Fellini Fairy Tales

If memory serves, it was about a year ago when I first saw Fellini: I'm a Born Liar; wanting to revisit it, I watched it again and got down more of the lines.

Damian Pettigrew and his team have put together a fascinating glimpse into Frederico Fellini's world that includes film clips, interviews, and footage of the maestro directing. The approach is minimalistic and unobtrusive and highly effective. We do not have to hear a narrator's voice or see some heavy handed prima donna interviewer trying to steal the show. It inspires the viewer to go back and watch the original movies again.

Early in this film, Italo Calvino enthuses: "For a psychiatrist, whether you lie or tell the truth is unimportant because lies are as interesting, as eloquent, and as revelatory as the so-called truth." Fellini does not disappoint, noting in turn that: "I invented my youth, my family, my relationships with women and with life. I'm a born liar." He speaks of the pleasures of rebelling, breaking taboos, reconceiving his life through memories refracted by art.

"Memory is a mysterious element . . . it constantly incites us. . . For me, the things that are most real are the things I invented." Makeovers of the past are more real than what might "actually" have happened -- and which no one can -- with complete accuracy -- reconstruct anyway.

Interviews with a few of Fellini's actors are not nearly as interesting as the musings of his writers, editors, cinematographers, and the man himself. Donald Sutherland comes off as pained and disturbed at being worked as a "puppet" -- he's the scariest thing in the film. He ain't right in the head . . . .

Fellini: "I don't think the word 'impromptu' has a place in the creative process. I hate impromptu! I'd say what matters is being open to the thing that is being born," and that is far different from something like, say, comedy improv (thank God!).

Fellini: "I don't believe in total artistic freedom. A creator, if he is given total creative freedom, would tend, I think, to do nothing at all. The greatest danger for an artist is total freedom, to be able to wait for inspiration, that whole romantic discourse. . ."

One more for the road: "Psychologically, the artist is an offender. He has a childish need to offend, and to be able to offend, you need parents, a headmaster, a high priest, the police . . . I need opposition, someone who annoys me, someone who opposes me, to work up the energy that I need to fight for what I'm doing. I need an enemy. . . . ."

Charming insights, indeed. For writers, fiction is a powerful form to refashion memories and history; creative nonfiction is a dicier proposition, but straight-out memoir comes under the heaviest scrutiny for fact-checking. Poets have the best of both worlds -- poems do not claim to be but seem to be based on real life; the reader is often complicit in assuming that they are.