ORCHESTRA REHEARSAL

Musicians turn up at rehearsal, chat up a documentarian’s camera, then take up against their Ahab of a maestro. Shooting for Italian TV, Federico Fellini indulges only a knack for gags, lewd and lyrical, and his love of eccentric mugs—a tubby tubist, the wizened men on reeds, a beaky loon on flute. The documentary conceit—a foretaste of Intervista—is sloppily handled, but the rest is a smooth nonnarrative portrait of human turmoil and musical grace. This must be the genius’ slimmest film. Don’t mistake it for his slightest. B+