SOURCE: "Warm Memories and Hot Nightmares Are Etched in Fellini's Singular Vision," in The New York Times, October 29, 1993, pp. B1, B7.

Canby is a novelist, playwright, and the chief film critic for the New York Times. In the following excerpt from a review of a Fellini retrospective held just before the filmmaker's death, Canby provides an overview of the major films of Fellini's career.

Now that the Fellini career is approaching its end, one can follow its splendid arc with a certitude not possible before. It begins with the early, bracingly comic, sometimes somber neo-realist black-and-white comedies, and includes the breakthrough with his two black-and-white masterpieces, La Dolce Vita (1960) and 8 1/2 (1963), after which he forever abandoned conventional narrative.

There followed his simultaneous discoveries of color with Juliet of the Spirits (1965), and of the power that the Cinecittà studio facilities gave him. Working within the studio, he could not only...