FEDERICO FELLINI AND THE GRAND HOTEL RIMINI

"When descriptions in the novels I would read were not stimulating enough to arouse suggestive sceneries, in my imagination, we would pull out the Grand Hotel, in the same way as some small shabby theatres alwey use the same back-drop whatever is being given

...... On summer nights the Grand Hotel would become Instambul, Bagdad, Hollywood .

On its terraces, protected by thick curtains of plants, perhaps parties in the style of Ziegfeld were going on.

We would catch glimpses of women with naked backs looking like gold, clasped in the arms of men wearing white dinner jackets. Faint strains of syncopated sentimental music were wafted to us on a scented breeze.

They were tunes from American films, Sonny Boy, I Love You, Alone, which we had heard at the Fulgor Cinema the previous winter and we had then whined for entire afternoons with Xenophon's Anababis laying on the table, our eyes unseeing and a lump in our throats

...Only in winter time, in the humidity, the darkness and the fog, could we finally take possession of the wide terrace damp with water….”

Federico Fellini
"La mia Rimini"