Federico Fellini's The Clowns (1970) was marvelously groundbreaking—a facetious documentary about making a documentary on the alleged demise of the circus, prefaced by the director's childhood memory of the circus coming to his small town in 1930s fascist Italy. As a child he found the clowns scary—entirely too reminiscent for comfort of the weirder denizens of his village, which when enumerated turn out to be almost the entire population.
The Clowns has been issued as a handsome DVD set complete with a booklet containing Fellini's essay on the film and his drawings illustrating the characters. The adult Fellini found much to appreciate about clowns, seeing them as the shadow of our efforts to be rational beings. They embody grotesque aspects of our nature, the side of us that refuses to adhere to the “normal” order of things. And yes, they can still be scary. Beautifully filmed in gorgeous tones of Techicolor, The Clowns ripples with humor and irony while seeming to spoof the pretension of its own ostensible project, as if wondering whether the truth can ever be had through the medium of documentary filmmaking.
