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SPOILERS***

My friend recently told me his girlfriend had to watch 8 ½ for a film class, but she had to turn it off halfway through because she had “no idea what was going on.” Some films just shouldn’t be presented to beginning film classes, which attracts its fair share of narrow-minded Transformers lovers. Hell, people in my class called 2001: A Space Odyssey boring and My Life to Live “really, really weird.” There were even students who couldn’t quite understand Do the Right Thing, which is as clear with its message as a cloudless day. If my teacher had shown 8 ½, I’m sure people would have just walked out of the classroom.

The story itself isn’t inaccessible. It follows filmmaker Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) amidst the pre-production of his current film. Suffering from extreme director’s block, Guido is continuously pressured and pestered by actresses, agents and studio executives to begin production. Guido is unable to focus, with his thoughts racing between childhood memories, elaborate dreams and fantasies, grappling fears and the various women in his life. As he builds towards the first shoot of his film, Guido attempts to find the proper mindset and win back his wife, who has become fed up with Guido’s adulterous outings.

You’ll hear people say 8 ½ is the best film ever made about filmmaking. It’s probably true. But really this film isn’t so much about filmmaking as it is about a filmmaker. The pressures surrounding a director seem insurmountable, and like any of his films, Fellini completely immerses the viewer into the protagonist’s world. People constantly confront Guido about receiving parts in his films and critique his methods and writing. Fellini likes to bury the important dialogue in strands of incessant chatter, enclosing the central character in a mass of selfish people just using Guido for their own advancement. He’s met with cost pressures, religious figures who question his films and time constraints, when all Guido really needs is some alone time to sort out his collective memories and fantasies.

But in reference to 8 ½ being about filmmaking, the biggest issue it covers is self-indulgence, which has become taboo for directors and a direct attacking point for critics. But self-indulgence is a detraction only when it fails to relate the film’s central character. Fellini began his fantasy trips starting with La Dolce Vita, and 8 ½ almost feels like an autobiography. A fantastical, autobiographical film—why did critics originally scold this film? But with time comes understanding, and we now see that Fellini managed to make a self-indulgent film about self-indulgence without ever sacrificing Guido, a factor he disregarded with Juliet of the Spirits.

While Juliet of the Spirits was about a single idea surrounding a character, 8 ½ focuses on a character with an array of issues. Self-indulgence comes full force when Fellini transports Guido into a past memory where he is scolded by his Catholic teachers and mocked as a child for paying a woman to dance (and display her shoulders) for him. The scene is supposed to relate the pressure he receives from Catholic priests and the religious community about using film to portray faith. One Cardinal tells Guido he can “educate or corrupt millions of souls.” Talk about pressure. In more autobiographical fashion, Fellini relates his own encumbrances as a filmmaker, with constant reviewing and critiques coming from all angles, telling him what he can and cannot do. All the things he’s forbidden from doing also permit him from delving into his past, which is a crippling blow to his inescapable mindset and tools as a filmmaker. He needs the ability to express himself, and his attempts to recreate childhood memories on screen fail in comparison to his ostentatious fantasies. What 8 ½ becomes is a film within a film: people berate Guido for making his films personal affairs, but Fellini himself then turns the fantasies Guido is unable to create into full-blown cinematic reproductions, dripping with masterful camerawork and impeccable flow. Fellini is able to show that there is a place for self-indulgence; he is able to advance his own character while defacing the arguments made against self-indulgence at the same time.

The women throughout Guido’s life bring out his deepest flaws. One woman tells Guido that he’s unable to “tell a love story.” Guido promptly agrees with her, because he himself cannot communicate with his own wife, Lusia (Anouk Aimée). Guido holds disdain for any time he spends with his selfish mistress Carla (Sanda Milo), but relishes the time spent in the bedroom. He’s drawn to this aspect because there are no tie-downs; she constantly babbles about her husband, who she seems to legitimately love. Guido feels no need for attachment because she is taken, therefore he holds no qualm for sleeping in the same bed as her. However, he and his wife each take a separate bed when she visits. Guido himself knows his own faults, but is unable to overcome them even when he confronts them. He envisions the perfect actress for his star role, who happens to come to life in his mind as the actual actress Claudia Cardinale. She questions Guido, asking, “I don’t understand. He meets a girl that can give him a new life and he pushes her away?” “Because he no longer believes in it,” he responds. “Because he doesn’t know how to love,” she replies.

