A DOCUMENTARIAN LOOKS AT FELLINI'S LIFE, ART AND LIES
23 June 2003

 90     THE NEW YORK TIMES  •  A. O. Scott


At one point in Fellini: I'm a Born Liar, Donald Sutherland recalls a deleted scene from Fellini's Casanova in which, as he puts it, ''Fellini makes love with a man.'' The actor does not correct his slip -- it is Casanova, the character played by Mr. Sutherland, not the director, who is amorously engaged -- which is almost as telling as his having committed it in the first place. In addition to being, by his own admission, a fabricator of untruths, Federico Fellini was a consummate narcissist. His movies, neo-realist or phantasmagorical, black-and-white or color, grand or merely grandiose, were at bottom all about himself.
     This is not meant as criticism. In the long interview that takes up most of this fascinating new documentary, Fellini recounts a dream, in which Picasso serves him an omelet, and reflects on the affinity between them, which is less a matter of artistic style than of temperament. Speaking in 1993, a few months before his death, Fellini is not so much indulging in vanity as placing himself in appropriate company.
     In a posthumous appreciation in The New Yorker, Clive James wrote that Fellini's ''individuality resided in his being able to see what was universal about himself,'' and that his ability to reflect his country and his personality through the bright lens of his art made him ''one of the great men of the modern world.''
     There are those who would quarrel with that assessment, and who might even deny that Fellini should be counted among the great postwar Italian filmmakers. I am not one of them, and neither, from what I gather, is Damian Pettigrew, the director of Fellini: I'm a Born Liar, which opens today at Film Forum. Mr. Pettigrew's affection for Fellini and his films animates this documentary and limits its appeal. Aficionados will be enthralled by the master's ramblings and ruminations, thrilled at behind-the-scenes glimpses of his working methods and delighted to sample snippets of his movies, ones famous and obscure.
     But for skeptics and novices, the experience will be less satisfying: familiarity with Fellini's life and his oeuvre is assumed. There is no biography beyond the restatement of some well-known facts: he grew up in Rimini, the Italian seaside resort, and was married for many years to Giulietta Masina, who starred in many of his pictures. The film clips and interview subjects seem to have been selected haphazardly, and are identified only at the end. Mr. Sutherland and Roberto Benigni may be easy to recognize, but even the most passionate devotees of Italian cinema may find it hard to identify Fellini's off-camera collaborators -- like the screenwriter Tullio Pinelli or the cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno -- by sight.
     Their contributions are nonetheless fascinating, and Fellini: I'm a Born Liar is best understood not as a biography but as a kind of master class, a seminar in aesthetics conducted by Fellini, with ample and intelligent footnotes supplied by Mr. Pettigrew. Fellini, impish and eloquent, tends to explain his art either through abstractions or discussions of technique. The art itself, however, is peerlessly, magically sensual, and when we hear him talk about memory, dreams, sexuality and fear it is helpful to see how these ideas have taken shape in his movies.
     In addition to scenes from Fellini's movies, Mr. Pettigrew revisits some of the locations where they were shot, as if to show the alchemical transformation that Fellini's camera visited on his native landscape. ''I'm a sort of magician,'' Fellini remarks -- and also, he suggests, a puppeteer, a scientist, a painter and a deity." After seeing this film, you may not be content to take him at his word. Luckily, though, his films supply the proof.

 90     FILM COMMENT  •  Michael Rowin: "Haunting imagery and attention to physical presence… Fellini: I'm a Born Liar is a documentary featuring not just footage from the late director's final interview and revealing insights about his life and work from collaborators such as Donald Sutherland and Terence Stamp, but also evocative tracking shots through locales made famous in La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2, a simple tactic that renders these environments both reminiscent and more palpable…"

 90     THE NEW REPUBLIC  •  Stanley Kauffmann: "The more one looks at and listens to Fellini the man, the more one realizes that most of the films are exponents of the man… One rare and unexpected treat is a short visit with Italo Calvino whose writing meant much to Fellini. But it is Fellini’s face that is peculiarly welcome, the face that – in a probably fantasizing but pertinent way – endorses his films…"

 90     E ONLINE: "A wild introduction for the uninitiated and an affirmation for the Fellini fan. In other words, here's a fitting tribute to the born liar… "

 90     SAM PHILIP'S TOP 10  •  # 1 FELLINI : I'M A BORN LIAR - “Sam Phillips’s TOP 10 choices are a kind of inner soundtrack and cinema…”

 90     REEL MOVIE CRITIC.COM  •  Lee Shoquist: "A real cinematic treat. Not a biography in any traditional sense, this is a film about the process of making movies, told beautifully from a myriad of perspectives: director, actor, cinematographer, writer and more."

