The Magic of Fellini

Magic of Fellini, The (2002)

*** (out of 4)

Fifty-minute documentary on the life and career of the legendary Italian director. We get to see clips from his films as well as see interviews he gave throughout his career as well as some press conference footage and behind the scenes stuff. Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Donald Sutherland, Claudia Cardinale, Anita Ekberg and Anthony Quinn are among the people interviewed. This is a fairly interesting documentary but you really don't get to learn too much about the director. You also don't get to hear too much from the people being interviewed because they pack quite a bit of footage into this movie. Allen gets to speak a couple lines and the same is true with Scorsese. Sutherland gets the most screen time as they interview him at what appears to be some sort of Q&A session. He tells some nice stories about his working with Fellini and this includes a story about an American actress who couldn't keep from crying because the director kept screaming at her throughout her week of working on the film. Stories from various others range from Fellini not knowing the technical side of film-making to him not knowing how impatient he was.