8 and a half

I would say one of the trickiest things a person could try to film is the creative process, the work in progress, or when an artist just can’t make up his mind about what his next work should be. Federico Fellini’s “8 and a half” is perhaps the one film that fully creates the world of an artist and his struggle with his own art.

“8 and a half” is a film that is usually one of the first art house films studied by film students, probably along with Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai”, and Ingmar Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal”. The film came along in the early sixties back when going to art houses was the trendy thing to do. “8 and a half” was exposed to a lot of people; it won the Oscar for best foreign film of 1963, and is probably still considered the most Felliniesque of Fellini’s films.

I first saw the film as a young boy who haunted my local video store every weekend, for me it was the first Fellini film I ever saw, and I discovered him the same time I discovered others like Kurosawa and Truffaut. When I saw the film I was entertained, I didn’t quite understand it, and it was probably the first film I saw that used dreams vs. Reality so liberally. At the end when it got to the circus like procession on an abandoned set, I was at a loss, but I wasn’t bored. I felt perhaps what other people felt after seeing it for the first time, that they were experiencing something new and original, and personal. Maybe I didn’t get the fact that it was personal, nor had anything to do with Fellini, but I was effected by it.

It wasn’t until just recently I saw “8 and a half” again at a film festival earlier this year, this time I was moved by it in a more profound way, and I viewed it as one of the most truthful films about an artist there has ever been.

“8 and a half” concerns the life of a famous film director Guido (touchingly played by Marcello Mastroinni) who is in a creative block. He’s in charge in making an epic science fiction film, only the plot is never explained. His producer is getting impatient with him, his writer criticizes him, and he is flooded by actresses who want to be in his films. The film actually starts with Guido having a nightmare suffocating inside a car being swarmed with other people and vehicles around him. In reality he is swarmed, swarmed by his friends, his colleagues, and people who just want to get a piece of him.

Guido’s love life isn’t all that stable either, he carries on an affair with a married woman who he treats as a tramp (Sandra Milo), but he is still in love with his wife Luisa (Anouk Aimee) an intelligent woman who is finding it hard to live with her philandering husband.

The film goes back and forth from Guido’s imagination, to his reality. He visits nostalgic places of his past sometimes involving women he fantasizes about sleeping with. Perhaps the most vivid image of these women is Saraghina, a prostitute who lived by the sea when Guido was young. She danced the tango for him and his young friends, but the church tells him she is the devil. Guido struggles with his catholic upbringing, which was a running theme in many of Fellini’s films.

Guido seems to move further and further away from his film, he becomes disinterested in it, he seems to be searching for truth, something that is eluding him through the whole film. Guido is suffocated by both his talent and shortcomings as a filmmaker; he doesn’t seem to know where to go from there.

It has been said that Federico Fellini made “8 and a half” when he didn’t know what do to. He had just had his great success with “La Dolce Vita”, a film which would be difficult to top, what was to come next? “8 and a half” seems to come out of desperation, almost as a fever dream, the remarkable thing about it is Fellini was able to put all the pieces together to make a work of art, about working on your art.

The film pulls no punches in making Guido a wonderful man, especially when his bitter wife confronts him, and turns on him, in one of the most truthful moments filmed between a husband and wife. Luisa has just been through an embarrassing sight as she sits through screen tests by Guido of women who are obviously supposed to be her. She berates Guido for only doing this film to pet his own ego, it’s not honest, although Guido meant to be.

The film is very much about the women in Guido’s life, as it is about his art, they are both things that are attainable and not. His love of women culminates with his muse Claudia (Claudia Cardinale) who is both a real and imagined person who he just can’t quite get to; when he finally does, she turns out to be just as real as all the others.

“8 and a half” is a magical film, Fellini was one of those who always had something up his sleeve, he was in love with what film could do and with images that could be perceived as both real and imagined. I’ve only seen a handful of Fellini’s films, but “8 and a half” has had an enduring impact on me, and has affected me the most, every time I see it, I am entranced by its beauty, and moved by its honesty, it’s a majestic work of art.