Ennio Flaiano

Ennio Flaiano (March 5, 1910 in Pescara – November 20 1972 in Rome), was an Italian screenwriter, playwright, novelist, journalist and drama critic. He is best known for his work with Federico Fellini.

Biography

Flaiano wrote for "Cineillustrato", "Oggi", "Il Mondo", "Il Corriere della Sera" and other prominent Italian newspapers and magazines.

In 1947, he won the Strega Prize for his novel, "Tempo di uccidere". The novel, set in Ethiopia during the Italian invasion (1935-36), tells the story of an Italian officer who accidentally kills an Ethiopian woman and is then ravaged by the awareness of his act. The barren landscape around the protagonist hints at an interior emptiness and meaninglessness. This is one of the few Italian literary works (which has been constantly in print for sixty years) dealing with the misdeeds of Italian colonialism in Eastern Africa.

With Tullio Pinelli, he co-wrote the screenplays for ten films by Federico Fellini: Variety Lights (1950), The White Sheik (1952), I vitelloni (1953), La strada (1954), Il bidone (1955), Le notti di Cabiria (1957), La dolce vita (1960), "The Temptations of Doctor Antonio" episode in Boccaccio '70 (1962), 8 1/2 (1963), and Juliet of the Spirits (1965). [Peter Bondanella, "The Cinema of Federico Fellini", Princeton University Press, 1992, pages 337-340.]

Quotations

* In Italy, fascists divide themselves into two categories: fascists and antifascists. [Quoted in Oriana Fallaci's four-page essay titled The Rage and the Pride published on September 29, 2001 in Il Corriere della sera.]
* Chastity is the mirage of obscene people.
* In my love stories remorse used to come afterwards, now it goes before me.
* I got so upset I couldn't sleep the whole afternoon
* If you are not a communist when you are a teenager, then you have no heart. If you are still a communist when you are 40, then you have no brain.

References