The film’s most infamous scene comes when Fellini…I mean Guido, gathers all of his women in a single room. Women he loves, women he sleeps with, women from his past and women of his desires. They walk around and pamper him, catering to his every need. But then one woman, a flash dancer from his childhood, is sacrificed to make room for the women currently coddling his mind. She is sent upstairs with the other women who have left his thoughts, which causes his current women to furrow their eyebrows and attack Guido for his inability to love. Guido grabs a whip and comically keeps them back, but the scene is sort of tragic with its message. In the end, Luisa starts to clean the house and relates she understands why Guido felt the need to be distant all those years. Instead of sounding like a defensive wife, she comes across robot-like, only repeating what Guido has transcribed. At this point we realize that Guido doesn’t really defend his own actions, but is simply a man who believes he is incapable of change.

But like every Fellini film (minus La Strada), there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. If there’s anything outside of camerawork that Fellini can be admired for, its his tightly constructed scripts. Even the misguided Juliet of the Spirits had a distinct destination it reached, and 8 ½, with its sprawling nature and random dream sequences, has a clear path from beginning to end. At no point do we feel like we’re floating away from the central character or his story. We’re always learning new things about his past that directly coincide with his current problems. Fellini’s only fault, which can be found in most of his films, is his sometimes-too-blatant dialogue. Fellini is amazing in his ability to relate a character’s thoughts through shots and images, but sometimes the characters flat-out state what’s flogging Guido’s mind. It almost feels like a step back, as if the same point is being beaten over our heads. But its not something that completely burdens the film, like it did with Juliet of the Spirits.

But no words are required for 8 ½’s final scene, which features a parade of people that Guido directs with childlike enthusiasm. Parades can be found in just about every Fellini film. They are never planned, but randomly thrown together by people with a common destination. In 8 ½, they parade solely exists for Guido: they come down the ramp and line up for him. He choreographs them, painting their movements with his hands and directing traffic. After abandoning the film he spent so many months fretting over, Guido finds solace in the simple joys of filmmaking, which doesn’t require poring over your past and discovering much-needed amends. Guido learns to exist in the moment, and in turn, learns he has the ability to love.

