Orchestra Rehearsal, a long-unavailable 1979 short feature by Federico Fellini, is finally seeing domestic release, and while that's a good thing, it's not hard to see why there was no rush to release it outside Europe. Not that it's not a fine film; it is. Subtitled The Decline Of The West In C# Major, it's also a fairly heavy-handed political allegory about post-war Europe. Orchestra Rehearsal is told from the point of view of a television documentary crew covering a rehearsal in a medieval auditorium that also serves as the burial place for several popes. Over the course of the rehearsal, amid much discussion of what drew them to their instruments in the first place, the musicians come into conflict with each other and, more frequently, the conductor. After a short break in the rehearsal, Orchestra Rehearsal then quietly slips off the shackles of realism as wholescale revolt takes hold. A relatively minor film by Fellini standards, it's still smart, compelling viewing, and its conclusion—an ambiguous tribute to the unifying power of the arts—is as provocative as most of the director's films.