Fellini's Clowns

by L. -R . Dauven and Jacques Garnier

Translator's note: Federico Fellini's 1970 film, The Clowns, has been
widely accepted as a realistic though somewhat exaggerated picture of
the European clown tradition. For his documentary, Fellini used many old
clowns living in France. Their reaction, and that of the French circus world,
was unfavorable. The following essay from Cirque dans l'Univers (# 81)
takes a critical look at Fellini's historical accuracy and journalistic integrity.
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Fellini, for us, is La Strada, Il Bidone, Roma, Open City, Nights of Cabiria,
Satyricon and ten other films dear to our hearts. And so we awaited The
Clowns with as much faith as impatience. Had not the great Italian
filmmaker announced that the work would be "an homage to the
fascinating world of the circus?"

We have seen The Clowns.

We were totally disappointed, and quite disgusted.

We do not deny that there are some beautiful cinematic moments in The
Clowns, and the contrary would be surprising. Even when he works on
commission ‹ and this is the case, since it originally was conceived as a
documentary for Italian television — Fellini remains a great artist. There
are beautiful images and very successful sequences: the awakening of the
child at the beginning of the film,, the setting up of the small circus, the
death of the auguste in the seats, the burial, the closing trumpet duet.

But these represent only a few moments. And the film is more than two
hours long!

Fellini as a child was — he recalls in an interview — "traumatized," we

would say today, by clowns. (More likely by augustes. But he does not
seem to make the distinction.) The experience has happened to others.
They got over it and they forgave. Not him. And he is taking cruel revenge.

It is not so serious that he slips into his film bits of nonsense that provoke
laughter where he did not intend it — that, for example, he has Annie
Fratellini label as a xylophone a musical instrument François Fratellini,
who claimed to have invented it, nicknamed the "flex-a-tone." And where
did he discover that wild animals only "understand" German? If the film
were honest, that is to say, in good faith, these trifles would not be worth
mentioning. We know worse.

What is sad is that Fellini has retained only what is sordid and ugly about
the circus. In Venice, Max and Alex Fischer, humorists justly forgotten,
only saw the dirty water as it washed away garbage and dead dogs. In the
circus, Fellini sees only vulgar, coarse, horrifying grotesqueries. Venice
will always exist, with its palaces and its canals. The circus and clowns will
outlive Fellini.

It has been said, and the critics have repeated it, that for Fellini, filmmaker
and thinker, the circus was merely a pretext, his grand plan was to show
us that we are all clowns at certain points in our existence and that
grotesques also meet every day in life. Thus the astonishing gallery of
ridiculous personages he takes pleasure in presenting to us: the dwarf
nun, the stationmaster puffed up with authority, the fascist officer whose
presence terrorizes the small boys, the old soldier always at war with the
Austrians. Everything in the film is made grotesque, with two exceptions:
Fellini himself and his script.

These caricatures, so overdone that on stage they would be unacceptable

in a tenth-rate revue, might give the work "philosophical dimension." Yet,
were this true, it would change nothing. For whatever motives, Fellini has
offered us an image of the circus that is outrageously deformed, and
totally out of touch with reality.

Is it not a mockery of the public to try to ask some of today's clowns,

whose talent is not in question, to try to recreate the Fratellini trio? The
scene — set in an insane asylum, for no particular reason — is
unbearable. François, who was grace itself, has become a clumsy lout in
the hideous mask of wickedness. Does this serve the truth? Antonet is no
more "real," nor is Footit, who plays "Je cherche après Titine," a song
composed well after his death, when another was clearly suggested: "A la
maison, nous n'irons plus..."

We can also wonder if Fellini, taking advantage of the undeniable prestige

of his name, has not abused the trust of the clowns invited to collaborate
on his film. To encourage them to "talk shop" after a hearty meal and
several drinks and, in the flood of conversation, isolate their responses, is
that really honest? We have our doubts.

But everything is allowed to the great master, as Federico Fellini surely

knows. M. Bouglione appears in one scene —M. Bouglione is
photographed from behind and does not speak a word ... and it is not the
real Bouglione! Fellini ridicules the old artistes who had the courtesy to
receive him into their homes: Loriot, Bario, and Jean Houcke (who was
never a clown). How do you say "low-down" in Italian? It is true that the
filmmaker has a very peculiar concept of journalism.

For anyone who is in doubt, he has only to refer to the declarations made
by our friends Fredy and Nello Bario to François Jacques, who published
them in Le Nouvel Observateur last March 15, as follows:

"When Fellini came to see our father — Papa Bario is eighty-seven

years old — he found him all smiles. He asked him to recount his past, but
he systematically stopped him when he spoke about anything humorous.
'Tell me about your last time in the ring, when you became ill in the Circus
Knie in 1956! Tell me sad stories.' To think he made our father cry.
Realizing the same tactics would not work with the dwarf Ludo, he got him
drunk and then had him talk. He cried then. When Maiss doubled as Papa
Bario, Fellini decided on the circus at Amiens, because it is empty. He had
proposed filming us (we still did not know what his movie was to be like)
but he found us too modern..."

What more is there to say?

Of the remarks made by Tristan Rémy — whose voice seemed dubbed in

the version we have seen — Fellini has kept but a few responses, and this
is a shame. especially since one is driven to wonder if the filmmaker has
not on several occasions distorted — intentionally or not — Tristan's ideas.

Our friend (Tristan Rémy) feels — and has for a long time — that "the
whiteface clown is dead," for lack of invention, lack of self-renewal, and
failure to impose his presence to the same extent that the auguste has,
always inclined to have things his own way. Fellini goes much further: he
proclaims that "the circus is dead."

A gratuitous and false affirmation, it hardly need be said. M. Fellini no

doubt ignores some fifty circuses, large and small, performing in his own
country, and we can count dozens in France and England . . . and a few
hundred in the USSR.

But it is too much to ask the great filmmaker to be informed or even to be

consistent. At the end of the film, it is a whiteface clown who says: "The
auguste is dead. I alone remain." M. Fellini is probably alone in not
knowing that if clowns — whiteface clowns — have become rare,the
augustes remain numerous. And that many of them are excellent.

One more word, to conclude.

The Clowns is perhaps not "an evil deed," as it is termed by one of our
friends who cannot pardon Fellini's deliberate denigration, but it is certainly
a film that spectators have good reason to sulk about, and a work that will
add nothing to its creator's glory.

As for the clowns, not to displease Fellini, but they are still going strong.
The Francescos, the Chabris, Chiky and Co., the Rivels, the Rudi-Llatta,
Charlie Caroli, Zavatta, the Bario, and many others prove themselves
every night.

The art of the clown, disappeared?

Sans Blââââââgue, Signor Fellini?

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Reprinted from Mask, Mime & Marionette

Translated by Diane Goodman