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After writing and directing nine films and co-writing a host of others, did Federico Fellini begin to see life as film, or is that why he became a director in the first place? He would direct a total of 21 films, so his 8 ½ (so titled because his fourth and ninth efforts were segments of collaborative works) is not quite the halfway point. But coming after masterworks like La Dolce Vita and La Strada, it was a great time for seeking some answers.
When 8 ½ first started making headlines around the world, the praise was almost unanimous and time has only elevated its reputation. The common criticism, however, was in regard to the blurred distinction between the real world, in which a director (Marcello Mastroianni) struggling to finish his latest project, a science-fiction flick he no longer feels passionate about, and the world of his memories, fantasies, and hallucinations.
But the lack of such distinction is not only deliberate but necessary. Certainly Guido, the director, is having trouble finding the distinction and, most likely, so was Fellini since Guido and Fellini are virtually one and the same.
Much has been made about the opening shots showing a suicide by affixation in a car set on a congested highway. Our attention is naturally drawn to Guido’s car as he struggles for air, but each car on the road contains a different cinematic story. Is this a real suicide attempt or is Guido dreaming? We will never know for sure, but in a later attempt to escape paparazzi hounds, Guido imagines shooting himself with a revolver, suggesting that suicide is never more than a consideration for Guido.
The most talked about scene in 8 ½ is Guido’s flight out of the car into the serenity of the clouds. Psychologists have come to interpret flight in dreams as an indicator of newly gained control in real life. Guido is far from in control, however, and he still has director’s block and an unfinished picture to answer to. His fantasy is brief and one of his crew members literally pulls him back down to the real world.
Ironically, it is droll everyday realities that inspire Guido’s fantasies. Something as simple as standing in line to get a glass of mineral water from a fountain becomes an elaborate parade in his mind. Ordinary figures (priests, nuns, etc.) become as much a work of art as the ordinary girl at the fountain who turns into an angel bearing water in Guido’s eyes.
Fellini was always an observer and in the director’s camera he found the ideal vantage point for his love of people watching. Guido is, then, a second channel between Fellini and the camera through which he observes the public. Guido is an individual, with an unusually creative mind, despite suffering from a lack of inspiration. And yet, he is the only true accessible character to take us through this strange world consisting of the real Italy and the dreamlike world of Fellini.
Real life is ugly and Guido needs his movies to make his fantasies a reality. All around him there is infidelity and disingenuousness, and he is not exempt from participation. Mezzabotta (Mario Pisu), his friend, has separated from his wife to freely romance an American starlet (Barbara Steele) young enough to be his daughter. Guido didn’t even have the integrity to divorce his wife (Anouk Aimée) after starting an affair with Carla (Sandra Milo), an actress who is herself still married. Considering this, it comes as no surprise that Guido can’t even be frank to an actress (Madeleine LeBeau) about casting her in a film. To Guido, this is all material for good cinema.
The best part of making a movie for Guido/Fellini is the escape from reality, even reality according to actors and directors. 8 ½ is a tribute not only to filmmakers, however, but also to film culture and its often wrongheaded approach to understanding cinema. In truth, inspiration comes from a number of places and Guido and Fellini know this. Life, at both its best and worst is brimming with mysterious depths. To be a good filmmaker, Fellini thinks, it is important to understand the dynamics and complications of human relationships. There is no scarcity of complications here. There is the relationship between Guido and his wife Luisa who stands by him even after she learns of his affair. There is also the strange fall-out between Guido and his veteran assistant Conocchia (Mario Conocchia). Each one is a learning step for Guido’s development as an artist.
Throughout 8 ½, there is a feeling that Guido is recalling his past through rosy lenses, from his upbringing in a peasant family (like Fellini himself), sharing a room with a number of other children and his education in Catholic school. Indeed, another important conflict is that of artist and religion. Guido is asked about the balance of Catholicism and Marxism in Italian cinema and the local clergymen certainly don’t think much of film, at least not as Guido aspires to it. But, like many great moviemakers (Scorsese is a perfect example), Fellini acknowledges the Catholic Church as an unavoidable influence in his development as an artist. Hence, Guido’s flashback to a summer day in his youth when he wandered out of Catholic school to gawk at a frolicking whore (Eddra Gale) on the beach and the punishment he received when caught. Since his early years, Guido, like many filmmakers, discovered the conflict between the purity of the priests’ teachings and his human desires. He reconciled them by becoming a director.
“The audience has to understand the film,” a crew member tells an increasingly discouraged Guido. Is this the obligation of a director and, if so, is there only one right way to accomplish this? There are no easy answers to this question, especially for such a complex film about something as complicated as life. 8 ½ is about the richness of experience and one is bound to understand it in any number of personal ways. The beauty of 8 ½ is that it does nothing more than open the doors to exploring life’s mysteries and the leaves the answers to how they shape our creative minds on a personal level. Incidents depicted may be specific to Fellini, but the film’s state of mind is a tribute to artists everywhere. 8 ½ is not only the greatest film about moviemaking, but one of the truest love songs to creative minds. Few movies have inspired so much with so little. In a sense, 8 ½ is like a breath of inspiration itself. It comes with simplicity, but leaves the mind and heart open to wonderful possibilities.
In a fit of rage near the end, Luisa accuses her unfaithful husband (who should really be married only to his art) of living in a “mess of lies”. Here she is only ostensibly talking about his deception to her. In a wider sense this is Fellini questioning his own motives for being a filmmaker. By his own admission through Guido, here he gets to tell the truth only on the surface. Beneath, he is escaping into his own fantasy.