 90     THE WEEK MAGAZINE  : "THE WEEK’S FILM PICK: Fellini: I'm a Born Liar"

 90     POPMATTERS  •  Jonathan Kiefer

 
It is easy to revere Federico Fellini, who died 10 years ago and will be accordingly lionized with a huge retrospective at Cannes this year. The event should also demonstrate that it is easy to watch his films, which flow like dreams, with their own internal logic.
     The right way to make a documentary on Fellini, therefore, is to fantasize a little about the persona, rather than to seek the "truth" of the man. A well-proportioned mixture of "truth" and "fantasy" occurs in Fellini's films, so much so that it soon becomes obvious that a documentary can't contain him, or entirely capture him, considering Fellini's own resistance to "truths" about himself. Damian Pettigrew was wise not to try; with Fellini: I'm a Born Liar, he delivers an attentive appreciation of the old ringmaster, whom he's perfectly willing to remain opaque.
     Pettigrew dutifully collects comments from people who knew and worked with the director, and returns to a few of his films' most iconic locations for a then-and-now comparison -- rather a clever technique, as it passes off a romantic pilgrimage in the guise of clinical examination. As accent, Pettigrew adds sensual close-ups of film stock being manipulated, an exhibition of stunning and iconic images from Fellini's finished works, and just the appropriate aural flourishes: a gust of wind and a few bars of inimitable music by Nino Rota, Fellini's longtime composer.
     But Pettigrew's approach seems to proceed from the theory that it would have been a shame not to build something from the long interview Fellini granted him shortly before the maestro died. Pettigrew places this interview at the core of his documentary, with the understanding that any Fellini interview is at best a web of yarns. The director's digressions about his background and techniques, while vivid and loquacious, are notoriously unreliable.
     Fellini: I'm a Born Liar is lyrical and visceral; it serves the lore of Fellini, not the scholarly research. It glimpses his soul and style. Fellini was as famous for his leg pulling as he was for his filmmaking, and this tendency gave life and joy to his best work, which, as he describes it, is "a quest for the most authentic part of oneself." Part of what made the director a genius and a bane to his usually jealous dissenters was his rare gift for making movies that were both interesting and entirely about himself. Many read like stylishly narrated memories, deeply lived in, embellished at will, cherished.
     Regardless of his cinematic skill, this capacity for relentless self-exploration alone qualifies Fellini for inclusion in the canon of great modern artists. So it's no surprise when, with a strangely plausible hybrid of humility and vanity, he recounts the story of a dream in which Picasso made him an omelet. What a great image -- the abstract artwork of food preparation, the nourishment, and service, taken from the master. Portent and iconic and amusingly weird, it lodges itself in your imagination so firmly that the fact of having been dreamed doesn't make it any less authentic.
     Pettigrew assumes an audience of people who would similarly dream of brunching with Fellini. On our behalf, he assumes more than familiarity with the films. Clips are neither identified nor, in several cases, given any context. The result, almost certainly not intended as a survey or a deconstruction, is a kind of internal dialogue of a movie, which poses a series of affectionately rhetorical questions for those already in the know. Like: "Remember the dreamed opening of 8 1/2 -- the cutting, the selection of shots, the precise balance of clarity and mystery -- could it be more perfect?"
     That film, about the impotent agony a movie director endures while conceiving and birthing his film, covers some of the same ground as Pettigrew's project, and its inclusion here only reinforces the vital relationship between memory and creativity. "You come into this life with the unique goal of narrating it to others," Fellini intones. For many that would seem like an audacious claim, but Fellini put it into recurrent practice.
     For all the headiness, of course, it helps to include some of the humdrum. So what of Fellini's specific work habits? Famously, the maestro was often a cranky taskmaster with actors. "Puppets are happy to be puppets if the puppeteer is good," he says, not at all defensively. For perspective on this, Pettigrew supplies liberal doses of interviews with Donald Sutherland and Terence Stamp; Sutherland, who played the title role in Fellini's Casanova, displays by turns admiration for and hostility toward the director's methods. And he delivers his comments with perfect, actorly diction. It's such an eerily exaggerated tone -- the extemporaneous thoughts so carefully enunciated -- that it evokes listening to the dubbed dialogue in Fellini's films: a controlled, unreal reality, a "truth" apart from facts.
     When he gets rolling, Stamp is a marvelous raconteur in his own right -- particularly when recalling the English stage actor's first foray into Fellini's rather ribald world. It's hard to know how much Stamp exaggerates, but it's easy to see that exaggeration is the real fun of his story, and that seems like the central lesson learned from the director himself.
     Given this emergent portrait, it doesn't seem so hard to believe that Fellini was, as he says, "unable to cope with what they call a normal existence," or that he knew he'd never be a doctor or a cardinal. To a certain breed of young artist, that must seem as reassuring as having Picasso make you an omelet.

