Intervista

A nighttime setup at Cinecittà is prepared for a sequence Fellini calls the prisoner's dream, where his hands search for a way out of a dark tunnel. The scene invites the viewer into the claustrophobic feel of filming and the dreamlike logic of cinema. The maestro contemplates the fragility of escape even as the set comes alive around him.

With aging and weight complicating simple escapes, Fellini considers Cinecittà from a vantage point. He muses on flight and freedom, turning the studio into a looming cityscape that dwarfs him. The moment blends personal reflection with the scale of the movie world.

The next morning, Fellini guides the Japanese TV crew through the sprawling studios. They pass on-screen absurd TV commercials in production, creating a satire on the industry within the behind-the-scenes tour. The encounter sets the tone for the meta-narrative about making a film within a film.

Fellini's casting director presents four young actors chosen to interpret Karl Rossmann, the lead in Amerika. The moment introduces the artificial nature of casting and foreshadows the memory-work of Fellini's project. The tension between potential performers and a legendary director frames the casting as performance itself.

Fellini introduces Nadia Ottaviani, Cinecittà’s female custodian, who evasively delays the interview by wandering into the deserted backlot to pick dandelions for herbal tea. Her disappearance underscores the playful unpredictability of the film’s world. The moment highlights the everyday, non-film aspects that color the production.

Maurizio Mein, the assistant director, is on location with the crew at the Casa del Passeggero, a former cheap hotel now transformed into a drugstore. Fellini intends to incorporate it into his film about his 1938 visit to Cinecittà. The on-location shoot contrasts with the studio world and reinforces the film’s time-bending motif.

Fellini wants to include the Casa del Passeggero in the film about his journalist visit in 1938 during the Fascist era. Past and present blur as he engages with that earlier self in the memory-filled production. The idea moves the narrative between eras, tying the dream of cinema to personal history.

As scenes unfold, Fellini interacts with his younger self, played by Sergio Rubini, highlighting the film’s meta-fictional conceit. The two versions of Fellini move through sets and memory, exploring how a director's past informs his current work. The exchange underscores the continuity between creator and creation.

The facade of Casa del Passeggero is reconstructed elsewhere in Rome, and a fake tramway carries young Fellini/Rubini from an American Far West into a surreal clifftop world. They arrive at a herd of wild elephants off the coast of Ethiopia, a dream-logic detour that blends travel with cinema’s fantasy. The sequence emphasizes how memory, fantasy, and the film’s production collide.

Arriving once more at Cinecittà, Fellini begins an interview with matinee idol Katya, a character representing the actress Greta Gonda. The encounter replays a real interview he once conducted, further weaving biography and fiction. The moment marks the shift from rehearsal to the project proper.

Illusion takes over as the crew dives into two feature films being directed by tyrannical directors. The line between cinema and reality blurs as the production contends with control, ego, and the limits of vision. The meta-fiction deepens, revealing the fragility of artifice.

Fellini and his assistant scramble to recruit the right cast and build sets for the Amerika project, the fictitious adaptation used to justify progress on his actual film-in-progress. The sequence shows the frantic pace of preproduction and the director’s struggle to realize a vision. Tensions rise as onlookers, testers, and delayed schedules collide.

Disgruntled actors who failed auditions appear, including Marcello Mastroianni in a TV commercial where he plays Mandrake the Magician. The insert functions as a satirical mirror of fame and promotion in the industry. It also underscores the performative nature of cinema within the film.

A thunderstorm signals the production’s collapse of Amerika, climaxing in an attack by bogus Indians on horseback wielding television antennae as spears. The surreal assault embodies the chaos of making a film and the fragility of control. The scene marks the impending end of the dream-assembly.

Back inside Studio 5, Fellini’s voiceover declares, So the movie should end here. Actually, it’s finished. The producers’ gloom over the dark ending prompts him to offer a final ray of sunshine by lighting an arc lamp. The gesture closes the metafilm with a sly, hopeful note.