The Clowns
The Clowns is a 1970 mockumentary film by Federico Fellini about the human fascination with clowns and circuses.
Plot summary
The film begins with a semi-autobiographical childhood recollection of Fellini’s youth where a young boy watches from his bedroom window, a circus arrive in his hometown. The boy is simultaneously fascinated and frightened by the clowns it brings. Driving this memory is the director’s long-standing obsession with the world of the circus. From this opening, the narrative transitions into a pseudo-documentary journey in which Fellini and a film crew travel through Italy and Paris in search of the great clowns of Europe. Along the way, the film blends interviews with veteran clowns, staged circus routines, & archival footage while constantly blurring the line between fiction and reality. Ultimately, it culminates in a surreal, operatic “clown funeral” sequence which is a metaphoric lavish farewell to a dying art form.Cast
Main
- Riccardo Billi as himself – Italian Clown
- Federico Fellini as himself
- Gigi Reder as himself – Italian Clown
- Tino Scotti as himself – Italian Clown
- Valentini as himself – Italian Clown
- Fanfulla as himself – Italian Clown
- Merli as himself – Italian Clown
- Carlo Rizzo as himself – Italian Clown
- Colombaioni as Themselves – Italian Clowns
- Pistoni as himself – Italian Clown
- Martana as Themselves – Italian Clowns
- Giacomo Furia as himself – Italian Clown
- Alvaro Vitali as himself
- Dante Maggio as himself – Italian Clown
- Galliano Sbarra as himself – Italian Clown
- Peppino Janigro as himself – Italian Clown
- Carini as himself – Italian Clown
- Maunsell as himself – Italian Clown
- Nino Terzo as himself – Italian Clown
- Osiride Pevarello as Clown
- Nino Vingelli as himself – Italian Clown
- Alberto Sorrentino as himself – Italian Clown
- Fumagalli as himself – Italian Clown
- Valdemaro as himself – Italian Clown
- Luigi Zerbinati as himself – Italian Clown
- Ettore Bevilacqua as himself – Italian Clown
- Maya Morin as Maya
- Anna Lina Alberti as herself – Alvaro's mother
- Gasparin as Gasparino
- Alex as himself – French Clown
- Georges Loriot as himself – French Clown
- Maïs as himself – French Clown
- Bario as himself – French Clown
- Ludo as himself – French Clown
- Nino as himself – French Clown
- Charlie Rivel as himself
- Pierre Étaix as himself
- Annie Fratellini as herself
- Victor Fratellini as himself
- Jean-Baptiste Thiérrée as himself
- Tristan Remy as himself
- Liana Orfei as herself
- Rinaldo Orfei as himself
- Nando Orfei as himself
- Franco Migliorini as himself – Animal Tamer
- Anita Ekberg as herself
Cameo/Uncredited
- Maria Grazia Buccella as herself
- Aristide Caporale as Railwayman
- Victoria Chaplin as herself
- Liliana Chiari as herself
- Dante Cleri as Fascist
- Shirley Corrigan as Audience member
- Feverello as himself – Italian Clown
- Gustavo Fratellini as himself – Italian Clown
- Adelina Poerio as Dwarf nun
- Richard Simmons – Clown
- Tonino Tommasi – Audience Member
Production
It is a docufiction: part reality, part fantasy. The film has sometimes been referred to as one of the first mockumentaries in film history. Being documentary and fiction in one, The Clowns distinguishes itself by being a mockumentary with unique characteristics, not the least of which is reflecting Fellini's own increasing fascination with how documentary films reflect "reality". Fellini had already explored this semi-fictional documentary genre in 1969's Fellini: A Director's Notebook and would further do so in 1987's Intervista, both of which contain unreliable depictions of Fellini himself making the film within the film narrative.