Casting Pointers in C style?

[tomadom]

This is something I'm having allot of trouble with. Casting Pointers in C Programming. I don't want to move onto implicit casts until I have this down pat.

I'm failing to understand how casting pointers works.
I know the below program is pointless but I am just trying to understand it.

The line

int *mnt = (int*)&flt;

if I read this correctly passes the address of flt which has been converted to an int to the pointer mnt.

1 - When I output mnt I get a garbage value, probably because the address of flt is then converted to a pointer and passed onto mnt as a value and then reinterpreted as a memory address. (that is the first part I don't understand)

2 - - What exactly does the (int*) cast say? Does this mean that a pointer will be returned or an address will be returned. What does the fact that the * is inside the parenthesis mean?

#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

int main()
{

  float flt=  6.5;

  int *mnt = (int*)&flt;
  
  cout << mnt << endl; // outputs hex memory address
  cout << *mnt << endl; // outputs garbage value
  

}