lovers, onto the circus ring which is lit in light in the middle of nowhere in the dark of the night. In the background is the eerie, abandoned rocket launch tower for the movie the director himself was never able to make. But what is forefront is the circus ring where the child leads this cast of his life in this circle dance, all of them holding hands, exhuberant, dancing in the dark to the tune the child creates.
It still gives me chills even after watching the movie many many times to watch that ending scene. As the child plays, the light narrows as the "characters" of his life exit until only the child remains in this tiny circle of light as he too exits and the screen goes dark. And you still continue to hear his flute play this haunting searching song.
Yes, you might imagine some of what is happening at the end guided by the music without watching the movie--but probably because you have seen so much of Fellini's world.
I would argue that what lifts Fellini's movies past what you could imagine, is Fellini's imagination and sheer love of the visual. What his imagination delivers is so unique and often so unexpected that you have to SEE it or you will truly miss the movie.
It is HIS movie, not ours. And watching a Fellini movie is surely a necessary part of taking the journey Fellini is telling, admittedly, with beautiful music that also gives one the shivers.
But Fellini is as visual as he is musical.
My father was a professional photographer, I am not, but I love to take photographs. And I was held totally spellbound the first time, and everytime I watch 8 1/2 by the images.
Perhaps I am more limited by my imagination than others. But, I admit there is NO way I could ever ever ever have come up with some of the photographic moments in 8 1/2. I hear the music and I love it, but I fell in love with the images which are light years ahead of what I would have imagined had I "watched" 8 1/2 with my eyes closed.
I have not seen Nine on broadway or in the movie theatre. But, I would bet for me the movie would fail because simply it was not Fellini. Only Fellini could have made a Nine that worked. And the key would be the images that work with the music but still exceed it.

I grew up listening to movies on the radio because Irish TV was broadcast on radio FM frequencies in the 70's.

You learn a lot that way. :)

I grew up listening to movies on the radio because Irish TV was broadcast on radio FM frequencies in the 70's.

You learn a lot that way. :)

Nino Rota was really great, but I can think of better composers, in my point of view. Ennio Morricone, Bernard Herrmann, John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, Jou Hisaishi....to name a few.

"Amorcord," "Roma," "Satyricon" permanently ingrained in my psyche...

Thanks for the memory.

The first album cover in the series of images you posted is "Amarcord Nino Rota," one of my all-time favorite recordings. It's a collection of Rota's themes from various Fellini pictures, respectfully re-interpreted by a gang of jazz cats including Carla Bley, Bill Frisell, and Jaki Byard. It never gets old.

I bought the soundtrack to "La Dolce Vita" after seeing it for the first time at the 'Cinema Interruptus' in Boulder a few years ago. I fell in love with the music. I hadn't yet thought of following the link of Rota's music from one film to another. I will do that now.

Schopenhauer wrote, "Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see." Rota was a genius. Great Tribute!

Dear Mr. Ebert,

I am deeply moved by the extent to which I recognized myself in what you have written above. I have recently finished my bachelor thesis in film studies on the topic of Fellini and how his fractures of the fourth wall serve his narratives and his own auteurism. After having examined closely fourteen of his films, I stood in absolute awe of his mastery and his craft as a film maker. For the past couple of years, "8 1/2" has been one of my top twenty favorite movies of all time, but I could never have expected how entranced and deeply, deeply moved I would be by watching "Nights of Cabiria", "La dolce vita", "La strada", "I vitelloni", "Amarcord", "Juliet of the Spirits", "Roma"...
(I have to admit, only "Casanova" and "Satyricon" were an absolute horror to watch - but since they were Fellini's "stop-gap" films, I do not regret disliking them.)

And indeed, it was most of all Nino Rota's brilliant contribution to Fellini's oeuvre that kept fuelling my love for my thesis topic. His music seemed to illuminate and brighten up my daily routine. As an eighteen-year-old, I was amazed by how great the impact of these cinematic fossiles (with all due respect) proved to be.

