Fellini: A Director’s Notebook

Shot during the making of Satyricon, this hour-long “visual notebook” was created by Fellini for NBC as a way to introduce his themes and obsessions to a wider audience. The great director visits the outdoor ruins of a set for an incomplete film, where suspiciously photogenic hippies now reside (“with an orchestra of grasshoppers”); looks in on the Colosseum and its “night wanderers”; and rides on the Roman subway. Giulietta Masina and Marcello Mastroianni weigh in on his work as well. Less documentary than self-reflective fantasia, A Director’s Notebook is as colorfully unique as any of Fellini’s fictions.