Fellini’s
great film 8 1/2 (1963) is a
dreamlike, surreal vision of a director, Guido Anselmo (Marcello Mastroianni),
at mid-career and mid-life. He fears he
has exhausted his creative impulse and that he has nothing left to say. His marriage is a shambles, and his wife is
ready for divorce. When the film begins, after a dreamlike scene in which he is
trapped in his car filling up with gas on an expressway, while everyone in the
cars around him stare at him ominously, he is staying at a sanatorium or a rest
home. Either he recovering from nervous
exhaustion or is an alcoholic trying to dry out. Though he is there for a rest,
to recover, his entire film crew seems to have accompanied him, especially his
producers, who are pressuring him to make decisions and to choose a cast for a new
film.
Everyone
is pressuring Guido—guilt about his marriage, memories of his parents and their
extractions, childhood memories, women he has slept with or is sleeping
with. These figures appear and
disappear, mostly in Guido’s fevered imagination, sometimes in reality.
Everyone
is trying to compel Guido to do or be something he is not. That struggle between the expectations and
desires of others, in conflict with his own self, is at the core of the film.
8 1/2 doesn’t distinguish
among dreams, memories, hallucinations, fantasies. One can sometimes tell the difference, but
not always, and such distinctions are irrelevant in the film—all these
impressions and sensation, real or imagined, make up Guido’s life. He contends
with them all.
Guido’s
struggle is with his authentic self and his impulses. As a director, he is constantly creating
fictions, illusions, lies. He lies to
everyone constantly, including his wife, his producers, and women he wants to
seduce (he suggests that there is a role for them in his films). He lies to
himself. The film he is being pressured
to make involves a rocket ship and a plot about people in a post-atomic
apocalyptic world escaping to another planet.
It’s not entirely clear to me whether the film is a genuine plan or a kind
of inauthentic joke, the sort of commercial film his producers believe will
earn money. He doesn’t seem to think
much of the film itself, but he feels pressured to make it. Symbols and images
of fiction abound: masks, backdrops, portraits, clowns, the huge artificial
launch tower from which the movie rocket ship is supposed to launch.
It’s
difficult not to suppose that 8 1/2
is Fellini’s self-critique. I don’t know whether there is a factual basis for that notion, but Guido’s role as a
famous director like Fellini supports the idea. The film that Guido is trying
to make (or avoid making) is his own self-critique as well. It uses material from his own life, his
marriage, his doubts. So that 8 1/2 is a meta film twice over: a
director’s critique of his life and vocation in the form of a film about an
artist making a film that is his own self-critique.
Cinematography
is a major aspect of this film. Fellini
especially favors long shots down hallways or in a forest or an enclosed
square. I never fully appreciated Marcello Mastroianni until I saw this film:
he inhabits his character fully. Nina Rota’s score is a strong element as well.
The
final scene is intriguingly glorious. This great film alone justifies Fellini’s
reputation. It has influenced such filmmakers as Robert Altman, David
Lynch, Woody Allen, Terry Gilliam, and
many others.[1]
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