All the confusion of my life has been a reflection of myself!
Myself as I am, not as I’d like to be.
But that no longer frightens me!
The truth is: I do not know . . . I seek . . . I have not yet found.
Only with this in mind can I feel alive and look at you without shame.
Life is a holiday; let us live it together.

Historical Background: With his 1960 film La Dolce Vita, Fellini left forever behind the Italian Neorealism that had provided his artistic orientation in La Strada (1954) and Nights of Cabiria (1957). After the success of La Dolce Vita, Fellini suffered a period of creative block, feeling uncertain about whether he had anything further to say. It finally struck him that there was something profound to be said about that very struggle he was having with the creative process. He would draw from his own experience. The result was the autobiographical binge that we now know as 8 ½ (so-named because, at the time, he had completed six solo films and three collaborations, which by his reckoning amounted to seven-and-a-half films, making this new one number 8 ½). The protagonist in 8 ½, Guido, is quite obviously Fellini’s alter ego. In fact, Guido’s mistress Carla was played by an actress who was in real life Fellini’s mistress! While all of this introspective emphasis on himself seems to some like unwarranted self-indulgence, it is, in fact, fully appropriate, since the principal theme being explored in the film is narcissistic, introspective self-examination. Fellini was after truth and if that meant exposing his own less flattering attributes, first, to self-reflection and, then, to public scorn, so be it. He presents us with a character, Guido, who is filled with self-loathing in relation to his weaknesses. Those weaknesses were, in fact, Fellini’s own weaknesses as a person. Ergo: Fellini loathed his weaknesses. In fact, he never tired of flagellating himself (residue of his Catholic upbringing?) by exposing his flaws to public inspection. With 8 ½, Fellini created a film that was simultaneously quintessentially Felliniesque and seminal. It’s soul-searching style was unlike anything before it but was imitated ever after – most directly in Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories.

The Story: The surface story is pretty straight forward. A famous director, Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) is suffering a midlife crisis. He is under tremendous pressure professionally to pull together a script for his next film. Screen testing and set-construction are already in the works and the script is overdue. At the same time, he is struggling psychologically from a variety of self-doubts. He wants to create a definitive work of art of fundamental honesty but wonders if he has lost his creative impulse or whether he ever had one. He feels like a phony and a failure and frets about whether his work up to the present time has all been junk. Unable to muster genuine enthusiasm for his next project, he is advised by his physician to take a break at a spa to regain his health. Yet, even there, his producer hounds him relentlessly for a finished script. Actresses hoping for parts demand details. A Marxist intellectual who has been tentatively tapped as co-writer bluntly characterizes Guido’s sketch as “a series of completely senseless episodes” having none of the advantages of the avant-garde films but all of the drawbacks. There is no escape for Guido.

Simultaneously, Guido’s personal life is in utter turmoil. He is torn between his libido (he has a youthful but tawdry and empty-headed mistress, Carla (Sandro Milo)) and the fear that he is destroying the relationship with the one woman he truly loves, his wife Luisa (Anouk Aimee). He experiences distraction in every beautiful woman he sees instead of the comforting and ego-support he desperately needs. Subconscious manifestations of his psychic crisis fill his sleeping dreams while also causing him to lapse periodically into daytime fantasies, even when he should be productively engaged. One fantasy relates to a beautiful actress of his acquaintance, Claudia Cardinale (playing herself), who he fantasizes as his ideal woman – one who will comfort him, support him uncritically, satisfy him sexually, and ask nothing for herself.

In this state of despair, he seeks solace in nostalgic memories of his childhood and his parents. He seeks religious guidance as well (but receives nothing of value there).

Some of the best scenes in 8 ½ are entirely fanciful and rendered in surreal style. I’ll mention just two stand-outs. The film’s opening scene (which we later discover is a dream) is of a man trapped in his car in traffic, being slowly asphyxiated, then escaping through the roof, then dangling from a rope suspended from a helicopter and unceremoniously dumped in the ocean, and finally emerging among a herd of writers, actors, reporters, and the like, all besieging him with questions.

