a pistol screaming, "What am I doing here? Why was I put here in the first place?" leaving Ivo Salvini with the film's last words: "If we all quieted down a little, maybe we'd understand something." Cast Roberto Benigni as Ivo Salvini Paolo Villaggio as Gonnella Nadia Ottaviani as Aldina Marisa Tomasi as Marisa Angelo Orlando as Nestore Susy Blady as Susy Dario Ghirardi as Journalist Dominique Chevalier as 1st Micheluzzi Brother Nigel Harris as 2nd Micheluzzi Brother Daniela Airoldi Stefano Antonucci Ferruccio Brembilla Stefano Cedrati Sim Themes In Ermanno Cavazzoni's 1987 novel, Il poema dei lunatici (The Lunatics' Poem) on which the film is loosely based, Fellini recognized an abandoned project about filming the natural world: "the soil, the seasons, sun and rain, day and night. He likes the notion that at night the water in the well is awakened by the moon and starts uttering faint messages" to those prepared to listen. Unfortunately, few are permitted - let alone prepared - to listen in the infernal uproar of a postmodern world where blaring television commercials and beeping satellites drown out poetry, silence, and the voice of the moon. The consumer society critiqued in the Rome of La Dolce Vita has moved to the suburbs where incommunicability, selfishness, voyeurism, and spiritual poverty characterise the chaos of mass media existence. In his twilight years (three years before he died of a heart attack at the age of 73), Fellini mounts an energetic assault on media moguls like Silvio Berlusconi and the pandemonium of contemporary society by suggesting the escape into silence as a means to heal the psyche, the source of all true wisdom. Production After writing a short treatment in two weeks with Tullio Pinelli, Fellini began scouting locations on the Po in September 1988 where he visited Reggiòlo, the hometown of the gifted Italian caricaturist Nino Za, his adolescent idol; the memories evoked reinforced his idea of returning to the provincial atmosphere of his early films. Although Fellini was still unsure about what he wanted to film, producers Mario and Vittorio Cecchi Gori agreed to finance his project to the tune of fifteen billion lire. Pietro Notarianni, the production manager, and Danilo Donati, Oscar-winning Set and Costume Designer, engaged in a heated dispute over costs. Donati quit and was replaced by Dante Ferretti. To help organise his ideas, Fellini decided to build a town outside Rome on the