The Voice of the Moon

Even the original (Italian) dialogue was re-dubbed in order to increase the feeling of unreality. However, this is not a unique feature for this particular movie among Fellini's. On the contrary, it was very common for him to ask his performers to speak out loud randomly chosen numbers instead of the actual script text. Then the main cast would re-dub itself, the supporting cast being most of the time re-dubbed by a few specialized actors. It has to be said that in Italy direct sound wasn't much in use until the French 'Nouvelle Vague' made a massive use of it, in the name of realism, and thus became an example for the Italian film industry. Re-dubbing remained nonetheless a common practice, and an excellent one at that until the 1980s, and Fellini took advantage of its possibilities to increase the feeling of unreality in all of his movies by asking his dubbers (all of them) not to perfectly lip-sync. The only exceptions to this technique are his very early works, where the famous dreamlike world and sensitivity of the director aren't still outlined.

Featured in Towards the Moon with Fellini (1990)