Vision is what gives an artist his will to express whatever dwells within his mind; it is the ability to perceive the world in a way so unique that a glance upon his work can reveal his name, but such capacity can only belong to those who confront the phrase found in T.S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men: “Eyes I dare not meet in dreams”, for it is inside the empire of limitless plausibility that vision lies.

Federico Fellini took this concept beyond along with the likes of Luis Buñuel and Michelangelo Antonioni, and penetrated deeply into the shallow waters of self discovery to bring up, as it was his fashion, an exaggerated version of himself, a carnivalesque retelling of how a film is made, narrated with a dreamlike voice fighting hard to tell us how it was to be in his head.

8½ is the product of such an insightful journey that could rival literary geniuses like Dostoevsky and Joyce, whose understanding of the human condition is shared by the Italian filmmaker in this wonderful achievement that Martin Scorsese called the “purest expression of love for the cinema that I know of”. And, as is the case of the aforementioned writers, Fellini can paint this interior landscape inside his main character, because they are the same person.

As much as Stephen Dedalus is James Joyce, Guido Anselmi is Fellini; they interpenetrate each other courageously and utterly, fearlessly having watchers observing their stream of consciousness spread against the screen, and though Guido might not be aware of this, Fellini is and he expresses who he is, with all his blemishes and life experiences uncovered.

What makes films like 8½ and Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Mirror so unique, is not just the fact of being so personal, but the way they are told, using every bit of the auteur’s personality and revealing his thoughts interspersed through a serious of clashing scenes that don’t necessarily make sense in terms of editing as much as they do in terms of being projections of the mind. But 8½ is also set apart for another reason: it makes the audience feel like the main character.

While facing a writer’s block, Guido sees his world swooping after him for the answer to what his next film will be like while he is trying to find out the very same thing. It’s a vicious cycle full of questions that can only be answered by himself. His thoughts are recurring visions that illustrate the creative process and explore the psyche of the artist; a series of contrivances that generates empathy between the viewers and Guido, up to the point that the feelings of tension start to become mutual, particularly when Guido is assaulted by motor mouths demanding absurd knowledge that only God might possess.

Pressure is actually what sets the story in motion since not as much occurrences happen on the outside as they do in the inside of Guido: his ideas, memories, and internal scenarios fly right past each other trying to get his attention and becoming a way out of his tense reality.

While 8½ is a film about itself and the filmmaker trying to get it done, it also deals with many things surrounding an artist’s orb, like women, who take on a role as important as nothing else within Guido’s perspective much like in Fellini’s being not only objects of desire, but muses that can be worshipped or ignored, but never controlled, except in the reign of fantasy, in which a very funny scene occurs when the women in Guido’s life rebel and he subdues them with a whip.

Everybody can have an interpretation on 8½, but they will all stem from the basic idea that it is about how hard it is to be a filmmaker with fans, collaborators, producers, reporters and else wanting something from you.

On the technical aspects, 8½ is absolutely superb. The cinematography is fluid and dreamlike, it’s a perfectly choreographed waltz between the actors and a camera so synchronized that it seems natural. The editing is violently shifting, changing scenarios with minimum relation to each other with the same speed and mixed up precision as the train of thought. The music is absolutely brilliant, giving the film the poignancy it requires when the images get too personal.

