One of the first reasons for dubbing Italian film was a technical one: the studios were from the silent era and were not soundproof. So the original sound recording would have had many irrelevant noises.
But the practice offered an artistical possibility especially important to Fellini: along with actors he used amateurs because he often needed special "types", persons who looked bizarre, more like real life, types that cannot be found among professional actors. As these amateurs of course had no voice training, they would not have made much effect delivering their lines, anyhow not the desired effect. During shooting Fellini constantly instructed them how to behave, what emotions to express on their faces, where to move and the like, so what is heard on the original recordings is Fellini's voice, sometimes music which Fellini had being played to create a certain atmosphere for the actors, the voices of the actors reciting their text, the voices of the amateur actors just counting numbers, and interfering noise.
The dubbing procedure (for which Fellini used trained voice actors) allowed him to mix faces and voices to his liking; a certain voice would enhance a character's personality better than another or even better than the original voice of both actors and amateurs etc., so the choice of voices was another creative part of filmmaking for him which allowed him to chisel out his characters even finer.
As Fellini did not care about reproducing reality, he did not think that ambiance sounds were all that necessary. For instance he pointed out in an interview I happened to read a short while back that you'll never hear footsteps in his films because he relied on the viewer's imagination to fill in the missing sounds without even noticing they were missing.
Regards, Rosabel
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