I can’t but wonder — whether Fellini intended it or not (probably not) — how much Terence Stamp’s performance in Toby Dammit (Fellini’s segment of Histoires extraordinaires/Tre passi nel delirio/Spirits of the Dead) is a self-portrait. Stamp did after all famously go off the rails and vanish to an ashram at the end of the sixties. Here, he plays a wan, unshaven, drugged- and boozed-out English actor brought to Italy to star in a Catholic western that, we’re told, aims to combine Ford, Dreyer, and Pasolini, and haunted by his personal image of the devil, a supposedly innocent girl playing with a large white ball. Stamp is fortunately the centre of this short and, equally fortunately, the Stamp character speaks no Italian and Stamp speaks in his own voice, so for once we have an English-speaking actor in a Fellini film who is not dubbed by some Italian. Otherwise, this is standard late-sixties Fellini — a crazed TV interview, an equally crazed film awards ceremony, and a final drive into the night in a revved-up Ferrari.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
15 Oct 2007 1:25 PM | Submit Comment