8 1/2

Plot

Fresh off of the international success of La Dolce Vita, master director Federico Fellini moved into the realm of self-reflexive autobiography with what is widely believed to be his finest and most personal work. Marcello Mastroianni delivers a brilliant performance as Fellini's alter ego Guido Anselmi, a film director overwhelmed by the large-scale production he has undertaken. He finds himself harangued by producers, his wife, and his mistress while he struggles to find the inspiration to finish his film. The stress plunges Guido into an interior world where fantasy and memory impinge on reality. Fellini jumbles narrative logic by freely cutting from flashbacks to dream sequences to the present until it becomes impossible to pry them apart, creating both a psychological portrait of Guido's interior world and the surrealistic, circus-like exterior world that came to be known as "Felliniesque." 8 1/2 won an Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film, as well as the grand prize at the Moscow Film Festival, and was one of the most influential and commercially successful European art movies of the 1960s, inspiring such later films as Bob Fosse's All That Jazz (1979), Woody Allen's Stardust Memories (1980), and even Lucio Fulci's Italian splatter film Un Gatto nel Cervello (1990). ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

Review

After his international smash La Dolce Vita (1960), Federico Fellini found himself saddled with a case of director's block, inspiring him to make 8 1/2 (1963), about fictional director Guido Anselmi's case of director's block, that made visible the intimate workings of creativity. To reveal Guido's state of mind as he struggles with his filmmaking and multiple demands on his private life, Fellini seamlessly interweaves Guido's activities, fantasies, memories and dreams, doing away with any semblance of straight linear narrative structure in favor of Guido's surreally scattered psyche. In so doing, Fellini, like playwright Luigi Pirandello, reflexively examines the artistic process itself; Guido's turmoil paradoxically brings Fellini's eighth-and-a-half feature (the half stood for two shorts), to fruition. Internationally hailed as an innovative masterpiece, and a commercial success, 8 1/2 won Fellini his third Oscar for Best Foreign Film and inspired a generation of filmmakers with the singularly personal artistry that could only be described by the adjective "Felliniesque." Bob Fosse's All That Jazz (1979) and Woody Allen's Stardust Memories (1980) were their own 8 1/2s; Nine was the 1982 Broadway musical version. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

Cast

• Marcello Mastroianni - Guido Anselmi
• Claudia Cardinale - Claudia
• Anouk Aimée - Luisa Anselmi
• Sandra Milo - Carla
• Rossella Falk - Rossella
• Madeleine Le Beau - French Actress

Mario Pisu - Mezzabotta; Barbara Steele - Gloria Morin; Neil Robinson - Agent for French actor; Mino Doro - Claudia's agent; Eugene Walter - The Journalist; Gilda Dahlberg - Journalist's Wife; Annie Gorassini - Producer's Girl Friend; Ian Dallas - Mindreader; Guido Alberti - The Producer; Mario Conocchia - Producer; Cesarino Miceli Picardi - Production Inspector; John Stacy - Accountant; Mark Herron - Luisa's Admirer; Rosellin Como - Friend; Matilda Calnan - Older Journalist; Eddra Gale - La Saraghina; Georgia Simmons - Anselmi's grandmother; Edy Vessel - Model; Annibale Ninchi - Anselmi's Father; Giuditta Rissone - Anselmi's Mother; Caterina Boratto - Fashionable Woman; Olimpia Cavalli - Miss Olympia; Tito Massini - The Cardinal; Polidor - Clown in the Parade; Jean Rougeul - Writer; Dina de Santis - Two Young Girls in Bed; Maria Antonietta Beluzzi - Screen-Test Candidate for La Saraghina

Credit

Piero Gherardi - Costume Designer, Lina Wertmüller - First Assistant Director, Federico Fellini - Director, Leo Cattozzo - Editor, Adrianna Olasio - Editor, Nino Rota - Composer (Music Score), Otello Fava - Makeup, Piero Gherardi - Production Designer, Gianni Di Venanzo - Cinematographer, Angelo Rizzoli - Producer, Federico Fellini - Screenwriter, Ennio Flaiano - Screenwriter, Tullio Pinelli - Screenwriter, Brunello Rondi - Screenwriter

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