 90     LITTLE GOLDEN GUY.COM  •  Brian Barney: "Commentary from actors who worked with the late director, scenes from his films and an interview with Fellini himself conducted by the documentary's director enhance this inspiring narrative…"

 90     NITRATE ONLINE  •  Gregory Avery: "Avoiding a didactic approach, Pettigrew layers in the material… and the results are dazzling… Perhaps best enjoyed as a fabulous tale told by an expert and highly adept con man…"

 90     PHILADELPHIA WEEKLY  : "An actual prior-to-death interview with the uber-passionate filmmaker may be the height of Damian Pettigrew's doc, though word has it that the real appeal is Terence Stamp (who worked with him on the phantasmagoric Toby Dammit segment of the Poe trilogy film Spirits of the Dead /Histoires extraordinaires) and his cracking good impersonation of the man…"

 90     DVD VERDICT  •  Mark Van Hook: "Essential viewing for all Fellini fans, as well as those wanting to gain further knowledge of the Maestro's strange and fascinating career…"

 90     THE SEATTLE TIMES  •  Moira MacDonald: "A worthy and often exquisite tribute to memory and art, to truth and contradiction… This a loving tribute, but not a fawning one – it presents an often-contradictory, maddening artist… Fellini: I'm a Born Liar is an impressionistic work, documenting a master’s philosophy in strokes of light and dark. At the end, a set of empty camera tracks extends toward the sea and that 8 1/2 beach, into the endless horizon; it’s a beautiful, silent moment, both false and true at once…"

 90    SAN FRANCISCO BAY GUARDIAN  •  David Fear: "Documentaries on filmmakers tend to stick to a well-trod path: unearth the cracked, yellowing photos or grainy home-movie footage of the director as child, insert scholarly interviews of admirers waxing nostalgic, heap on the gravitas voice-overs and paint-by-numbers narration. What's most interesting about Canadian Damian Pettigrew's documentary on the late, great maestro Federico Fellini is how it manages to stick to the vérité-tribute template and simultaneously succeed in flipping the old workhouse script. The subject's formative years are only obliquely referenced as a camera glides through Fellini's hometown of Rimini, Italy, no omniscient tenor-voiced tour guide explains his career peaks and valleys, and even as plentiful talking-head footage pops up between the film clips, the lack of identification intertitles during interviews provides little academic reference (most viewers will recognize Donald Sutherland and Terence Stamp, who does a wicked impersonation of Fellini directing him with "you've been up all night drinking whiskey, doing cocaine, and fucking"; the interview subjects come off as anonymous faces minus their famous names). Yet the film's diary-like montage of the master at work, first-person testaments to his legendary narcissism that are both deifying and damning, and the Felini-on-Fellini confessional Pettigrew filmed three months before the filmmaker's death couldn't toe the tributary line more.
     Assuming you already know the basics of the man and the myth, FELLINI: I'M A BORN LIAR's stream-of-conscious journey is full of personal delights that will have fans dripping puddles of drool onto the theater floor - what Fellini-phile wouldn't want to see him barking orders at wife-actress-cherub Giulietta Masina or his on-screen alter-ego, Marcello Mastroianni? I'd be a liar if I said this was a great introduction to one of the most significant seventh art-ists of the last 50 years. For devotees who need no primer, however, this intimate peek behind the curtain is priceless.

