Gideon Bachmann captures the magical atmosphere of Fellini’s Satyricon and its glittering set in the only behind-the- scenes documentary that fully demon-strates how the great Federico worked.. All the pieces of Fellini’s unique filmmaking machine are present: irony, laughter, yelling, jokes and salacious one-liners, ruthless directing of actors until the desired result is achieved, spectacular sets and costumes, brilliant ideas, the director’s unstoppable and chameleon-like creativity in constant dialogue/conflict with set and production issues…
And also the exceptional atmosphere of a film made during those years: the absolute uniqueness beautiful Italian silent film (by Fellini himself) is being screened – and then continues with excerpts from mediums and phony historians, a re-invented audition of Mastroianni for Mastorna, another (brilliantly fake) audition at the slaughterhouse in Rome for Satyricon, a parade of extras and background artists from which the director chooses the most suitable faces.
The film also surprisingly includes an excerpt of a sequence from Nights of Cabiria, which was cut by De Laurentiis due to pressure from the Vatican. These notes in film form have the charm of a confession told as a story, in which a lie, as usual, is the key to the truth. The only Fellini film made exclusively for television, it was not broadcast in Italy by Rai until 1972 and was unjustifiably cut by a quarter of an hour. The full version will be presented at Il Cinema Ritrovato.

Roberto Chiesi