[Fellin] turns the world into his circus and, in a liberated, quasi-documentary style, resurrects some of history's great pagliacci with their cornucopia of practical jokes, smashed hats, pulled chairs, popping balloons and squirting flowers.

Fellini's documentary celebration of the dying art of the clown is his best film in years.

It's not that The Clowns is not a good deal of fun, or that it is boring; it's just that -- to me, anyway -- this sort of coda doesn't do justice to the entire career.

From the very outset, Fellini does not falsify the world within which the clowns play their games in an attempt to make it correspond to his feelings, but instead finds among them those facets that are in tune with his own sensitivities.