Arguably the greatest scene of the film is a misogynistic fantasy in which Guido rules over a household composed of dozens of gorgeous women, including all of those currently or previously in Guido’s life and others that he has merely fantasized about taking to bed. All are there to please him – to cater to his needs. When one of the gals gets too old (age twenty-six), she is sent upstairs and out-of-sight. Although this “house rule” is challenged by the women, leading to an insurrection of sorts, Guido is able to quell the riot effectively with his whip and bring the women back into line! (Don’t blame me, ladies!)

Themes: The most obvious theme of this film is the issue of creative block, triggered by a crisis of self-confidence. Guido has the deep desire to finally say something unequivocally profound. He tells us, “I thought I had something so simple . . . so simple to say that would finally bury everything that is dead within us.” He wants to bury the lies and games by which we maintain our social relationships and cut to the chase, bare souls, and speak nothing but pure truth to his audience. Some call this the greatest film about film-making ever made, but I think that misses the mark. It’s not about film-making at all. It’s closer to being about “the creative process,” but most precisely about “failure of the creative process.” Guido’s creative block, of course, was caused by internal emptiness and suffering, which was largely self-inflicted. We can only surmise whether that was also the source of Fellini’s own creative block.

A second theme elucidated in 8 ½ is the joy of the artistic process vs. the value of the finished work. It is often said that the joy lies in the journey, not in the destination, but usually that old saw is applied to our causes and struggles in life. Fellini is arguing that the same point applies to the artistic process. Guido says (speaking on behalf of Fellini) “I really have nothing to say but I want to say it anyway.” For some, this assertion and the intellectual stance underlying it become a foundation for criticism of 8 ½ and, more broadly, Fellini’s entire “self-indulgent”, post-Neorealism artistic phase. One should recognize, however, that a film about an artist having nothing to say is not the same thing as a film or an artist that has nothing to say! The fact of the matter is that 8 ½ has a whole lot to say about mid-life crisis, childhood, memories of one’s parents, lust, accepting one another as we are vs. placing demands, mobilizing productivity and the creative impulse while sorting out personal crises, misogynistic tendencies of men, and more. Guido may be temporarily or even permanently “dried up” as a creative artist, but Fellini was not. This film reminds me, a bit, of the famous episodes of the popular sit-com Seinfeld in which Jerry and George propose to a potential producer a sit-com “about nothing.” While the proposed “show within the show” was to be about nothing, those particular Seinfeld episodes were not only successful humor, but very much about something. It is a paradox that Seinfeld shared with 8 ½.

Another theme in 8 ½ is the use of autobiographical elements in works of art. Another film that explores this question that I recently reviewed is Bergman’s Through a Glass Darkly. As one of the characters asks of Guido, “Why piece together the tatters of your life – the vague memories, the faces – the people you never knew how to love?” That question, in effect, is the one implicitly posed when people accuse Fellini of being excessively self-indulgent, even masturbatory. Fellini’s films are frequently self-indulgent and always self-referential. Self-indulgence in any form of communication is a risky business, but like any risk, it can culminate in either success or failure. When you share your own life experience in a way that others find interesting and illuminating, you’re a momentary hero! When instead, what you’ve shared strikes your audience as mundane and uninteresting, you’re just a bore. Like all of us, Fellini can be either, but in 8 ½, he has capitalized on personal insights and self-reflection in such a profound way that it is entirely successful in my view. Additionally, he delivers his exercise in introspection with such mastery of images, one has to impressed by the vehicle as well as the passengers. This is not style over substance. This is profound substance delivered with consummate style. That the substance happens to be about inner psychic emptiness is irrelevant.

Naturally, there is also Fellini’s usual slap at the Catholic church. Religion offers nothing for Guido either in childhood or adulthood. One scene recounts Guido’s experience with a rumba-dancing prostitute, Saraghina, and his subsequent shaming by the Catholic schoolmasters. The adult Guido is lectured by a naked cardinal at the spa, from behind a shroud to protect his modesty: “There is no salvation outside the church. All that lies outside the City of God belongs to the Devil.” Deep wisdom, that!

