Before his next project with Fellini, Rotunno began a three-film association with Lina Wertmuller comprising Love and Anarchy (1972), All Screwed Up (1973) and A Night Full of Rain (1978). He also shot his first musical, Man of La Mancha (1972), for Arthur Hiller. "Everybody sung except the director and me!" Rotunno recalls with a chuckle.
Rotunno then reteamed with Fellini on Amarcord (1974), an affectionate memory piece about life in the director's hometown of Rimini during the 1930s. Featuring an array of lovably eccentric characters, the picture won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film and remains one of the director's most popular works. "I knew all of the characters personally, because I had met them with Federico many, many times before we started shooting," Rotunno notes. "In a way, I tried to put my memory in a condition very close to Federico's. What is in the film is just a small representation of the real characters. I guarantee that if we had portrayed them in a realistic way, it would have been most unbelievable!"
Amarcord begins with the townspeople of Rimini building a huge bonfire (or fogarazza) on a pier to celebrate the end of winter. Rotunno used warm red gels to lend the lighting a nostalgic feel as Fellini introduced his characters. "The cameras went close in and followed the actors, and never came out further until the end of the film, when the young boy is again alone on the pier," Rotunno says. "The idea was to put the audience inside of the story from the beginning to the end of the picture."
Casanova, the pair's next project together, is arguably the most personal, ambitious, stylized and mesmerizing of Fellini's later films, and yet it was the least well-reviewed. "It was the most difficult film that I made with Fellini, really heavy to do, and frankly it is my favorite," Rotunno submits. "Fellini did 81/2, which was about a crisis of imagination and creativity, when he was very young, but Casanova was about the old age he was really feeling. Fellini and I journeyed around Europe like Casanova; we went to Germany, Venice and England, and I think we were able to do a good job re-creating the interior of a powerful prince's German home, the warmth of an Italian salon with paintings on the wall, and the foggy atmosphere of the English countryside. I would say it's maybe Fellini's best and most beautiful film."
In one of the film's most unforgettable sequences, Casanova (Donald Sutherland) meets his mother at a theater, where massive candelabras are lowered around them and snuffed out. Rotunno relates, "Casanova first meets his mother in a box in the balcony of the theater, and she is represented like the imagination, like a vision for Casanova: she is shadowy, and then her face appears. I did everything in this moment, with this scene, these characters, and the light, to create an illusion that would emphasize the meaning. The chandeliers were hanging up on the stage, and then they were coming down until the men could reach them with the snuffers; when the lights were going out, they were on dimmers, because the effect had to be realistic. Again, I have no secret; I did it with my talent and my intuition. We tried to give the impression of the truth, but nothing more."
One of the tougher Fellini assignments was Orchestra Rehearsal (1979), which presented an orchestra as an allegorical microcosm of a troubled world. The film was made for Italian television and shot on one set over a modest four weeks, after the director's ambitious contemporary fable City of Women was postponed. Fortunately, the latter project got back on track the following year, and proved to be one of Fellini's most successful films. "Fellini always worked with his own dreams, but City of Women is his most dreamlike picture," Rotunno opines. The film's climactic sequence is also its most surreal, as Marcello Mastroianni takes a wild, sexually charged ride down a mad amusement park slide. The 200'-tall slide set was built on Cinecitta's backlot, and Rotunno directed his electricians to cover it with lights: "We set up many thousands of bulbs, with big bulbs in the foreground and small ones in the background, to make the slide look longer and make the perspective point of view move faster. Everybody said that Fellini and I built the slide for ourselves, and not the actors — to play, you know? Sometimes we sat on the slide together and went down with Marcello; I had a small light in my hand which I crossed over his face to create more movement."
Rotunno's last collaboration with Fellini was the whimsical fantasy And the Ship Sails On. In one of the film's most memorable scenes, a group of musical artistes touring the ship happen upon the boiler room, where they give an informal recitation. "That sequence was shot on a very tall stage, which made it easier to light because there was more room — it's much easier to control the illumination when you can place lights farther away. When I can move, I can do everything! The lights were placed above and below the actors. Below, it had to be very dark, so I used a reddish color that came from the fire inside the boiler as the coals were stoked. Above, I used golden light on the faces of the singers, using a window behind the doorway as the motivation. The two types of lighting were intended to signify hell and paradise."
After completing work for And the Ship Sailed On, Fellini called Rotunno to make three extravagant TV commercials for a large Italian bank, but fate determined that the two friends had worked together for the final time. "We always talked about doing another film," Rotunno says. "When Federico was sick, he was in the hospital in Ferrara, a beautiful town in northern Italy. When I went to visit some relatives there, I called Federico, and we talked and talked. He was very weak, but he told me, 'Peppino, listen, why don't we meet next Saturday in front of Cinecitta?' I think he didn't want me to see him in the hospital. Unfortunately, he never arrived at the studio."
Just before shooting And The Ship Sails On, Rotunno completed Bob Fosse's All That Jazz. During the following decade, he also worked with such accomplished directors as Robert Altman (Popeye), Alan Pakula (Rollover), Richard Fleischer (Red Sonya), Terry Gilliam (The Adventures of Baron Munchausen), Sidney Pollack (Sabrina) and Italian shock-horror maestro Dario Argento (The Stendhal Syndrome). He has also experimented with the HDTV and Showscan formats.
In surveying his nearly 60-year career, Rotunno likes to say that he has created a great deal out of very little; he points out that just as music has only seven basic notes, cinematography has only three lights: "You've got the key light, fill light, and back light, out of which comes an infinity of results. The light is like a kaleidoscope, but those three lights mixed together are more touchy than the kaleidoscope. It's difficult to ask a painter, 'How did you paint the picture?' I go with my eyes and intuition. I like so much to light, and I cannot stop. When I was shooting with Fellini, I was always lighting the next shot, because I was afraid to lose the idea of the light. My love for this work made it really easy. I work very hard, but the days seem only five minutes long. It's a business I'm very, very proud of, because I was able to create a wonderful harmony with my directors, and to release their fantasies."
