Italy
Shown in 1970
CREDITS
- dir
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Gideon Bachman
- scr
-
Gideon Bachman
- cam
-
Gideon Bachman, Mario Masini
- prod co
-
Victor Herbert Productions, Paris
- source
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Victor Herbert Productions, Paris
-
COMMENTS
Gideon Bachman in person.
OTHER
A perceptively, slyly amusing film about the great Italian director, Federico Fellini, at work during the shooting of Satyricon. The style is leisurely, non-didactic and almost as fascinating, in a documentary way, as the completed film itself. In any case, Ciao, Federico is an important addition to film history’s ever-growing archive of films-about-filmmakers, and although Fellini remains as delightfully enigmatic as ever, the actors in Satyricon come across as the vivid characters they truly are, and totally unlike the dream figures one remembers from Fellini’s evocation of ancient Rome. Gideon Bachmann, a critic, journalist and indefatigable amanuensis to Fellini (it is certain that he possesses the longest interviews with the director ever assembled, and promises a definitive volume in the future), has captured some priceless sequences. Capucine, resembling a revivified caryatid, argues with Fellini about the timing in one of her scenes; Max Born, the mysterious Giton, suddenly breaks into a song by Dylan, and Hiram Keller throws aside his characterization of Petronius’ carefree satyr, Ascyltus, to reveal an authentic like-wow personality, full of wit and profanity. The timelessness of this documentary lies in all of these things, as well as the opportunity to watch Fellini at work, cajoling his actors into whatever mood he desires. Then, there are all those incredible sets and costumes—the jetsam of genius, swirling under open Mediterranean skies, reminding us of our personal recollections within Fellini’s circus-of-the-past, with its mountebanks and freaks and beauties, aglow with living.
FACTOID #65
The combined running time for all the films in the Festival is approximately 310,000 minutes. Or to put it another way, 5,167 hours. That’s about 215 days of viewing, 24 hours a day, with no breaks.
