8 1/2, FEDERICO FELLINI, AND NARCISSISM WITH INSIGHT

If one was judging Federico Fellini’s 8 ½ by the films that copied it (Chief among them Woody Allen’s STARDUST MEMORIES and Bob Fosse’s ALL THAT JAZZ) then we would consider the film a failure, a self-indulgent mess, the narcissism of a film director out of control on the screen for everyone to see.

But the films that copy 8 1/2 only get right the part about noting the details of the director’s life than multiplying it times the maximum number of ridiculous surrealist imagery.  What’s missing is any insight into the film director, into the artist himself.

8 ½ does have that.  We understand the motivations of the director because we see his hectic life as well as a few select fragments of his childhood.  We see how everything overlaps on everything else.  It’s a form of sensory overload assisted by Fellini’s grab bag of visual tricks such as wide-angle shots, odd landscapes/scene staging etc.  Fellini shares equally with Bergman the way of framing a scene for mood that would become especially influential on perfume commercials in the 90’s

There are parts of 8 ½ that don’t work.  I’ve never cared for the fantasy scene where the director is the master of a household containing all of his lovers and potential lovers.  But what ties it together and make it ultimately a successful film is the ending in which the director metaphorically kills himself but then starts a new life joining together his past and present in a circle literally and for now putting off any big decisions about his life.  The realm of fantasy finally breaking through and merging with the real and this being a positive thing.

It helps of course in a film like 8 ½ (which is despite the wildness of its imagination intensely personal) for the director to work with an actor who he has simpatico with, who mirrors him and Marcello Mastroianni is that for Fellini.

Fellini had three phases to his career.  His early films were made in the Italian neo-realist style of Rosselini (who he wrote scripts for and with) and De Sica but slightly more light-hearted, his genius middle period where he still utilized the visual style of the neo-realists but combined that with wild far flung surrealist imagery, and his later period wherein he started making movies in color that had no restraint, no connection to neo-realism and which I personally don’t care for.

The films of his middle period LA DOLCE VITA (my favorite Fellini film), NIGHTS IN CABIRIA, LA STRADA, and of course 8 ½ are all worth seeing.  I would also add JULIET OF THE SPRITIS made in color and at the end of his middle period but thematically more in control and more like the films which immediately preceded it.