Fellini, I'm a Born Liar

Damian Pettigrew interviewed the Italian director Federico Fellini one year before his demise about the creative process of filmmaking. This interview is the common thread running through this portrait; in addition, Pettigrew speaks with actors Donald Sutherland (CASANOVA), Roberto Benigni (LA VOCE DELLA LUNA) and Terence Stamp (TOBY DAMMIT), scriptwriter Tullio Pinelli, cameraman Giuseppe Rotunno and others. Meanwhile, scores, feature film extracts and images of the current state of former shooting locations create a Fellini-esque atmosphere. Recordings behind the scenes, where Fellini walks about with his inseparable black hat, present a fascinating portrait of the maestro at work. Despite the gentle tone of his voice during the interview, he was not very amiable to his actors. Sutherland, for instance, calls the director ‘a dictator, a demon’ and his behaviour ‘almost like a child, quite hysterical’. In an archive image, we see how an annoyed Fellini grumbles at his eternal alter ego Marcello Mastroianni: ‘Why do I always work with you?’ To Fellini, his actors were ‘puppets’ that had to open up as a medium to pass on the story and film was ‘a form of painting, before it is literature or drama’. He never saw his films again and when he happened to see a scene on television, he often did not recognise his own work. But he was unable to live without film. ‘I feel quite unable to cope with what they call a normal existence.’