Federico Fellini’s
Intervista
Picture: B-
Sound: B- Extras: B Film: B
One word that could probably sum of Fellini’s 1987 film Intervista would be ‘collage’. The film serves as a collage of the
filmmaker’s career and in essence his life.
His life has he lived it was for making films, which for anyone who has
a passion for filmmaking can certainly understand and relate.
The film involves a Japanese film crew who is interviewing
Fellini as well as incorporating Fellini regulars like Anita Ekberg and of
course the always brilliant Marcello Mastroianni. If Fellini’s 8 1/2 was
the inside version of making a film, than this film serves as an inside look at
the filmmaker who made films.
I would suspect that it would be helpful to be familiar with
Fellini’s work in order to truly understand and enjoy Intervista. For those that are fans of Fellini than this
will serve as a brilliant reminiscent of a life’s work and perhaps even
re-spark those moments when you embarked on a journey into Fellini’s fantastic
world of adventure, love, passion, mystery, and desire.
The film is presented here in an anamorphically enhanced
1.85 X 1 transfer and looks quite good for the most part. There are some minor problems mostly in the
detail department. You can notice a bit
of pixelation of softness occurring at the edges of just about everything,
which could be described as edge-enhancement issues. Colors seem slightly darker in some scenes, but that could have
been a production intention. I think
that the film has been slightly modified in the cropping as well, which took
the original 1.66 X 1 transfer and converted to 1.85 X 1.
The film has been remixed for Dolby Digital 5.1, which
brings a nice dimension to some of the wonderful music during the film. Most of the dialogue stays centered for the
duration and only some spatialness is given to add depth, but overall not too
shabby for a remix, especially for a film that was a Dolby A-type analog
theatrical release.
Koch has supplied a nice little handful of extras
including a documentary by Vincenzo Mollica, which serves as a nice appendix to
the film. There are photos from the set
that can be skimmed through if you are really curios and the trailer, which is
in full frame. Yellow subtitles are a
nice addition to the film as well and look great.
Fellini is one of my favorite filmmakers so it’s hard to
really judge whether this will appeal to most people. I can say that if you are not familiar with Fellini that you will
not get much out of this, but that should not stop you from trying out a few
Fellini films and brush up on some world cinema. Most people start with La
Dolce Vita or perhaps La Strada,
for me the film that reeled me in was 8
1/2, just because I could relate so well with the film, the characters, the
story, and also understand that sometimes its ok to not have everything in life
figured out. It would seem that even at
the end of his career that Fellini still did not have everything figured out
and he was fine with that. He was fine
with just making a few memorable and magical moments that shall still enchant
viewers for years to come.
- Nate Goss
