It's hard to think of an Italian director on the same level of fame and influence as Federico Fellini, and though a good number of modern filmgoers may not be familiar with him by name, it's quite likely that they've experienced him secondhand through the countless modern filmmakers he's inspired. Elements of his style can be seen in the witty social commentary of Terry Gilliam, the surreal imagery of David Lynch, and the emotionally conflicted dialogue of Charlie Kaufman, while other films are just shameless exercises in homage, such as Kaufman's own Synecdoche, New York, Woody Allen's Stardust Memories, Paolo Sorrentino's The Great Beauty- even that ending scene from Big Fish. And for good measure, I guess I should throw in that one short film Wes Anderson directed for Prada. Fact is, without this guy, we wouldn't even have the word paparazzi, which comes from the character Paparazzo, a photographer from his 1960 classic La Dolce Vita, arguably the most well-remembered of his works. And while La Dolce Vita's cinematic beauty and iconic status may have won it the rank of #40 on the BFI list for the top 50 greatest films of all time, 8 1/2 surpasses it by miles, ranking within the top #10 on the same list.1 So, the question is... why? Why is 8 1/2 considered to be such a great film- and, more specifically- why is it an important film for the film lovers of today's audiences? The answer is simple. It is because 8 1/2 remains to this day not only the definitive film about filmmaking, but also quite possibly the definitive film about the life of the artist in general. Unfortunately, this is the kind of answer which only raises more questions, so let me explain exactly why I believe that to be true.
But before I move on to some of the film's deeper themes, I have to take a moment to talk about exactly what kind of a film this is. In his 1947 film Bicycle Thieves, Fellini contemporary Vittorio di Sica shows us the human condition through the struggle of a simple, innocent lower class man driven to desperation. Fellini shows us the same kind of desperation, but in an entirely different environment, as he chooses instead to focus on the depravity of Italy's lavish upper class. Here are the people who have everything that the starving families of Bicycle Thieves lack, even to excess, and yet they're entirely corrupted, left empty, searching for a sense of purpose and meaning that ultimately evades them. La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2 both carry across these themes and ideas, but they do so in entirely different ways.
La Dolce Vita is a stinging social commentary on celebrity lifestyle, a journey through seven days and seven nights of sin and debauchery. Not surprisingly, it happens to be the second saddest film I've ever seen- the saddest film I've ever seen being the aforementioned Synecdoche, New York, a story about a neurotic self-absorbed genius who begins an artistic project so grand and expensive that it consumes his life entirely and physically and emotionally estranges him from everyone and everything he really cares about. Not coincidentally, this is also the exact same plot of 8 1/2. But going back to Fellini, I'd like to point out that though 8 1/2 and La Dolce Vita both produce entirely different feelings in the audience when each film ends, both films keep the same emotional tone for a majority of their respective narratives. Their endings really are the only thing that separates them into the genres of comedy and tragedy- whereas, on the whole, Fellini's writing style floats in a balance between the two, so that each film can reasonably be seen as a tragicomedy. Now of 8 1/2 is surprisingly funny, but note that with the amount of distressing dramatic content within the story, Fellini found it necessary to consistently remind people that it was supposed to be funny, to the point where he had "ricordati che e un film comico" taped under the viewfinder of every camera- "remember that this is a comic film".2 To pull something like this off- this interplay of painful realism with absurd humor- requires a series of emotional maneuvers only the most skilled writers are capable. Fellini is able do this by masking painful information beneath clever wordplay and snappy and detached delivery- which again, brings us back to Kaufman, who does this so often it you may as well consider it his trademark. The effect of this balance is that though the entire film could be seen as one man's psychological breakdown, the movie's light tone and airy music keep you from being too worried about what you're seeing on screen- except, of course, for those few moments when Fellini really wants you to be worried.
