Federico Fellini's iconic films

Born on January 20, 1920, Federico Fellini began creative life as a radio scriptwriter before his name became synonymous with a golden age of European cinema. From the poetic realism of "La Strada" to the surreal "81/2" and fantastical "Satyricon," in between Fellini broke cinematic boundaries with his portrayal of a celebrity-obsessed, hedonistic world in "La Dolce Vita." His legacy lives on.

Fellini's first major success was "I Vitelloni" (1953), a neorealist film said to have mirrored his own misspent youth in an Adriatic seaside town. As five bored young men pass time hanging out in pool halls, getting into petty theft and chasing women until one escapes this dead-end for Rome, the film embodies a lost postwar generation. "I Vitelloni" won Fellini a Silver Lion in Venice.

"Our dreams are our real life. My fantasies and obsessions are not only my reality, but the stuff of which my films are made," Fellini once said. The approach was exemplified in the poetic fairy tale "La Strada," with Anthony Quinn playing a strongman and street performer who takes a young girl (Giulietta Masina) on tour. The film won Fellini the inaugural Oscar for best foreign language film.

The Italian picked up his second consecutive best foreign language film Oscar for "Nights of Cabiria." Also starring Fellini's wife Giulietta Masina, the film about a struggling Rome prostitute in search of stable married life has a surreal quality that would later be described as "Fellinesque": eccentric protagonists and bizarre scenes that invest personal struggles with wit, irony and humor.

Fellini's cinematic revolution reached its crescendo three years later with "La Dolce Vita," a film that skewered the life of Rome high society in the late 1950s and particularly targeted the celebrity-obsessed tabloid press. The film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and contains one of the most famous scenes in film history: Anita Ekberg kissing Marcello Mastroianni in the Trevi Fountain.

Marcello Mastroianni continued his legendary collaboration with the master filmmaker in "8 1/2," whereby he plays Fellini's alter ego, a director in crisis who embarks on a science fiction epic that is destined to fail. Also featuring another collaboration with soundtrack composer Nino Rota, the Oscar-winning surrealist film brought Fellini's first creative phase to an end.

With "Fellini Satyricon," the director entered a fantasy world marked by lavish color and luxurious staging. The episodic film is perhaps his most elaborate, spectacular and experimental work, and was inspired by Petronius' writings on ancient Rome. By appearing in the film title, Fellini's name had become a brand, the mark of a peculiar film style and language that lives on.

Fellini's "Amarcord" also belongs to the phase in which the director tells his stories with visual opulence and a lot of feeling. "Amarcord" is also a very personal film that looks back on the 1930s and Fellini's home town of Rimini. For this, it won the third Oscar in the best foreign language film category.

Fellini's "City of Women" is regarded as the beginning of the director's late period. As the filmmaker hit his 60s, he was still working intensely. His stories kept becoming more intimate, dreamy and personal or autobiographical. In "City of Women," he once again sent his favorite actor Marcello Mastroianni on a journey of self-realization.

Although "Ginger and Fred" was not the master's last film — two more were to follow — it was a finale of sorts, with Fellini's wife Giulietta Masina and Marcello Mastroianni playing the lead roles for the last time, portraying a formerly successful dance couple who meet again after 30 years. It was arguably Fellini's most beautiful film from this late phase.