Intervista

An absorbing mockumentary that supposedly shows Federico Fellini making an adaptation of Kafka's Amerika at Rome's Cinecitta studios, Intervista can be confusing to those unfamiliar with Fellini's oeuvre. It's a somewhat puckish film, loaded with autobiographical and career references. Actually, it's as much a homage to Cinecitta as to the filmmaker himself. Choices Select's DVD reflects either haste or carelessness in bringing Intervista to the public. The menus are bland and perfunctory, and the supplemental features--talking-head featurettes with I, Fellini author Charlotte Chandler and American Film Institute director of creative affairs Ken Wlaschin, each about 25 minutes long--are formless one-camera monologues that use quick fades for paragraph breaks. Chandler's comments relate more to her relationship with Fellini than to the film under examination, while Wlaschin's comments are more on point and rather enthusiastically delivered. He also supplies a bare bones commentary in which pauses of 20 seconds or more are annoyingly frequent. However, the movie itself looks terrific and speaks for itself, especially to the hard-core Fellini fans who comprise the target audience. In this instance it's the steak that will sell; the sizzle is irrelevant. --Ed Hulse