Well, who’d have thought it? Admittedly, Federico Fellini was well known as a ladies’ man but feminist academic Germaine Greer does not immediately spring to mind when one imagines his partners. And yet why not? Perhaps it was inevitable that two of the most unconventional people of their time should have been attracted to each other.
Writing in yesterday’s Guardian, Greer recalls meeting Fellini in 1975, when someone suggested her for a part in Casanova. It was fifteen years after La Dolce Vita and five years after the publication of The Female Eunuch. Greer, then aged 36, arrived at Cinecittà perspiring in the summer heat. She was wearing a flimsy dress and no underwear. Fellini at 55 was fascinated and asked her to read the script with a view to playing Madame Chatelet .
The two began to discuss the script and Fellini went to see Greer at her Italian home, packing his pyjamas in an overnight bag. They continued to talk about the script and Fellini, already suffering from a heart condition, made his own supper of a plain risotto. They went to bed but throughout the night Fellini made calls to his wife, the actress Giulietta Masina.
Days later Fellini gave Greer a present of electric light for her tiny house, sending his own workmen around to do the wiring. They did not see one another often, largely because of Greer’s work commitments, but they continued to discuss his films and Greer seems to have acted as a sounding board for the director. She has never forgotten him and calls him “a many-sided genius”.
Could you imagine Federico Fellini and Germaine Greer as partners?