 90     FILMJERK.COM  •  Edward Havens: FAVORITE DOCUMENTARIES OF 2003 - FELLINI: I'M A BORN LIAR

 90     EL NUEVO HERALD  •  Charles Cotayo: "Those who know Fellini's films will discover a fascinating introduction to his mind, heart, and spirit... El italiano Federico Fellini (1920-1993) fue posiblemente el director más atrevido y original de su generación. Por supuesto que han existido otros que también han contribuido al desarrollo del lenguaje cinematográfico, pero pocos como Fellini han dejado huellas tan definidas en las arenas del mar fílmico. El director italiano siempre sintió pasión por el mar. Varios de sus filmes, como La Dolce Vita (1960), por nombrar una, terminan junto al mar, como si el agua y el horizonte fueran un puente hacia lo eterno. En este documental descubrimos mucho de lo que hizo a Fellini vibrar como ser humano y como creador. El documental consiste de una serie de entrevistas con Fellini, colaboradores como el fotógrafo Giuseppe Rotunno (Amarcord, 1973), el actor canadiense Donald Sutherland (Fellini's Casanova, 1976) y admiradores como el autor italocubano Italo Calvino. La cinta está complementada con escenas de algunas películas de Fellini --quien se compara a un titiritero--, especialmente de su obra maestra, la semiautobiográfica 8 1⁄2 (1963), la cual muchos críticos consideran una de las 10 mejores películas de todos los tiempos. Una secuencia muestra a Fellini dirigiendo una escena sutilmente erótica de Satyricon (1969), en la que un ménage trois de actores hace precisamente lo que él les indica, movimiento por movimiento. Después vemos el producto final: un segmento impecablemente fluido sin aparentes cortes, con la elegancia y la gracia de un ballet. Quienes desconocen la filmografía de Fellini encontrarán aquí una fascinante introducción a su mente, su corazón y su espíritu. Lo que el documental reafirma es que este genio nació para lo que fue: un verdadero maestro del séptimo arte que aún hoy día sigue influyendo a nuevas generaciones de cineastas."

 88     TIME OUT NEW YORK  •  Andrew Lewis Conn: "A movie-length interview conducted with the director before his death in 1993, punctuated by film clips and remarks from artistic colleagues, FELLINI: I’M A BORN LIAR is a lovingly made tribute… Chockabloc with luminous clips, especially from the overpoweringly beautiful 8 1/2, one of the greatest films ever made…"

 88     DALLAS OBSERVER  •  Gregory Weinkauf: "One comes away from FELLINI: A BORN LIAR acutely aware of a man who spent his life grappling with the very concept of women, whom he deemed collectively to be "the unknown planet…"

 88     THE SEATTLE WEEKLY  •  Tim Appello: " 'An artist has a childish need to offend,' says Fellini. 'I need an enemy!' We see him oppressing Donald Sutherland (as Casanova), manipulating actors like a puppeteer – physically pawing them, making them ape his words and gestures… When Terence Stamp asked why Fellini added a little curlicue to his right eyebrow in Toby Dammit, Fellini replied, 'Eet’s like a question mark. You are always asking a question.' It also looks like an exaggeration of the unruly curlicue that erupts from Fellini’s own inquisitive right eyebrow…"

 80   CHICAGO TRIBUNE  •  Michael Wilmington: "A MUST FOR FELLINI LOVERS.... Seeing Fellini again in the flesh and in his films is, as always, a pleasure and a teasing mystery... FELLINI: I'M A BORN LIAR is best watched in conjunction with the films themselves.”

 80     NEWSDAY  •  John Anderson: “It’s fascinating to hear Fellini talk about himself and his work… And the previously unseen footage Pettigrew employs of Fellini’s most magnetic star, Marcello Mastroianni, is close to exhilarating!”

 60     SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE  •  Mick LaSalle: "... Occasionally brilliant, profiting from Fellini's distinct and unmistakable way of looking and seeing. But it goes in circles and wears out its welcome, except for the most hard-core enthusiasts."