Sometimes those classic foreign films can be rather difficult to understand or to flow with. Naturally, this could be because the international films from decades past were much different and radical compared to the classics from Hollywood. While Hollywood, then as now, had to make movies that could satisfy a relatively large audience, Europe, and other continents, had to distinguish themselves from that little town in Southern California. Hollywood had Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, John Ford -- Europe had Ingmar Bergman, Luis Bunuel, Fredrico Fellini..... you know how it is.

Fellini was an Italian who made some very famous films during the fifties and sixties. He made, among others, La Strada, Nights of Cabiria, La Dolce Vita, as well as 8 1/2. I’ve seen all of these movies, but 8 1/2 is undoubtedly the strangest of an increasingly strange lot. Fellini was accused (or perhaps he was praised, take your pick) for becoming more and more surreal, and self-indulgent in his works -- La Strada and Nights of Cabiria, the earlier films, were grounded in realism, while the films afterward, apparently, slowly became stranger and stranger. I’ve not seen anything of his after 8 1/2, but I have the feeling that I would be even more confused, if not frustrated, than I was with this one.

The basic story seems fairly simple -- a film director (Marcello Mastrioanni) is trying to make a new film, which apparently is a sci-fi epic loaded with pretentious script elements. He’s trying, but he’s not succeeding. The man is in an emotional and psychic crisis -- in terms of his filmmaking, he is the ultimate procrastinator, (or is he merely utterly directionless?) unable to decide on who should act in his film, and who p*sses away all sorts of cash on sets and other things that don’t seem to have a point. And, in his personal life, he has a wife that he doesn’t seem completely enthusiastic about.... since he’s carrying on with another woman, and has clearly had mistresses and the like before. The rest of the movie is basically a slow revelation on the part of Marcello’s character that his soul is one big wasteland.

The nature of the film is something else altogether. It feels almost like you are watching a dream. This is mainly because of the many surreal images that Fellini throws at us. The first shots of the movie are of Marcello’s character in his car during a traffic jam -- inexplicably, he is trapped in his car, banging on the windows, as if suffocating to death, while all the other people in their vehicles watch him impassively. Suddenly, he is floating above the cars. Other strange and famous moments include a sequence in which the guy is living in a house, in which all of the women in his life reside in as well. They are expected to cater to his every whim, although once they gather that he uses women and takes them for granted, they begin to revolt, although he eventually is able to win them over again.

Besides these sequences, which are clearly meant to be symbolic of the main character’s “real” life and state of mind, there are also numerous sequences which show us memories of the guy’s childhood. One notable sequence is of the kid and his friends, who pay a prostitute to dance for them. The kid is found out by his mother, and by the local priests, and, since this is Rome, home of the Catholic Church, the environment is such that the kid manages to be shamed by the clergy in front of his family, and his classmates at Catholic school.

The complete result is a movie that, even if you don’t fully understand it, at least gives off the appearance of smooth execution. It’s clear that Fellini was able to direct this piece without trouble -- the images flow together well, the visual narrative is good, (helps too, that this movie is in black and white) even if some people may wonder what the hell is going on.......

8 1/2 is a perfect example of a “personal” film. It’s pretty obvious that everything in this film is made according to Fellini’s wishes and nobody else’s. Sure, Fellini wasn’t a nobody at the time of this picture, and everything he would have made would have been praised by the right people, but at the same time, unlike other directors who probably would have tried to make a film that would actually appeal to a lot of people, Fellini went right out and made a film that practically spoofed the whole notion of a successful director trying to top himself.

Many critics and fans of the film suggest that 8 1/2 is some sort of veiled biography, but I’m not sure if this film is really so, or just a bit of a joke. I suspect the latter. The real Fellini wouldn’t be making the sort of films that his protagonist is trying to make ---I think that Fellini is merely satirizing the sort of successful, shallow, self-important, self-pitying, pathetic guy that Marcello’s character is. The critics make the mistake of calling this autobiography because of all the seemingly personal childhood flashbacks, the insights into character, and the mere fact that the main character is also a film director. But just because you use memories from your real life to spice up your picture, doesn’t mean that your main character is you. All we purveyors of creative fiction commit this sort of theft -- stealing from our own lives as well as that of others -- to form a decent story. So while, sometimes, the final result can be meant as autobiographical, most of the time, it probably isn’t.

Sure, Fellini has probably had some of the thoughts and ideas of his main character. They’re both directors, after all. Fellini is able to show us some aspect of a creatively bankrupt artist, and no doubt Fellini had -- as we all do -- those occasional spells where he might have thought he was bankrupt. The main character is a director who is an empty soul -- he’s making a crappy science-fiction, but instead of making it into a fun film, he’s trying to inject it with a lot of fluff about religion, and morals, and “ideas”. His behavior at this point seems self-important. He’s not really making a movie about anything -- he just wants to make it look as if he has, to prove to the world that he is better than the movie that he is making, while not having the talent or the drive to actually make a good movie. By the end of the film, during a press conference, however, reporters and others accuse him of having not a single thing to say.

Overall, 8 1/2 is a film that would have to be watched more than a few times, I think. I’ve seen this film twice, and still haven’t really “gotten” the whole thing. Mind you, some people could watch a film like this only once and give up right away. I suppose a lot of people who’ve hardly watched a foreign film in their lives, especially not one of this vintage, would comment that 81/2 would be no less, or more, confusing than all the rest. Put this movie alongside, say, Bergman’s Cries and Whispers, or Bunuel’s Phantom of Liberty, and those eyeballs would detect no discernible difference, the owners of those eyeballs would say. All of these films are weird, and don’t make any sense.

Of course, this isn’t true. Actually, Cries and Whispers and Phantom of Liberty make a lot more sense, and entertained me a lot more, than 8 1/2 ever did, but try telling that to some guy who thinks that music videos are compelling storytelling. That guy would say that all of these films suck, and probably couldn’t even tell you what the difference were between them.

I, personally, haven’t yet gotten attached to Fellini. La Strada is a classic, but other than that, I’ve not warmed up to Fellini in the same way as I have to some of the Bergman or Bunuel films. No real reason, I’ m afraid -- my soul just tells me certain things, such as that Cries and Whispers is a great movie, or that Phantom of Liberty is strange, but with some really funny bits in it, and that 8 1/ 2 is very interesting, personal, but still very difficult for my puny brain to be fully satisfied with it. Oh, well, maybe someday soon, I will try it again.







Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV