The Martin Scorsese-Federico Fellini movie that almost was: “Unfortunately, he passed away”
Martin Scorsese has an astounding number of masterpieces on his resume, but he has just as many unrealised projects that he was never able to make.
Any filmmaker who has been working for as long as Scorsese is bound to have a few films that got away. While he works at a consistent rate and has a more robust filmography than most of the directors from his generation, he also has some films that he dreamed about doing for years that unfortunately never materialised.
There are many reasons why Scorsese’s films didn’t happen, such as rights issues, budgetary concerns, or finding the right participants. He floated the idea of making biopics about several United States Presidents, including Theodore Roosevelt and Ulysses S Grant, but ultimately moved on to make other films with Leonardo DiCaprio. Similarly, he has long desired to make a biopic about Frank Sinatra, but was never able to negotiate with the late singer’s estate because he had wanted to make a ‘warts and all’ portrayal.
Scorsese isn’t just one of the best directors ever, but someone who still loves going to the movies, so it makes sense that he would want to collaborate with a filmmaker that he admired, and he had often talked about his love of the Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini, whom he has cited as a major inspiration. Many of Fellini’s films, particularly 8 ½, are among those that Scorsese has described as his all-time favourites.
In addition to being a brilliant narrative filmmaker, Scorsese has also made several documentaries throughout his career about different subjects that fascinated him. After developing a friendship with Fellini, the pair had planned to make an ambitious documentary about the film production process.
Fellini had compiled a series of scripts about the different components of a film production, and planned to direct the project with Scorsese attached as an executive producer. This was in an era where it was common for New Hollywood directors to ‘return the favour’ by supporting the auteurs who inspired them; George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola famously enacted a similar deal with the legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, whom they had both idolised when first studying film.
While the cinephile community certainly would have greatly anticipated seeing a new project from a filmmaker with as storied a reputation as Fellini, the great director died before he was able to begin work on his collaboration with Scorsese. However, the latter has not been silent about spreading the word about Fellini and the power of his work, as he attended the Rome Film Festival to present a restoration of the director’s iconic masterpiece La Dolce Vita.
Although La Dolce Vita wasn’t met with the immediate praise that some of Fellini’s other masterpieces were, it has grown in estimation over the years thanks to the support of film scholars, including Scorsese and Roger Ebert, who famously included it on his Sight & Sound list of the ten greatest films ever made and proclaimed it to be Fellini’s best work.
Scorsese has still been actively producing for other directors, although he now seems more keen on helping out a younger generation, and among the recent films he joined as an executive producer are acclaimed arthouse titles like Uncut Gems, The Souvenir, Homebound, The Card Counter, and Die My Love.
