Fellini: I'm a Born Liar (2003) on Netflix
R20031h 45mBiographyDocumentary
Federico Fellini talks about his background and how he works. Actors, a writer, a producer and a production manager describe his sets, where he asked for availability rather than improvisation.
- Netflix3.1/5
- IMDb7.0/101,027 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes73%
Plot summary
Actors, a writer, a producer and a production manager who worked with Federico Fellini recall that he was fully in charge on set, that he dismissed improvisation and that performers called themselves puppets. Fellini himself, in long conversations filmed in Rome in 1991 and 1992, discusses his background and the way he creates. The film sets the invented images of his studio-built sets against the real Italian places where his earlier films were shot, and it illustrates his working habits with behind-the-scenes footage and clips from 8½, Juliet of the Spirits, Fellini Satyricon and other features. He says he is a born liar and that the things most real to him are the ones he invented.
Cast
- Luigi 'Titta' Benzias Himself / Ami d'enfance
- Rinaldo Gelengas Himself / Peintre
Show all 18 cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Fellini: I'm a Born Liar (2003)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- In 1983 Damian Pettigrew was preparing a documentary about the novelist Italo Calvino, but the two kept talking about Federico Fellini, so Calvino arranged a surprise for him: a lunch at Cinecittà cooked by Fellini himself.
- When Pettigrew offered an amateur diagnosis that the mass of black hairs in Federico Fellini's ears was a classic sign of arteriosclerosis, the director began treating him with superstitious reverence and cooperated more fully than ever.
- By the summers of 1991 and 1992 Fellini had been unemployed for the first time in 40 years; he told Pettigrew that his last film, La voce della luna, was "a beeg flop" and that producers called him no more.
- Pettigrew obtained more than 10 hours of footage of Fellini, who later wrote to him that the tapes were "the longest and most detailed conversation ever recorded on my personal vision".
- Fellini said the hotel lobby and staircase in 8½ was based on the Plaza Hotel in Rome, except that he built a larger staircase and added a second lion, and had the elevator doors copied down to the last detail at great expense.
- Pettigrew admits he challenged Fellini so aggressively during the final 1992 film shoot that the director threatened to walk out, though their friendship made it physically painful for him to see Fellini so depressed.
