I Clowns [Blu-ray] [Import]

I first saw this film in college in the early 70s; it was about the time of SATYRICON and after JULIET OF THE SPIRITS, thusly, around the time that Fellini was moving away from narrative cinema and into the "metacinema" that would be more and more prevalent in his later films. I CLOWNS was by far his most successful foray into films reflexive onto themselves as "film". Surely, none of his other pseudodocumenataries ever approached the emotional tug that I CLOWNS produces. The lovingly recreated clown acts that Fellini films, accompanied by the haunting trumpet theme that winds through one of them, has never left me. I am gratified that I CLOWNS will be available on DVD, finally; I only hope it is struck from a clean master and not just a rebooting of the inferior VHS copy that is still out there somewhere. I CLOWNS is a film that, if viewed with a sympathetic imagination, can bring anyone back to the wonderment felt at the world when one was young. Now that I CLOWNS is available, by my reckoning it is only LA VOCE DELLA LUNA, Fellini's last film, that is not available on DVD. C'mon, guys, someone's gotta release this one too!

I'd like to defend this against some of the negative reviews here. Just my opinion. I don't work for the company. I haven't seen the French release but then that's not widely available, and not everybody has a multi-region player. I Clowns was just not available for so long. This is a full-featured disc with a 40 min. video essay about the film, a 50 pg. booklet filled with Fellini's color drawings, reproduced beautifully, and his long essay of reflections on clowns "A Journey Into The Shadow," - the most important bits from the coffee table hardback "I Clowns" published by Rienzi in 1970 (also pretty hard to get). And Fellini's 16 min. short from the omnibus film "L'Amore in Cittá," which has also been unavailable in the US. That's not all, sound in DTS HD Master Audio 5.1, and meticulous listing of cast, crew, and credits, identifying every person appearing in both films explaining where they appear, and even where scenes were shot and when.
The Product Description is misleading. It's not one of Fellini's "final masterpieces." It was done 20 years before his final film and is not a masterpiece, as Fellini himself describes in his essay, recounting the "carefree and laid-back attitude with which (he) approached it," "without thinking about it too much," approaching it with his "left hand." And it doesn't "feature" Anita Ekberg, she has a short cameo appearance in it.

For Fellini fans, this is a treat - the director's lengthiest and most elaborate examination of one of the mainstays of his films - clowns and circuses. It's part biography (what an wonderful opening, with a small boy watching a circus tent going up outside his bedroom window, as if it's an extension of his dreams), part history and part circus extravanganza. Rota's score is a gem - circus versions of themes from practically all Fellini's films to that point. Shot for television but released soon after in theaters, the movie is not one of Fellini's best-photographed films, and I recall finding the color odd and grainy in the original 35mm prints. But this edition is about as good a transfer as you could hope for. Also, for Fellini completists, the disc includes Fellini's "Matrimonial Agency" from the early 50s compilation movie, "Love in the City." That film has yet to be released on DVD in the US. It's rather minor Fellini, but contains the seed from which Marcello, the central character in "La Dolce Vita," grew.