In terms of acting, the biggest contribution comes, of course, from Marcello Mastroianni, whose performance adapts itself to the various situations he faces inside Guido’s mind and on the real world; he never seems confused since he is the manipulator of his environment and he is the one that confuses the audience, so he can easily go from highly stressed to melancholically reflexive, to cynically satisfied. The rest of the cast might be criticized for being unrealistic, but in fact it does a great job as it intends to portray caricatures, and not real people, so the cartoonish nature of Claudia Cardinale’s or Anouk Aimée’s characters is not a mistake or a simple aesthetic decision, but a huge contribution to the naturalness of Guido, perhaps the only “real” character in the film, since the others are rendered by his vision; he is the only honest character.

Like never before, and few times after, Fellini did on 8½ what was considered to be an exclusive responsibility of literature: he portrayed himself as a full human being with a history behind and beyond him while also sending the biggest love-letter to his beloved art form. His film is a personal journey through the afflictions and joys of sharing with others honestly and courageously the fulfillment of his dreams, as well as bits of his life and passion, not caring about becoming the center of a discussion between strangers just to tell cinema: I love you.

There’s no shortage of genius here. 8 1/2 provides some of the most fluid and striking cinematography I’ve ever seen, endlessly imaginative and furiously thought-provoking. The imagery of Anselimi’s surreal misadventures is memorable in its unsettling combination of mysogyny and morbidity. Unfortunately, the film suffers similar symptoms as Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane in that all of its elaborate choreogaphy serves an unsound story and a dislikable protagonist. In this case, it’s a self-lementing paradigm of creative suffocation that leads to emotional destruction of both self and society. As far as confict goes, it isn’t as serious as Fellini would have you believe. It’s relentless, loud, and abrasive qualities would be given the benifit of the doubt in light of the film’s impeccable craft, but since it is a sort of woeful autobiography it’s quite obviously a masturbation project in which the filmmaker is exorcising his demons. Respect to that, but I’ll stick to Stardust Memories, Woody Allen’s more light-hearted adaptation. Thematically, 8 1/2 is rewarding and dense. Fellini studies the origin of character through unannounced flashbacks of the stifling Catholic Church and the birth of a boys sexuality. It’s technically innovative, visually incomparable, a monster of an experience.

Yes, that is the working title of 8 1/2, that i found just as describing and as beautiful as the movie itself.,alas, 8 1/2 is still a great title though…okay, now to the review…

HOLY….

what am i gonna said? surely no words and feelings could describe of the experience that i just had. Damn you Fellini. After making 3 hours feels just like 3 weeks watching his LA DOLCE VITA, now, with 8 1/2, he makes me,.emm.,well,you know that feelings that you don’t need to do anything anymore in this world, that you just feels your life is complete? Well, this is the movie for me.

This film means perfection. Surreal,metaphorical,full of symbolism,honest, funny,that was just some words that i lucky could think of (like i said earlier,no words could describe this film, actually. i just tried hard enough !) .From the captivating opening, until that wondrous circus conclusion.,and along the way,the dream sequence in which all of the women of Guido life comes together? Classic

Oh and to think that i always associated the wonderful “Rides Of The Valkyrie” with the woeful APOCALYPSE NOW..Haha ! not anymore !

According to Guido, the protagonist in Fellini’s 8 1/2, “Life is a celebration. Let’s live it together.” The way I see it, it serves as a theme in the movie. The whole movie seems to act as a party of sorts. It’s stylish, dysfunctional, serious, and it makes you think. It’s even more important because of the musical remake to this manifesto, Nine, so if you want to see it, I recommend the original before you check out the new spin on the Italian classic (even though it doesn’t matter what you do).

With the soon to be released Nine on its way, I had to finally dust off my Criterion DVD of Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 for a viewing since that new musical is based off it. Besides all the praise lauded on it, I really had no idea what to expect. It only took about ten minutes or so to discover that we would have no Charlie Kaufman if it were not for this, Fellini’s interpretation of his inner thoughts, both creatively and personally road-blocked. Synecdoche, New York borrows a lot from this opus and Adaptation takes the rest. I say this not to demean anything Kaufman has made—I love both of those films—but instead to praise this Italian master for doing it almost fifty years earlier, as well or better. The movie soon causes you to be disoriented in regards to what is real and what is imagined. Inventive transitions are connected by actions or thoughts in the scene, leading us through the mind of Guido Anselmi as he himself seeks answers to the chaos.

