Federico Fellini, whose habit it is to offend the sensibilities of his fellow Italians, is at it again in a film with the precisely accurate title, Orchestra Rehearsal, and an explanatory subtitle, "The Decline of the West in C# Major." Beginning with La Dolce Vita, Fellini has made a series of films dealing with moral and social decadence; here he turns allegorically to political chaos and violence. (p. 221)

The message is clear enough, if perhaps a little simplistic: shape up, do your jobs, show some responsibility toward the society of which you are a part—in short, discipline yourselves, for if you don't, someone will come along to discipline you. In the present Italian context, it seems cogent advice, nor would I deny that it has wider application. But somehow the bite does not seem very sharp.

One problem, I think, is that Fellini has chosen an unfortunate model for his parable. Orchestra musicians, by and large, are a rebellious breed. For the most part, they are gifted and many of them slaved for years to achieve virtuoso careers that narrowly escaped their grasps. They are highly individualistic, fiercely proud of their skills, and yet they are forced to submit to the will of a conductor whom they have not chosen and of whose ability they are often scornful….

So Orchestra Rehearsal might readily be understood, at least until the closing scene, as an instrumentalist's dream of sweet vengeance on the bête noir of his trade. And this interpretation would be encouraged by the fact that the cast, with the exception of the conductor …, is composed not of actors but of musicians. Being amateurs, they appear self-conscious, they are aware of the camera, they tend to preen and giggle, there seems to be more pretense than passion in their rages. This is how they might behave among themselves to demonstrate how a visiting celebrity could be given his comeuppance, if they cared to bell that cat. For all the cracking of walls and intrusion of wrecking ball, the atmosphere of the film is more that of a comic charade than of a solemn admonition, and the notion of an orchestra kicking over the traces is not sufficiently fantastic to make a strong metaphorical point. (p. 222)