Trip to Tulum: From a Script for a Film Idea

In 1966, after a terrifying nightmare, the Italian director Fellini decided to abandon the making of a film called The Journey of G. Mastorna . Fellini's memory of that movie serves as the inspiration for artist Manara's transformation of the director's failed screenplay into a fantastic journey to a land of mystery and ancient wisdom. A beautiful woman fallsp.59 into a pond chasing Fellini's windblown hat. Under the water's surface is an eerie world of preserved shipwrecks and planewrecks, p.60 a resting place for ghostly references to Fellini's films. Inside a submerged seaweed-encrusted 747 the woman is astonished to find Fellini himself.P.64 He sends her off with a very handsomely drawn Marcello Mastroianni--Fellini's alter ego--to make a movie of unknown content. They stop in Los Angeles p.68 and finally reach a grand hotel on the Mexican coast where magical transformations abound. Fellini and Manara have brought the dreamlike beauty of Fellini's cinematography to the comics medium. A consummate linear draftsman, Manara's deft portraits of Fellini and Mastroianni are complemented by his dazzling imaginary architecture, his characteristic lyrical eroticism and the playfully self-referential exchanges between Fellini and the characters in his story. This unusual and engaging encounter between two exceptional artists is in color and includes short essays by Fellini and Manara. (Nov.)