Anno XXXIX, n. 2 RIVISTA DI STUDI ITALIANI/JOURNAL OF ITALIAN STUDIES 2021 Tutti i diritti riservati. © 1983 Rivista di Studi Italiani ISSN 1916-5412 Rivista di Studi Italiani Toronto, Canada: in versione cartacea fino al 2004, online dal 2005 218 www.journalofitalianstudies.com CINEMA FELLINI AND THE ADVENTURES OF PINOCCHIO: THE ETERNAL CHILD FRANCO GALLIPPI York University ntroduction The aim of my work is to focus on the presence of the story of Pinocchio in Federico Fellini’s films by examining several of the main and minor characters that by analogy can be compared to the characters in Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio. For instance, the archetypal Pinocchio is present in the interaction and conflict the characters experience before a figure of authority. In Fellini’s films, this is a dominant motif, and it is clear that the director is not interested in necessarily abolishing authority, but rather exploring its role as it interacts with the characters that challenge it or come into conflict with it. By doing so, Fellini shows the ongoing battle between the opposites that stimulates development and growth in the subject. Such growth or maturation does not always occur, as in the case of Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) in La dolce vita (1960). Considering Fellini’s vision through the story of Pinocchio, it is important to stress that there is no specific ideology behind his view, and this is consistent with Collodi’s Pinocchio, in which one finds a tension towards truth rather than ideology. Fellini’s circus is a case in point: It provided him with a stage, a “puppet show”, on which to project what he intuitively felt was true about the human experience. This is made evident in his film I clowns (1970), in which he narrates his traumatic experience during his childhood when the circus stirred something in the child Fellini, and frightened him rather than entertain him. The circus had disturbed him, and on discovering why he then builds his stage modelled on the “circus” he saw unfold before him in the daily life of a northern Italian provincial town. Therefore, in I