Poe in the world of Fellini: an Authorial Approach to Literary Adaptation for the Cinema

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to assess Federico Fellini’s adaptation of an Edgar Allan Poe story for the screen. The film “Spirits of the Dead” is Fellini’s adaptation of Poe’s story “Never Bet the Devil your Head”, but it is very far from being a faithful rendering. The “infidelity” of the Italian film director to the American writer occurred in the context of the enormous prestige enjoyed by what was known as “authorism”, a phase which the film industry was going through at the end of the 1960s, whereby great value was placed on the aesthetic idiosyncrasies of individual film directors.