Marcello Mastroianni’s Guido is a stand-in for Fellini himself, at a crossroads in his life, desperately trying to discover what it is he needs to do next. So many people have come and gone in his life, connections that he could have reached out and loved unconditionally, but all of whom he pushed away, creating the isolated loneliness he despises. He can tell any of his actresses, producers, or mistresses exactly what he feels, causing them to hate him and leave without a second thought. The one woman he truly cares for, however, his wife Luisa, is left in the dark. Throughout the film we see Guido whisper to himself about how much she means to him, but when in her company, all he can do is lie or act disinterested. He is lost in life; unable to find true happiness and feeling bored by those he surrounds himself with. It is a self-imposed torture that he can no longer run away from. Who else would invite both his mistress and his wife to the city he is filming in? Only a man looking to be cleansed of his demons would play with fire such as that. Guido just may not be strong enough to do it; sitting back and watching each opportunity pass him by.

Even the script doctor he hires to hopefully make some sense of the incoherently abstract script he has written cannot get through. His notes attempt to drive out the symbolism and personal moments that make no sense to an audience unknowing of his past, commenting on the memories that play for us as though we are watching the film he is about to begin shooting. I wonder if the notes he makes are real notes made on the script for 8 1/2. And that is the genius of the movie—what we are watching is the film the character is refusing to make. While Guido drags his feet, bringing every woman that has ever crossed his path back into his consciousness, we get to watch it all take place inside his head. His memories are what have been put on paper to eventually shoot, (although I’m still not sure where the spaceship comes into play, maybe as an escape hatch to leave his true self behind), and they are shown to us as he remembers them. We see the first women in his life, his mother and nanny, give him a bath; his first glimpse of sexuality with La Saraghina’s full-figured Rumba; the chorus girls he bedded; his wife of which he has taken for granted; the mistresses he has used and thrown aside; and the actresses he has made perform for his films and possibly himself. This is a man who has treated women as objects at his disposal for as long as he remembers and the unfilmable movie he has written is a way to air out all that dirty laundry.

What then becomes even more profound is how, while Guido couldn’t stand tall to make the film, although he could let the screen tests be viewed by his wife as a way to tell her what has been happening without actually opening his mouth, Fellini himself has. The real director of 8 1/2 has made himself emotionally naked here, sharing with the world his mistakes and insecurities. Talk about a catharsis as art form, the underlying meaning to the film only makes the finished piece that much more astounding. It opens with our ‘hero’ being trapped in a glass box for all to see, a celebrity held up to immense scrutiny without any secrets, attempting to break free only to find his foot tethered to the Earth and his producers, the ones paying his way of survival. The vicious system is its own predatory circle of life that has barred him in to serve more powerful people, himself a pawn in their games much like the women in his. Life is a system of power struggles and that, I believe, is at the forefront of this cautionary tale of ego. Even the actors, so excited to be working with a prolific auteur such as Guido become impatient to learn what their parts and motivations are. They use agents to threaten for information, their guiles for an upper hand, and yet they still must wait until he is ready to let them into the loop.

It all culminates to an extended sequence in Guido’s mind, a world consisting of all the women he has ‘loved’ and the ruled hierarchy they must adhere to. He is their master, whipping them when they are out of line or insubordinate, and they love him unconditionally even though his own feelings for them are fickle and ever changing. Once you are too old, you are sent to the upstairs, never to be seen again except as a memory of younger times. It is a world created for his own comfort, a world he thought he had constructed in real life, but only recently realized never existed anywhere but in his head. Even the muse he imagined at the start, a shining face of youth amongst the cattle-driven lines of elderly folk at the day spa he is seeking treatments at, isn’t enough. Claudia Cardinale’s Claudia is sent for to be this angelic, fresh, new beginning, but her arrival in reality is not as he imagined it. Instead of the jumpstart to a new life, her youth and vitality only serve as a mirror to how broken and unloving he truly has become. She is the catalyst to finally end his lamenting, end the prospect of this new film, and finally accept the people in his life as more than just chess pieces he can move and discard whenever he feels.

