“Il viaggio di G. Mastorna”

Abstract

“Il viaggio di G. Mastorna” (“The Voyage of G. Mastorna”) is the story of a man who is dead but does not know it. The biographical circumstances surrounding Fellini's reluctance to complete the Mastorna project are known. The archetypal features of Mastorna's journey, however, show up in the entire arc of Fellini's output, before and after “Mastorna.” In a sense, Fellini could not complete “Mastorna” because he had already done it. Mastorna's story was too explicit; it would have revealed that Fellini's characters—to quote Jacques Lacan—are often caught entre deux morts (between two deaths), already dead yet waiting, unbeknownst, for the “second death” that will open “eternal life” to them. As a reader of Kafka, Fellini may have borrowed the theme of the wanderer between two deaths from the former's “The Hunter Gracchus” or Amerika (The Man Who Disappeared). This chapter analyzes the entre-deux-morts theme in the Mastorna script, with references to Le notti di Cabiria (Nights of Cabiria) and La dolce vita.

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