Production Values: I can’t name another film that so effectively and seamlessly intersperses reality with dreams and daydreams. Some viewers complain that they are unable to recognize when the film is depicting reality and when the dreams or fantasies. One clue is that Guido lowers his sunglasses with one finger and peers out over them whenever one of his reveries is about to begin. He then pulls the glasses back up when he returns to reality, as if the glare of reality is too strong for his eyes! Even Guido’s reality is more satirical than realistic, providing Fellini with endless opportunity for an extravaganza of surrealism.

The technical virtuosity of this film is exceptional. The shot composition is exquisite as in all Fellini films, sometimes focusing on the foreground and other times tracking activities at a distance as faces passing through the frame in the foreground. Not that it especially matters, but all of the usual list of Fellini trademarks are present in 8 ½: the grotesque faces, the large, buxom tramp, the man suspended between earth and heaven, the parades and processions, and so forth. So, too, is the gorgeous lyricism. Like other Italian masters of his era, Fellini did not record dialogue during filming. Instead, he played music during filming so that his principals and extras were always moving synchronously to what later seems to viewers to be some inner rhythm or ethereal melody. In also had the advantage of ensuring that dialogue would be clean and crisp when later dubbed in at the studio. The soundtrack provided by the great Nino Rota is partly original and partly drawn from dance music of the time and classical themes by Rossini and Wagner. All of it is superbly rendered. There is a nifty documentary about Rota’s career included on the disk of extras in the Criterion DVD version of 8 ½.

Mastroianni delivers a masterful performance – a mimicry of his own director. His hair is dyed with gray streaks and he is suitably decked out in old man’s garb – black suits, shoes, and glasses. Mastroianni was a well-known lead in European art films for over thirty years. His credits include La Dolce Vita (1960), La Notte (1961), Divorce Italian Style (1962), Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (1963), and La Nuit de Varennes (1982). The gorgeous Claudia Cardinale appeared also in The Pink Panther (1964) and Fitzcarraldo (1982). Anouk Aimee had been in La Dolce Vita (1960) and later starred in A Man and a Woman (1966).

Bottom-Line: I first saw this film in the 1960’s when it was new. At that time, I frankly thought it a complete waste of celluloid. I watched it for just the second time this afternoon and am amazed to discover that the film has improved a good deal during those four decades! I had fully expected to pan this film based on my distant recollection of it, but must instead eat every word that I’ve offered gratuitously about it in some comments on other Epinion reviews. Pass the ketchup! It is unquestionably a masterpiece of both themes and execution and the pinnacle of Fellini’s career. It seems superfluous to add my enthusiastic recommendation to the lofty esteem in which this film is held by so many film-experts and film-lovers.

The Criterion DVD is the preferred version and an exceptional film offering. The interactive menu is high quality, the video transfer is top-drawer, and the package of extras is exemplary. Extras include a Director’s Notebook (footage that Fellini did for NBC in 1969), the Nino Rota documentary mentioned above, three pertinent interviews, and a set of still photographs from the set of 8 ½. This film is in Italian with English subtitles and has a running time of 140 minutes. It is unrated but ought to be suitable (though not necessarily of interest) for age 13 and above.


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You might want to check out these other excellent films from Italy:

Amarcord
L’Avventura
The Bicycle Thief
Christ Stopped at Eboli
Cinema Paradiso
The Conformist
Death in Venice
Divorce Italian Style
The Dreamers
Eclipse
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
General della Rovere
The Last Emperor
The Leopard
Life is Beautiful
Malèna
Mamma Roma
Miracle in Milan
The Night of the Shooting Stars
Nights of Cabiria
La Notte
Padre Padrone
Il Postino
Rocco and His Brothers
Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom
Shoeshine
The Son’s Room
The Spider's Stratagem
Star Maker
Swept Away
Teorema
The Tree of Wooden Clogs
Umberto D.

Recommended:
Yes

Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older