So I fully agree with you, Mr. Ebert: I too could watch a Fellini film on the radio. Yet, it is always better to watch them on the silver screen, don't you think?

All the best wishes for 2010!

Best regards,
Jordi
(Haarlem, the Netherlands)

Ebert: We are kindred spirits. Congratulations on your new blog.

A bit of trivia: popular composer James Horner (TITANIC, AVATAR) is the subject of some controversy in film music circles for his liberal musical "borrowings." In 1989, he used Rota's AMARCORD theme in his score to HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS (Exhibit A: http://tinyurl.com/yft2v75 ) and Disney was obliged to settle with Rota's estate after the fact.

I, too, love Rota, but your comment that there is no one else who composed music for films in the 50s and 60s whose music is still in print and selling well, is, of course, not very accurate.. I can give you one name without even breaking a sweat - a composer named Henry Mancini - most of his albums have never been out of print, and continue to sell well, especially Breakfast at Tiffany's and Peter Gunn. Also, Morricone's scores for the Leone/Eastwood westerns and Once Upon A Time In The West are still with us and always popular. I believe others could give you many more examples.

You are KIDDING, right? Henry Mancini, Lalo Schifrin, Jerry Goldsmith, Johnny Williams - all with albums still in print, there are other composers, too. What a ludicrous post on your part.

Nino Rota was a great composer for film as well as the classical arena. Many of his scores are classics. However, was he the 'the greatest film composer of all time?'. Was he better at getting to the crux of the drama in the manner that Alex North did. Did did he truly possess the talent and versatility of a Jerry Goldsmith or John Williams? And how about the Golden Age composers? Miklos Rozsa, Franz Waxman, Erich Korngold et al???

And I'll bet that new releases of Jerry Goldsmith or John Williams film scores clearly outsell the Nino Rota releases. While everyone is entitled to their favorite composer the statement of saying one such composer is the greatest of all time is silly to say the least.

as a musician i think i just experienced one of those moments that in a lifetime moment of truth film would be called a turning point. as a human being i thank you.

i am so grateful for this post. sorry i'm so late. you are so prolific, it's hard to keep up.
i've sent on a few of the greatest clips i like to others, that u posted and so agree about the music. i'm memorizing the godfather love theme as a must for an inveterate whistler.i work in a hospital and you'd be amazed at how many old folks appreciate hearing the songs of their youth. i whistle the blues, reggae and other genres and get comments like "u made my day man" occasionally.
i'm in the minority who think that the godfather part 3 was a great work of daring art.1 and 2 get all the credit but i like #3 the best for it's great insights.
off subject, i think that the turk's head burgers were way better than the steak and shake's on green st, where i was working during high school in the 60's. i can still remember the taste of the real swiss cheese melding with the ketchup on top as it was covered with a pot lid to create the melt . of course, the beef was even better than the gus belt cows.
just talked to steve, the old proprietor, and he said to say hi.
i enjoyed going to steak and shake when i last went to urbana and so agree with your comments about the memories.
an old steak and shake and turk's head employee. now a respiratory therapist .
thanks for the great musical memories, especially the fellinni films we saw back then at the art theater and elsewhere.

I have seen some of Fellini's films 7 to 10, 11 times. I could hear the epic La Dolce Vita on the radio and envision every frame. Cabiria, my sentimental favorite. Otto e mezzo. Giulietta. And everyone's favorite weepfest, La Strada. These are engraved in my heart like no other films, excepting a few Warner's movies from the 30s and 40s.

Now I wish someone would netcast them -- only audio, no visual. It would be like hearing an Italian Dickens being read by the fireplace...

Ebert: Now there's an interesting notion.

All the soundtracks are on iTunes and probably elsewhere.

"Citizen Kane" "Jane Eyre" "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir." "Psycho" "North by Northwest" "Taxi Driver"

I vote for Bernard Herrmann!