One of the first things that you'll notice with this movie is its use of bizarre imagery- even from the very first shot, it seems to be speaking its own kind of symbolic language. Fellini's biographer Tullio Kezich writes that at towards the middle of his life Fellini became fascinated by the writings of psychoanalyst Carl Jung and his respective theories on the subconscious- the director began to keep a dream journal and subsequently his films began to illustrate qualities of the oneiric3. Oneiric film theory aims to interpret film in a way that emphasizes the parallels between the film and the dream, so that the film can literally be seen as a dream shared by the artist and the audience- as French critic Roland Barthes beautifully points out, do we not walk out of the movie theater feeling almost as if we had just awoken from a long sleep?4 While it's true that not every film lends itself to this kind of psychoanalysis, many directors who view the medium in this way will deliberately work surreal elements in their movies as a means of guiding the audience to reconsider the film from this perspective, and many films are better enjoyed and understood when you watch the film as if it were a dream, the product of our collective subconscious. Films which operate on this idea can be found everywhere you look- such as Martin Scorsese's After Hours, Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, and pretty much everything by David Lynch- and yet when it comes down to it, all of these directors' uses of surrealism can be traced straight back to Fellini. The symbols we see in Fellini's dream sequences are by no means arbitrarily chosen. In fact, the fears and desires symbolically present in the opening scene are carried throughout the rest of the film, and just as much can be said for the reappearing visual motifs. In the first sequence we see Guido trapped between the glass windows of a car, just as his dead father is shown to be trapped within the glass mausoleum within the second dream sequence; the steamy bath house also refers back to the steamy car from the same opening scene. When I first saw the film, I was amazed when I first saw the sheer magnitude of Guido's film set- unaware that I had actually seen it within the first three minutes of the movie! And it's hard for anyone to miss the unsettling similarities between Guido's harem fantasy and his childhood memory of the wine bath. Within the dream, the environment is understood as a manifestation of the character- how that character interprets his own reality, and what he or she sees as important. Yet with Fellini ensuring the line between dream, reality, fantasy, and memory stays blurred, the audience is forced into a deeper level of involvement with what they're presented with- you have to figure out what's going on in any given scene.
At the center of 8 1/2, is of course, Guido- dreamer and director. Guido is interesting because he is at once likable and repulsive. The movie introduces him as someone beset with stress, surrounded on all sides by producers and actors who never cease to barrage him with questions, and we can immediately relate to his frustration. But just when we feel we like this guy, the movie suddenly begins to explore in depth every single one of his flaws- contemporary critic Alberto Moravia describes Guido as “obsessed by eroticism, a sadist, a masochist, a self-mythologizer, an adulterer, a clown, a liar and a cheat."5 He is a charlatan, attempting to mount his magnum opus at a time when he is, as Roger Ebert writes, "artistically bankrupt"6, perhaps not unlike Fellini before the film entered development. When Guido begins working on his film, it is a story about a nuclear apocalypse, about a rocket-ship and mankind's evacuation of a dying world-- and yet when we see the screen tests, all of the characters are simply mirror images of the key players in his own life. In choosing to make the film, he desires to do something important, something beautiful, something to be remembered, but as he retreats into himself further and further, his massive science fiction epic eventually devolves into self-gratifying autobiography. Here is a man who hides behind his sunglasses because he is afraid of the world around him, afraid of women, afraid of vulnerability, afraid of being disappointed and afraid of being a disappointment. Thus Guido creates art as a means of controlling a reality that is beyond his control, processing reality through his artwork in the same way that dreams process our reality in a way that we can understand. But in doing this, he distorts reality and ultimately loses touch with it. Guido's very character is constantly defined by lies and deception, but more damaging than any of the lies he feeds the other characters are the lies he feeds himself, to the point where even he- and therefore, the audience- can no longer distinguish between reality and fabrication.
In the midst of his trials, Guido seeks for answers in his wife's medium friend Rosella. He is free, she tells him. Free to do what, though? Free to choose, perhaps? For certainly, the entire ending of the film seems to hinge on one climactic choice- where he crawls under the table at a press conference, pulls out a gun, and points it towards his head. A gunshot is heard, but we see nothing. And though there is some level of ambiguity, most are convinced that this doesn't imply he kills himself- no, the upbeat optimism of the film's final images conflicts with that idea too strongly. According to Fellini analyst Frank Burke, what Guido shoots is not himself, but his ego7. When we encounter Guido at the film's beginning, he is making art for himself- not exposing his weaknesses, but to hide them- even though what Guido primarily desires is a relationship built on vulnerability without judgment. He craves true self-expression, but also true acceptance. What he discovers at the end is the love that he was searching for, almost unconsciously, and when he puts his own pride and selfishness to death, he discovers a glorious afterlife where he is able to live in harmony with everyone he has wronged. The film's ending then redefines art as a gift to others, a bridge to unite artist and audience- so that the artist is noblest when he is most honest. Art is no longer, then, a burden or a duty. Art is an act of love.
Sources:
1"The 50 Greatest Films of All Time". Sight & Sound. British Film Institute, September 2012. Web. Retrieved on 24 September 2015.
2Walter, Eugene. “Dinner with Fellini”, The Transatlantic Review, Autumn 1964. Print.
3Kesich, Tullio. Federico Fellini: His Life and His Work. " London: Faber & Faber, 2007. Print.
4pp.104-107. Barthes, Roland. "En sortant du cinéma". Communications, 23. 1975. Print.
5Moravia, Alberto. L'Espresso. 14 February 1963. Print.
6Ebert, Roger. “Fellini’s 8½”, Chicago Sun-Times, 7 May 1993.
7p. 164-170. Burke, Frank. “Modes of Narration and Spiritual Development in Fellini’s 8½”. Literature Film Quarterly. 1986. Vol. 14 Issue 3. Print.
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