The inventive camerawork at the hands of Fellini is stunning in its dream-like quality, creating distinct divisions of place when we are in real time, Guido’s mind, or fantasy worlds. Compositionally precise, every frame is meticulously put together, drawing our eyes in and tricking them with quick edits, replacing actors seamlessly at times and transitioning from scene to scene with the use of a common point. I was impressed early on when seeing an out-of-place woman washing nonexistent windows inside a hotel room soon being the static detail as we move scenery, watching her now wash the windows of our new locale. And the acting is fantastic as well, especially Mastroianni who must carry each and every scene. The women are beautiful and talented—Anouk Aimée’s Luisa morphing from the quiet victim with her depressed, glasses-wearing face to the stunningly happy housemaker in his vision and Sandra Milo’s Carla just as you’d think a mistress would be, flaunting her body even though she herself is married. Everyone plays his/her role so as to continue Guido’s progression to the enlightenment of truth. The final scene’s destruction of the scaffolding built to bolster the lie, as the people who have cared for him reenter for a farewell parade, is the perfect footnote to a complex and intricate tale. This Fellini guy just may be as good as I’ve always heard.

8 1/2 10/10

http://jaredmobarakreviews.wordpress.com/2009/12/24/8-12/

a very personal and imaginative film from federico fellini.

why personal? the story of the film is more like a self examination than just a simple art film. i find the main character of this movie very fellini-like, either it’s from the conflicts that he has to face or from how he face the conflicts.

why imaginative? this film is a cryptic work that consist of many unique metaphors and symbols. this is more or less a film within a film within a film.

a true work of art and a timeless classic.

It’s the best film ever made about filmmaking and the creative process, bar none. A film director, completely exhausted and creatively empty, tries to rekindle his passion and rescue his shambles of a life while simultaneously attempting to finish his latest film. The film mixes reality and fantasy as the director struggles to wrangle his foibles, failings, fantasies and creativity into something that could resemble art.

The Beautiful Confusion was a working title. I totally understand the confusion part. The beautiful part I’m not absolutely sure about. My wife and I had to watch it in three different sittings and we had to renew it to the max from the library. Part of this was because we have been very busy, but mostly it was because we kept falling asleep. That’s unusual for me. When I watch a movie I focus and stay with it very well I think. There are very few films that I have struggled to give my attention to. I think, especially in this film, that the Italian language has a lullaby effect. Then there is the fact that certain parts of this movie are extremely talky and self-referential while the remaining parts are flights of fancy that leave you reeling with confusion. Reeling at least during initial viewing. It did seem well put together and since this is known as such a classic, I trust that on repeated viewings little details would appear clearer and make more sense. I did appreciate the autobiographical references as well as the film’s way of dealing with the struggle of making an artistic, truthful, and meaningful film. It is trying to be a film about a film with scenes that don’t make sense and lack meaning and answers to questions, but it is impossible for it to be meaningless itself. It’s just a little harder to discover what else is hidden under the surface.

There’s not a lot I can say about Fellini’s masterpiece that hasn’t already been said. It IS one of the greatest pieces of cinema there is.
A beautiful love poem to women in all their forms – mothers, matriarchs, sisters, wives, mistresses, lovers, whores, actresses… Claudia Cardinale’s ethereal entrance at the spa, Sandra Milo in furs, arriving by train and being “more like a slut” and not forgetting Eddra Gale as Seraghina, dancing her dance – rolling her eyes and swiveling her huge hips for the boys. True iconic moments of celluloid-amore that are embedded in this jaded cinephile’s psyche. Marvelous!