Fellini kind of grows on you, I think. Not only between movies, as you learn more about what makes him tick, but as each individual film unspools before your eyes. The first one of his films I saw was La Strada, and I didn’t get it. At least notGiulietta Masina at first . . . I didn’t know anything about Italian Neo-realism or Roberto Rosselini or anything like that. I hadn’t heard about how he was castigated by the neo-realist faithful for not excoriating the Roman Catholic church, for not being socially-conscious enough. I didn’t know about his interest in Jungian archetypes, and that he’d begun to explore them in the way he directed his actors. All I could see was what looked like over-the-top acting from both Giulietta Masina and Anthony Quinn, not to mention Richard Basehart, who’d looked so level-headed as that nice Admiral from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.

From the first frame, when Zampanò (Quinn) buys Gelsomina (Masina) from her mother I thought, what is this that I’ve gotten myself into? I tried to match the Italian soundtrack with the movements of Quinn’s lips, and I thought, God, this is the very epitome of the pretentious art-house pap that my mama warned me about. And then, about a third of the way into it, or maybe half-way, I don’t know, I began to get it. I began to enter its rhythms, appreciate its black-and-white photography and the absolute control Fellini had over his mis-en-scene. I began to appreciate Masina’s oerformance as well, stylized as it was, and how committed she and Quinn were to their roles.

Since then, this gradual appreciation has happened with every film I’ve seen (with the possible exception of City of Women, but I don’t want to talk about that now). I start out thinking: what was I thinking? And end up bowled over once again, a sucker for the Felliniesque.