Planned as a documentary celebrating the fiftieth anniversaryof Cinecittà, the film ended up as a self-directed interview. Asin A Director's Notebook, The Clowns, and Fellini's Roma, the camerafollows a director and crew shooting a film about the subject inquestion. The pretext (as if Fellini needed one) is a pilgrimage to ilmaestro by a Japanese television crew. Still, Cinecittà is acrucial background: Fellini called it "a fortress, an alibi, if youlike." Six unconnected sequences offer a glimpse of the generous ifchaotic ambiance in which Fellini performed his magic. They include anight shoot, with huge cranes, lights, and smoke, to capture one ofFellini's dreams; a scene in his projected adaptation of Kafka's Amerika(its style a bizarre mix of Dickens and softcore porn); his assistantdirector fending off people who are certain they are "Fellinitypes"; a reconstruction of Fellini's own first visit toCinecittà as a young journalist in 1937 on the tram-line built byMussolini; and Mastroianni, playing a magician, evoking the TreviFountain sequence from La Dolce Vita at Anita Ekberg's mansion.-SeymourChatman