Fellinis Intervista

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.

While shooting a movie about his arrival to Cinecittà to interview a famous star, Federico Fellini is interviewed by the Japanese television. Fellini highlights and revisits the beginning of his career portrayed by the young actor Sergio Rubini in the early 40's. Then he casts new characters for his next movie, "Amerika", from Franz Kafka. Later Marcello Mastroianni performing Mandrake visits Fellini and his producers, cast and crew and together they pay a visit to Anita Ekberg in her country cottage. Last but not the least, Fellini foresees the end of the golden era to the cinema industry with the competition of the television.

The beautiful and simple "Intervista" is a nostalgic "movie of a documentary of a film-making" that envisions the increasing competition to the television in this segment and consequent end of the golden era of the cinema industry and mostly of the movie theaters. The climax of the story is certainly with the unforgettable and most famous scene of the Italian cinema with Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg in the fountain of "La Dolce Vita". I would give a penny for the thoughts of Anita and Marcello while seeing that magic moment of their youth again. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Entrevista" ("Interview")

Watching Fellini's "Intervista" is a mixed bag--sadness, frustration because it is not better... coupled with moments of brilliance. I'm not sure there is a more poignant moment in the movies than the scene of a wrinkled Marcello Mastroianni and obese Anita Ekberg wistfully watching their former youthful black & white selves in "La Dolce Vita" being projected on a makeshift screen. That scene alone is a richly-charged commentary on time, memory, regret, self-delusion, love, missed opportunity, life and death--unlike any other I have ever seen.

"Intervista" ("Interview") takes life and movies to an unimagined extent. A nostalgic journey into memory, experiences and life in the way Federico Fellini sees them. And he asks those kind of questions: "What's real in movies? What's real in news and documentaries?". Even more: "What's real in life?" Defying, joking, molding, constructing and deconstructing films and the human existence, Fellini challenges and fascinates viewers through four intertwined segments which echo his work, his art and his early memories when of his arrival at the famous studio Cinecittá, way before of becoming the cinematic author of "Amarcord" and "Satyricon".

The movie is composed of showing the behind the scenes of a movie directed by the maestro Fellini; the movie itself (film within the film) and its long and confusing process of shooting; the interview documented by the Japanese crew who hears the director's stories that later are intercut with scenes of a young Fellini (played by the lovable Sergio Rubini) living his first experiences at Cinecittá while interviewing an impressionable film star. They're all mixed into a magical and dreamy imitation of life.

But how can one distinguish what's scripted and what's real? You can't. But you can try. The reunion between Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg, 27 seven years later after "La Dolce Vita" is wonderful, almost brings tears to our eyes. But did they really kept apart for all those years without seeing each other as they say? Maybe, maybe not, very unlikely but somehow we buy this as a fact. It looks genuine, they're so thrilled and surprised with this event. They play themselves in the movie, watching the characters they played in another Fellini classic, when they were very young. That's the film's magic, to capture both these stars in different situations and periods of life, all captured in a beautiful frame where Marcello can play magic tricks and prepare a delightful and nostalgic surprise to Anita and then watch the famous sequence of the Fontana de Trevi that the two performed in 1960. This dialog between medias and time is hypnotic, mysterious and funny too. It's a perfect fusion of realities, facts and fiction friendly put together in one single film.

One of Fellini's finest and a treasure to be sought. 9/10.

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.