Intervista

So to sum it all up, Fellini seems to be saying in this film, he lived for movies. Like a long train ride as a passenger, a lover, a player, a commentator he lived through it all and had his moments. When Marcello Mastroianni says to Anita Eckberg while watching the fountain scene from La Dolce Vita with the party at her mansion that for one moment they made magic, it seemed to sum it all up. For the actors, the film maker and for us the audience, there were moments that were magic. This film is a great movie makers collage of his memories of his life. If it had been cinematic itself it would have taken away from the message. Life at its very best can yield a few magic moments, and those lucky enough to make those moments of magic can appreciate the rest of it all that serves as the backdrop. Like the film studio around which Fellini's life revolved and which gave him all those great memories he shared with us here.

I concluded my "Ginger and Fred" review saying the experience was worth all the weirdness if only for that final reunion reunion between Fellini fetish actors Giuletta Masina and Marcello Mastroianni. After watching "Intervista", I can make exactly the same statement. The film isn't without flaws, Fellini's tendency to swing from one perspective to another can be frustratingly disorienting, even for viewers used to his anarchic style and who aspires from some semblance of coherence. The film also doesn't have the same pace than "Ginger and Fred" with two characters being like narrative backbones and making any kind of intermission useless (while "Intervista" is full of them) but for all these imperfections, "Intervista" was worth my time for one particular sequence.

Near the end of the film, there's a magnificent and emotional moment when Anita Ekberg and Marcello Mastroianni are watching sequences from "La Dolce Vita" on an improvised big screen and there was no way their emotion was acted or feigned, Anita's tears were those of a once beautiful woman who realizes how time passes and her smile and childish eyes still carry that joyful spirit and innocent lust that took her to that iconic midnight bath in the Trevi fountain. And her chemistry with Marcello "Come here" Mastroianni was still there; watching that scene where he asked for a grappa, I knew their complicity was genuine, the merit of great actors is to know when they don't need to act.

And the genius of Fellini is to know when he doesn't even need to direct, just reuse some footage from a previous classic and the magic operates. For that scene only, for these little five minutes, "Intervista" is certainly a movie I would recommend to a fan of Fellini, not a newbie for it takes a certain knowledge of his work to fully enjoy it. And I believe the Maestro knew only viewers familiar with his movies would appreciate it. Well, let's just say this is a film that cannot be watched before "La Dolce Vita", and it also feels as a continuation of Fellini's nostalgic trip started one year before with "Ginger and Fred". These are movies that couldn't come earlier in his work anyway, both carrying a mix of detachment and introspection that can't result from the mind of a young director.

And while "Ginger and Fred" was a love letter to Hollywood, "Intervista" is a back-to-the-roots journey that echoes Fellini's most puzzling masterpiece "8 ½", in a more accessible but no less eccentric way. The 1963 classic was more complex as it was dealing with autobiographical material combined with an exploration in the author's psyche revealing how his youth memories were the alphabet he wrote his language with. But as Fellini said in an interview, he gained too much weight and couldn't escape from a car hanging on a kite, more pragmatic in "Intervista", he simply shares his passion through an interview with Japanese journalists. An interview is a trigger, hence the title "Intervista".

The film focuses on Fellini's debut as a journalist visiting Cinecitta to interview a known diva, he's played by Sergio Rubini. But we couldn't see Fellini for no reason, so he inserts his trademark film-in-the-film plot, which is an adaptation of Kafka's "Amerika", and an excuse to see his cast and crew at work. And in between, actors from the "youth part" connect with the real world filmed in documentary (sometimes mockumentary) style. And then Mastroianni makes his entrance, dressed like Mandrake, a fitting disguise as once he pops up in the screen, we get to the most magical moment of the film, the one that allows it to proudly levitates above a material which, as rich and colorful as it is, is something we get a little bit used with -if not tired of- with Fellini. The problem with "Intervista" comes from the lack of a clearly defined perspective, unlike "Ginger and Fred", it can get too distracting for its own good.

There's one recurring theme though, quoting the Maestro, the film was conceived like a long private and friendly chat about film-making, it's Fellini talking about movies with his troop, his loyal friends and guiding the conversation and its vignette-like episodes the way he feels it. It's a passionate love letter to cinema and Cine Cita in its unveiling of the sideshow as essential a part as the show.In reality it's the sideshow of his own life we're plunged into. I guess the film has the most pretentious premise but maybe Fellini can get away with it, because he's got quite an eloquence when he talks about himself and such an aesthetic approach to life, such a smart use of circus-like or melancholic music that I enjoyed it to a certain degree. I'm not sure I was as enthralled as I expected to be, maybe the film drags too long on needless parts, and wrapped up in his own artistic creation, Fellini didn't feel the need to trim in the raw material. The part with the Natives attack for instance and the ensuing chaos kind of reminded me of the chaotic ending of Mel Brook's "Blazing Saddles", but I'm not sure it changed anything at all, after the Anita and Marcello part, the curtain would have found a perfect moment to close.

But I guess even the most unexpected moments speak for the way Fellini looked at his four-decade spanning career at that time, every movie could be his last and so he tried to push the envelope every time even further, not using inspiration to make movies but making movies about his inspiration. It's pretentious all right but if cinema was his life, there's no reason he couldn't regard his life as cinema, maybe his genius comes from his impossibility to dissociate cinema and reality, cinema was his reality, and to understand the reality of Fellini, the director, the artist and the man, watch his films, Fellini was also his best biographer.

An elegiac look-back by the Maestro on where his films were shot (Cinecitta), Intervista has the most meta-fictional plot devices Fellini's used yet.

--It features Fellini himself, shooting a film "recounting" a location (as in "Roma") but here he is more forefront. --The rather casual stream-of-consciousness meandering of the happenings hearkens to "Amarcord," which is similar to this, with a wistful look back on the past, with fascists, bus rides, buxom women, etc. "Intervista" truly seems like an alternate draft of "Amarcord" with Fellini personally added. --The "young Fellini" going on an interview, being shot by Fellini during an interview in present day, and the playful and insistent 3rd-wall being broken every so often.

--And of course Marcello and Anita as themselves.

For fans of Fellini, this is an absolute must-see. Its reflection on his work, himself, and making films makes it one of the most playful, subversive, and autobiographical films in Fellini's late career.

(Originally a t.v. production, it displays a smaller scale that can only be attributed to the budget (too bad) and a need to make things "play" on a smaller screen. Although very similar to "A Director's Notebook", another filmic essay (that was a rough draft for "Roma"), this one is more assured and stands on its own. )

Intervista is one of the best films I've ever seen. The strong sense in all Fellini films that reality is like a big, sad circus is even stronger in this film because fact and fiction, past and present become so confused. The fictitious carnival appears to be reality. And isn't that maybe quite a realistic view?

There is not only the usual sense of nostalgia: because the film looks back at decades of Fellini nostalgia, the nostalgia is double. Who can watch the older Anita and Marcello looking back at La Dolce Vita with dry eyes? The only possible critic could be that the film is, like all Fellini movies, little coherent, but then, isn't that as well like life itself?

Intervista maybe isn't the most famous Fellini films, it certainly is one of the better ones and with that one of the best films in cinematographic history.

I don't know what the reviewers were thinking, but with Ebert leading the pack, it might be safe to say that they weren't thinking at all.

Intervista is an amazing film. It takes the shape of a fake documentary, in which Fellini looks at, and pokes fun at, his entire career. In the end it is an homage, not to himself, as other reviewers have suggested, but to film itself. Praise for a medium which never ceases to amaze viewers and film makers alike with it's capacity to project and create our dreams.