Federico Fellini’s I clowns (1970) is a playful exploration of the clown’s impact in society: injecting a traditionally objective form (the documentary) with clearly scripted sequences, to illustrate the duality of a profession that demands a double life, a performative extreme stationed well past reality. Despite their exaggerated nature, clowns nonetheless hold a mirror to the real world, in turn its a contemporary circus, populated by everyday clowns.

It begins with his childhood, where visiting the circus imprints upon him a grandiose, larger-than-life spectacle. He recalls initially being frightened by the clowns, and later realizes how they reminded him of real-life figures in town. The idiosyncratic nature of humanity, with oddballs and bullies, fools and authorities, are an everyday version of the circus clowns performing in the ring.

The film jumps to present-day (1970) where Fellini, himself on-screen, and his crew visit circuses and famous clowns throughout Italy and Paris, engaging in thoughtful debate around different archetypes and historical questions. Most of the subjects interviewed are older men, who sadly admit that the clown, and the circus, is a declining art.

I clowns ends with a spectacular finale: a circus performance lamenting the loss of a beloved clown, whose funeral attended by mourning clowns ends with a true bang, as a massive champagne bottle exploded and streamers descend from the ceiling. Even the tragic is a staged performance, inverting loss into a moment of comedy and celebration.

In his book Making a Film, Fellini remarks on this cinematic approach to real-life events stating that “the only true realist is the visionary.” To qualify, and substantiate, one’s understanding of truth and meaning, one must manifest it through his or her means, creating an artifice to achieve the authentic.

I clowns plays with documentary in terms of narrative, editing clearly staged scenes alongside more traditional interviews and factual narration, as well as through form. The filmmaking itself has playful qualities: comedic zooms and fast edits, translating singular moments into a cascading mini-montage; subjects going about their business, as if the camera weren’t observing them, who unexpectedly break the fourth wall and grin at the audience. In one memorable gag, the film crew makes a stop in Paris, and the camera has different cuts of each member of the crew, too many, each exiting the vehicle one by one; it’s become a clown car, with an impossible number of passengers, each exiting with a wink and a smile.

In addition to the comedic tone Fellini sets through editing and camerawork, the documentary deconstructed is further amplified by nature of its subject matter: the artifice of the circus in general, and clowns in particular. Their world is a heightened, controlled space (the circus tent), where they conduct performances, as planned, deliberate carrying out of actions, in a uniform of outrageous, brash attire, with snow-white makeup, ruby-red lipstick, and impossible wigs.

The circus itself is another reality, several steps removed from our own, and through film it’s further separated by the documentary form, capturing not the objective “reality” of the circus but an edited, heightened, version of an already exaggerated art form. The clowns’ performances, mostly with practical effects, could be performed in a real circus, but through film are constructed even more tightly with the camera, by staging props and sight gags in or out of view, directing the spectator’s attention via film in a way that the true circus cannot control as tightly.

Through this film, whether an authentic representation of the circus, or Fellini’s cinematic reimaging, Fellini captures a snapshot of an art form in decline. Released in 1970, I clowns came decades after the clown routines and circus performances of Fellini’s fascist-era childhood, least of all viewed over 50 years later today. The yearning to preserve, or resurrect, these fading relics comes as Fellini tries (and fails) to find footage of a legendary clown; the director ruminates that perhaps that clown is lost forever.

The feeling of slipping away and farewell to an era also comes in the film’s poignant final moment: following an exciting, raucous finale performance, an older clown recalls an act where he’d play the trumpet to beckon forth his departed friend. He is able to summon his old comrade, young and in full makeup, and the two play trumpet together, in an empty circus tent, and step out of the ring together: figures representing the circus today, and the circus remembered, giving their final performance.

Clowns and the circus are signatures of Fellini’s, present throughout his filmography, and it’s here with I clowns that he dedicates his most attention to such a beloved subject. In typical Fellini fashion though, of course it’s not a film just about clowns, but rather our relationship with them: leaning into their exaggerated grotesqueries, as a playful jab to the inherent artificiality of the documentary form, as well as a thoughtful meditation on a world clearly so special to him, but whose time may be fading.