Spirits of the Dead director Federico Fellini
Production
Development
Omnibus films were popular in Europe in the 1960s so producers Alberto Grimaldi and Raymond Eger developed the idea of film anthology influenced by the work of Edgar Allan Poe.Initial directors announced to work on the film included Luchino Visconti, Claude Chabrol, Joseph Losey and Orson Welles. Orson Welles would direct one segment based on both "Masque of the Red Death" and "The Cask of Amontillado". Welles withdrew in September 1967 and was replaced by Fellini. The script, written in English by Welles and Oja Kodar, is in the Filmmuseum München collection. The final directors involved eventually became Federico Fellini, Roger Vadim and Louis Malle.Production
Roger Vadim's segment "Metzengerstein" was filmed just after Vadim had completed shooting on his previous movie Barbarella, which also starred Jane Fonda. Scriptwriter and novelist Terry Southern, who had worked on the screenplay for Barbarella, travelled to Rome with Vadim and according to Southern's biographer Lee Hill, it was during the making of this segment that Peter Fonda told Southern of his idea to make a 'modern Western' movie. Southern was enthusiastic about the idea and agreed to work on the project, which eventually became the renowned independent film Easy Rider. The segment was filmed in Roscoff, a small town in Brittany.Louis Malle accepted the job of directing the segment "William Wilson" in order to raise money for his next film Murmur of the Heart. The financial process of raising money for Murmur took him three years after completing "William Wilson" and in the meantime he shot two documentaries about India. Malle stated that he did not consider his collaboration in Histoires Extraordinaires a very personal one and that he agreed to make some compromises with the producer, Raymond Eger, in order to make the film more attractive to mainstream spectators. Malle's original conception of the film was closer to Poe’s tale than the final result. The most important changes were: casting Brigitte Bardot in the role of Giuseppina with the purpose of adding some erotic touches to the film, the inclusion of the dissection scene, and a somewhat explicit use of violence in some scenes. Malle did not enjoy working with Delon. He wanted Florinda Bolkan for the female lead but the producers insisted on someone more well known, like Bardot. Bardot agreed to make the film; Malle thought she was miscast.Federico Fellini directed the segment "Toby Dammit" which he wrote with Bernardino Zapponi. Zapponi had a love for gothic literature which can be seen in his short story collection Gobal (1967) where he attempted to re-shape the genre into a contemporary setting. Zapponi's stories caught Fellini's attention. Fellini was particularly interested in C'è una voce nella mia vita ('There is a voice in my life'), which was his first choice in adapting into a film for Spirits of the Dead. The producers were reluctant to have Zapponi's name on the film, so Fellini changed his mind and returned to Poe for inspiration. Fellini considered "The Scythe of Time" and "The Premature Burial", but eventually chose "Never Bet the Devil Your Head". Zapponi and Fellini only used the ending of the story in their adaptation of the material. The film has thematic similarities to three earlier Fellini films. The disintegrating protagonist and the hellish celebrity demimonde he inhabits are reminiscent of both La Dolce Vita and 8½, while the interweaving of dreams and hallucinations into the plotline and the use of highly artificial art direction to reflect inner states resemble similar techniques used in 8½ and Juliet of the Spirits. Fellini rejected Poe's version of the devil, a lame old gentleman with his hair parted in front like a girl’s, and cast a 22 year old Russian woman (Marina Yaru) to play the devil as a young girl. Lending a "pedophiliac slant" to Toby's character, Fellini explained that "a man with a black cape and a beard was the wrong kind of devil for a drugged, hipped actor. His devil must be his own immaturity, hence, a child."
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