Customer Reviews

The Clowns [VHS]

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This is my personal favorite Fellini film. His exercises in cinematic self-reflexivity and artistic subjectivity are wholly successful here, and the film is filled with sequences that never fail to inspire curiosity, amusement, and fascination. While there's no shortage of the grotesque, eerily dream-like images that have come to be regarded as "Felliniesque", there is also a great deal of warmth that's impossible to dislike. If you like this film, you should also watch "Roma", which similiarly parodies the pretensions of documentary films within a relatively non-linear framework.

A true classic!

This product is not worth buying. This DVD does not do the justice to great Fellini. The picture is not sharp, in fact, images are blurry and the overall quality od this DVD disk is below desired level. Advice to potential buyer is : Do not buy it!

I was so excited to find that 'The Clowns' was finally available on DVD. And then I got this thing. Worst quality ever in a DVD. What a gross dereliction of decency to sell the Maestro's wonderful film in this way. DON'T BUY THIS VERSION.

If you thought everything was said about the childhood universe with Willy Wonka , Wizard of Oz , Mary poppins or Fantasy , sorry you made a wrong choice .
The circus world is one of our invisible links with our childhood . And no one as Fellini free spirit to make a glorious homage to the clowns and the circus meaning in our lives .
Haunting , beautifully filmed and exhilarating script will amaze you over and over again.
Fellini showed once more why he , Tarkovsky and Bresson were the freest filmakers in all the cinema story .
A thousand carats gem !

I bought the Synergy release earlier this year, so excited I was by the possibility that this would fill in one of the few blank spaces on my Fellini shelf. After 5 minutes of watching, I turned it off. For me, it was unwatchable.

Thankfully, now in March 2011, RaroVideo of Italy has released a much better version of Fellini's film which is also for sale here at Amazon.

If you want another opinion, check out the review at dvdbeaver.com.

Originally made for TV, this film has some real dry patches (the scripted pseudo-documentary sections of Fellini & his film crew are particularly arch), but it's all worth it for the moments of absolutely heart-stopping wonder it contains. When this film was first released theatrically in the U.S., I returned to see it repeatedly just to watch the AUDIENCE at the moment when the "dead" clown, visibly harnessed, lifts off the neck of the giant champagne bottle and begins swinging around the soundstage as millions of streamers shoot down. Ya gotta be there. Probably far more effective on the large screen, as a communal audience experience, but don't let that stop you from viewing it on video.

Fellini sees the grotesque, the ugly, the pathetic, and funny side of clowns. After showing us how clowning mirrors the grotesques of ordinary life he steps into the role of a documentary filmmaker with a bumbling crew trying to recover the great clowining of the past. He doesn't find it by interviewing pathetic old retired clowns, but he recreates it in a final extravaganza--a clown funeral complete with men in horse suits and a clown fire company. I understand a lot about Fellini's other movies after seeing his nostalgic recreation of clowning.This is one of Fellini's best--direct, unpretentious, funny and touching.

As of early 2012, this movie can be streamed from Netflix in a restored version with good color, though the restored version seems to be missing some footage in the mockumentary section that I remember from when I last saw it.

This light-hearted movie always makes me bit happier even when I'm blue. Federico Fellini is a great director and captures the clowns true nature at a great angle

I BUY DAYS AGO.RECEIVED BUT DID NOT PLAY GOOD.
YOU SAID I WILL RECEIVE ANOTHER DVD OK.
BUT UNTIL TODAY 29.01.2011 NOTHING CAME TO ME.
WHAT ARE HAPPEN?
WHERE IS MY DVD?
I AM WAITING.Clowns: I Clowns

How lucky we are to have this wonder available, as copyright problems have kept it out of European cimenas for decades. If there has ever been a better film, I haven't seen it. It rings as true now as when I saw it as a student in Paris in the seventies. Yes, the pathos is milked for all it is worth, but the acting is glorious, and it seems as if the circus hasn't left town yet. Enjoy. John Bald