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Intervista
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Wikipedia article
'Intervista' (English: 'Interview') is a 1987 Italian film directed by Federico Fellini.
Plot
Interviewed by a Japanese TV crew for a news report on his latest film, Fellini takes the viewer behind the scenes at Cinecitt. A nighttime set is prepared for a sequence that Fellini defines as the prisoners dream in which his hands grope for a way out of a dark tunnel. With advancing age and weight, Fellini is finding it difficult to escape by simply flying away, but when he does, he contemplates Cinecitt from a great height.
The next morning, Fellini accompanies the Japanese TV crew on a brief tour of the studios. As they walk past absurd TV commercials in production, Fellini's casting director presents him with four young actors she's found to interpret Karl Rossmann, the leading role in the maestro's film version of Kafka's 'Amerika'. Fellini introduces the Japanese to the female custodian of Cinecitt (Nadia Ottaviani) but she succeeds in putting off the interview by disappearing into the deserted backlot of Studio 5 to gather dandelions to make herbal tea. Meanwhile, Fellini's assistant director (Maurizio Mein) is on location with other crew members at the Casa del Passeggero, a once cheap hotel now converted into a drugstore. Fellini wants to include it in his film about the first time he visited Cinecitt as a journalist in 1938 during the Fascist era.Interviewed by Alain Finkielkraut for the 'Messager europen', Fellini explained that the first time I visited Cinecitt, I was 18 years old, a journalist from Rimini who considered Cinecitt as something legendary. In Fellini, 'Intervista', 228. Past and present intermingle as Fellini interacts with his younger self played by aspiring actor, Sergio Rubini. After the crew reconstruct the facade of the Casa del Passeggero elsewhere in Rome, a fake tramway takes young Fellini/Rubini from America's Far West with Indian warriors on a clifftop to a herd of wild elephants off the coast of Ethiopia. Arriving at Cinecitt, he sets off to interview matinee idol, Greta Gonda."I came to interview an actress named Greta Gonda and it was the first interview I conducted, the first time I went to Cinecitt, and the first encounter with an actress I liked very much. Fellini, 'Intervista', 228
Seamlessly, the illusion takes over the realities of moviemaking as the viewer is thrown into two feature films being directed by tyrannical directors. But only for a short while; for the rest of the film, Fellini and his assistant director (Maurizio Mein) scramble to recruit the right cast and build the sets for the film version of 'Amerika', a fictitious adaptation that Fellini uses as a pretext to shoot his film-in-progress. This allows Fellini/Rubini to go back and forth in time to experience filmmaking first-hand including disgruntled actors who failed their auditions, Marcello Mastroianni in a TV commercial as Mandrake the Magician, a bomb threat, a visit to Anita Ekbergs house where she and Mastroianni re-live their 'La Dolce Vita' scenes, screen tests of Kafkas Brunelda caressed in a bathtub by two young men, and an inconvenient thunderstorm that heralds the production collapse of 'Amerika' with an attack by bogus Indians on horseback wielding television antennae as spears.
Back inside Studio 5 at Cinecitt, 'Intervista' concludes with Fellinis voiceover, So the movie should end here. Actually, its finished. In response to producers unhappy with his gloomy endings, the Maestro ironically offers them a ray of sunshine by lighting an arc lamp.
Cast
Main
* Federico Fellini as Himself* Sergio Rubini as Young Fellini / Himself
* Antonella Ponziani as Train Girl / Herself
* Maurizio Mein as Himself
* Paola Liguori as Star
* Lara Wendel as Bride
* Antonio Cantafora as Spouse
* Nadia Ottaviani as Vestal Virgin
* Anita Ekberg as Herself
* Marcello Mastroianni as Himself
Supporting
* Maria Teresa Battaglia as Recruited Actress at Train Station* Christian Borromeo as Christian
* Roberta Carlucci as Recruited Actress in the Subway
* Umberto Conte as Photographer
* Lionello Pio Di Savoia as Aurelio
* Germana Dominici as No Nudity Actress
* Adriana Facchetti as Star's Assistant
* Ettore Geri as Menicuccio
* Eva Grimaldi as Actress at Audition
* Alessandro Marino as Cinecitt Director #1
* Armando Marra as Cinecitt Director #2
* Mario Miyakawa as Japanese Reporter
* Francesca Reggiani as Secretary
* Patrizia Sacchi as Make-up Artist
* Faustone Signoretti as Cinecitt Gate Guard
* Rolando De Santis as Chiodo
Cameo/Uncredited
* Tonino Delli Colli as Himself* Federico Fellini as Himself
* Gino Millozza as Himself
* Danilo Donati as Himself
* Delia D'Alberti as Script Girl
* Stefano Corsi as Assistant Director
* Sophie Hicks as Androgenic Actress / Herself
* Roberto Ceccacci as Production Assistant
* Piero Vivaldi as Fellini's Driver
* Clarita Gatto as "Fellinian" Woman
* Domiziano Arcangeli as Extra
Structure
Blurring the line between documentary and fiction, 'Intervista' threads four films into oneOlivier Curchod, "Intervista: J'cris 'Paludes'" in 'Positif', 168 or a film-within-four-films:
:Film 1 is a television news report: Japanese journalists arrive on the set to interview Fellini and his crew preparing sets, location scouting, searching for actors, inspecting photographs, and shooting screen tests. Fellini, Anita Ekberg and Marcello Mastroianni appear as themselves.
:Film 2 is filmed autobiography: while interviewed by the Japanese, Fellini evokes memories (real or invented) of his first visit to Cinecitt in 1938 as a young journalist commissioned to interview a female matinee idol.
:Film 3 is the making of a non-existent movie at Cinecitt, an adaptation of Kafka's 'Amerika'.
:Film 4 is the movie itself: 'Intervista' subsumes all three films, making them cohere into the Maestros portrait of himself and cinema.In an essay on 'Intervista', Carlo Testa argues that autobiography wins out over the transposition of literature into film. Cf. Testa, "Cinecitt and 'Amerika': Fellini Interviews Kafka" in 'Fellini: Contemporary Perspectives', 199
Reception
The film has a 75% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 12 reviews with an average rating of 6.9/10. The film ranked 2nd on Cahiers du Cinma's Top 10 Films of the Year List in 1987.
Awards
* 40th Anniversary Prize at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival
* 15th Moscow International Film Festival: Golden Prize
References
Citations
* Burke, Frank and Marguerite R. Waller (2002). 'Federico Fellini: Contemporary Perspectives'. Toronto: Toronto University Press.* Ciment, Gilles (ed.)(1988). 'Positif'. Paris: Editions Rivages.
* Fellini, Federico (1987). 'Intervista'. Paris: Flammarion.
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