Why Paolo Sorrentino Is and Isn’t the New Fellini

I was so put off by just the sacrilege inherent in the title of an article by Jimmy So in The Daily Beast that I couldn’t read it, and was less inclined to see Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty than ever. The blasphemous title was The New Fellini: Paolo Sorrentino’s ‘The Great Beauty.’ Sorrentino a new Fellini? Why, how dare he! Many Italian directors have added Fellinesque elements to their work, Woody Allen even make Stardust Memories as a spoof of il maestro’s 8½ , but to actually declare anyone to be Fellini himself? Like I said: sacrilege.

Eventually I was forced to surrender to the positive buzz and see the film. And then I read So’s article, in which he has a few of my same observations, namely that Sorrentino