"In 1963, with the revolutionary 8 1/2, Federico Fellini put his deepest desires and anxieties before the lens, permanently impacting the art of cinema in the process. Now, more than forty years later, film critic and Fellini confidant Tullio Kezich has written the work against which all other biographies of the influential filmmaker are sure to be measured. In this moving and intimately revealing account of a lifetime spent in pictures, Kezich utilizes his friendship with Fellini to step outside the frame of myth and anecdote that surrounds him - much of which, it turns out, is of the director's own making." "A great lover of women and a meticulous observer of dreams, Fellini, perhaps more than any other director of the twentieth century, created films that embodied a thoroughly modern sensibility, eschewing traditional narrative along with religious and moral precepts. His is an art of delicate pathos, of episodic films that directly address the intersection of reality, fantasy, and desire that existed as a product of mid-century Italy - a country that was reeling from a Fascist regime as it struggled with an outmoded Catholic national identity. As Kezich reveals, the dilemmas Fellini presents in his movies reflect not only his personal battles but also those of Italian society. The result is a book that explores both the machinations of cinema and the man who most grandly embraced the full spectrum of its possibilities, leaving his mark on it forever."--Jacket.