The Taormina Film Fest is proud to present Federico Fellini's Toby Dammit with the film's brilliant colors restored to their original chromatic values by Giuseppe Rotunno, one of Italy's greatest cinematographers and restorers, who began his long artistic association with Fellini on this film. This brand-new print-from the collection of the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia-Cineteca Nazionale, courtesy of Alberto Grimaldi Productions-was struck especially for the upcoming Taormina Film Fest and is being presented at the Tribeca Film Festival in a special preview screening by Ornella Muti and Sergio Toffetti, director of the CinetecaNazionale in Rome. The invaluable contribution of the Ornella Muti Network to this project marks the first time an Italian actor has invested in the preservation of a classic Italian film. The creative conjunction of Fellini and Edgar Allan Poe had been in the works for some time before Toby Dammit, part of a three-episode film released in the United States as Spirits of the Dead in 1968. While the segments by Louis Malle and Roger Vadim are minor works, Fellini's is a brilliant miniature, recapping many themes of La Dolce Vita in a darker key. Relying on a summary of Poe's short story Never Bet the Devil Your Head, Fellini chose to keep only the original ending. The hero becomes an alcoholic British actor (Terence Stamp) who flies to Rome to shoot a movie. He becomes embroiled in what is possibly the greatest send-up ever of movie award ceremonies and ends the evening with the keys to a brand new Ferrari in his hands. In ghostly makeup, the handsomely surreal Stamp gives one of the signature performances of his career.
Co-hosted with Italian Cultural Institute of New York.
Federico Fellini (b. Rimini, Italy, 1921) collaborated with Roberto Rossellini as a screenwriter on Open City (1945), Paisan (1946), L'amore (1948), and Flowers of St. Francis (1950). His feature films as director are: Variety Lights (codirected with Alberto Lattuada, 1950), The White Sheik (1952), I Vitelloni (1953), La Strada (1954), Il Bidone (1955), La Notte di Cabiria (1956), La Dolce Vita (1959), 81/2 (1963), Juliet of the Spirits (1965), Satyricon (1969), The Clowns (1970), Roma (1972), Amarcord (1973), Casanova (1976), Orchestra Rehearsal (1978), City of Women (1980), And the Ship Sails On (1983), Ginger and Fred (1985), Intervista (1987), and The Voice of the Moon (1990). He died in Rome in 1993.
