Plot Details: This opinion reveals no details about the movie's plot.

The 1987 "Intervista," Federico Fellini's penultimate film, is combination of a very PoMo movie about making a documentary of a movie (an adaptation of Franz Kafka's Amerika, no less) and a valentine for Cinecittá, the vast studio complex he first entered (following an elephant) as a reporter in 1940, and where he shot most of most of his films. As a mockumentary about a director famed for some eccentricities, "Intervista" is not as funny as "Incident at Loch Ness" in which Werner Herzog plays the public image of himself. "Intervista" is more sentimental than I can imagine Herzog ever being, but this is not surprising, since there's plenty of sentimentality in many Fellini films.

There's also music with resonances to circuses in many Fellini movies, and even after the death of Nino Rota, Fellini was able to find another composer who could work from the kind of demands he made (Nicola Piovani, who provides examples on his piano in the most interesting of the bonus feature--a documentary about a movie about a documentary about a movie.

Marcello Mastroianni has a dramatic entrance on a crane in lion-tamer costume (he's on the lot shooting a commercial in which he plays Mandrake the Magician).. Fellini take Mastroianni, the actor playing the young Fellini (Sergio Rubini, who looks like he was more likely to grow up to be Adrien Boddy than Federico Fellini), a floral tribute, and the Japanese tv crew that is shooting a documentary about Fellini making Amerika to visit the country villa of Anita Ekberg, Mastroianni's statuesque costar in "La Dolce Vita." She was already a very big woman (not just her bustline) in 1961 and seems to have grown even larger (by which I don't mean fat) in the quarter century after that.

I find the movie Indians attack on a plastic tent in which the film crew is huddled after a rainstorm the funniest scene in "Intervista," though the commercials being shot in the studio are also very funny. The best stuff of all is literally spliced in from "La Dolce Vita"--with Mastroianni conjuring it. Movie magic, indeed!

I like the cinematicization of Fellini's memoir of his wide-eyed 1940 introduction to Cinecittá quite a bit, too, along with showing the filming of a trolley. In fact, there's lots of charming stuff, particularly for anyone who has seen "8 1/2" and/or "La Dolce Vita." The film is far more miscellaneous than Fellini's cinematic memoir of growing up in "Amarcord," or Altman's splendid "The Player." And it lacks the bite of the great Fellini/Mastroianni collaboration in showing a blocked director in "8 1/2." "Intervista" is not a great film, does not aspire to be a great film, but succeeds in Fellini's intent of a genial reflection on his own past and the process of movie-making.

Focusing far more than "8 1/2" did on those involved in making movies other than the director, "Intervista" makes all the more remarkable that Fellini was able to stamp his own circusy/magical conception on a series of films (some of which work for me, others of which fall flat).

I'll readily admit that there are some longeurs that I hope were parodies rather than emulations of the flattest Mel Brooks humor. What ensures the DVD a 4-star rating are the bonus features, including a trailer that is better than the movie, very detailed talent files, and two "making of" (the making of the making of) features (56 and 21 minutes in length), especially the Piovani section about providing what Fellini wanted in the way of music for his films. Plus in his patience and self-effacing good humor Fellini comes across as very charming: not someone who was going to explain what his images meant, but someone willing to discuss how they were fashioned and able to provide quotable answers to fatuous questions (we see that he began as a callow reporter once upon a time himself).

Along with Piovani's music, the cinematography of Tonino Delli Colli (who shot most Pasolini films) deserves credit for outstanding work. Delli Colli is also used to fill in for an actor who doesn't show up to film the 1940 trolley sequence.

"Intervista" is assuredly not what anyone who has never seen a Fellini film should see first. I'm not sure that "La dolce vita" (the first Fellini film I ever saw) or "8 1/2" is, either, but to enjoy "Intervista," I think one has to have some memory of those two early-1960s Fellini classics.

---

© 2007, Stephen O. Murray

This is another contribution (about a lesser film) for a CaptainD's Good movie writeoff.


Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD