User reviews

I certainly wouldn't be saying anything new if I said that "8 1/2" is one of the most unique, fascinating, and personal pieces ever committed to film. It has consistently hailed as such, and its influence on film is far reaching and undeniable. It is certainly not one of the most entertaining movies of all time, and is actually quite long and difficult. But it is an incredible piece of filmmaking, and a gripping look at the difficulties of creating not just a movie, but art in general.

Guido (Marcello Mastroianni) is a popular movie director who is working on his new film. Along the way, he struggles with his screenwriter, producer, wife, and mistress. Each presents a different problem and obstacle. More and more difficulties arise, not just in his attempts to complete the movie, but in his own mind.

Guido, although flawed, is completely fleshed out, and draws sympathy from the audience. Yes, he is an adulterer, but he loves his wife. We see all of his personal desires and agony. We see how he suffers when he struggles with his desire to create the ultimate piece of art, one that offers something to everybody.

The movie is technically wonderful. The movement of the camera, the lighting, and the direction in general is top notch. The movie mixes in dreams with reality to create a dreamlike world, and put us closer into Guido's own mind.

Somebody who is looking for a movie as a two hour piece of entertainment will not enjoy this. But if you enjoy a movie that truly satisfies when it is finished, this is for you. It is quite long, and somewhat loose, but that is part of the interest. Moviemakers, or artists in general, will find that this film has a great deal to offer.

I know this film is loved and admired by countless filmmakers and fans. I know that the film is very artistic and wonderfully well made. And I understand that all serious lovers of film SHOULD see this film. But, despite this being a "must-see" film, I didn't particularly enjoy it--but I do respect what Fellini was trying to do. For the first time, Fellini was able to capture on film the psyche and inner turmoil of a director and although the film stars Marcello Mastroianni, the film is in many, many ways autobiographical. His inner struggles with traditional morality and god, sexuality and loyalty, all the sycophants trying to get his attention and the critic as well as his own childhood (including, of course his mother AND a representation of early sexual awakening in the form of a hideous but very sexual lady who looked a lot like Divine!) all come together in a series of somewhat disconnected images. All these factors that together work together to make the director's psyche are interesting, but very surreal--like the entire film is a dream or something that is the result of drugs. It is interesting at times, but also very tiring and difficult to watch at times and occasionally a bit dull. That's because it's a very choppy movie and only a child who is very hyperactive could easily stick with the ever-changing plot. As for me, what I liked best was the opening dream sequence--it was very amusing and brilliant.

This type of self-analysis and parody was often copied in such films as STARDUST MEMORIES (to me, a blatant attempt by Woody Allen to steal or re-created 8 1/2) or DAY FOR NIGHT--though Truffaut's vision is much, much more conventional and lacks the surrealism and weirdness of Fellini. Many prefer Fellini's mad style, but as for me, while it is not as original or wildly innovative, DAY FOR NIGHT was a more enjoyable film.

Overall, while not a fun or completely comprehensible film, it's a must for anyone who considers themselves a serious fan of film.

What can anyone say about this film? It's one of a kind, and simple words can't really describe it.

The famous Italian director Federico Fellini presents us the journey of the highly surrealistic thoughts of a filmmaker, who suffers from, what we could call, Director's block. The protagonist, who seems constantly tired, is surrounded by many different people, friends, associates, priests and mostly... women; struggling with his weird fantasies of the current events of his life and memories of his childhood. All of these scenes take place in many different phantasmagoric sets, where multiple, for the most part random, conversations occur simultaneously, making him continually engaged and, in a way, frustrated.

The production design is exceptional, with huge sets and dreamlike settings, while the cinematography (Fellini's last black and white film) is very unique and teases the viewer with alternate focusing and artsy compositions. The music theme is for the most part classical symphonies from Tchaikovsky, Wagner and Chopin, beautifully edited with the rhythm of the film.

This is a drama with many subtle doses of comedy and a surreal analysis of the thoughts, relationships, affairs, fears, dreams and memories of the protagonist. Some viewers can find a bit annoying the randomness of the script and editing, where mostly unexplained things occur, but others can completely immerse in this insane trip and fully enjoy it.

If you've seen some movies of Charlie Kaufman, a good explanation of what to expect is a wedding between Adaptation and Synecdoche, New York. If you haven't seen any of those, then you can go ahead and experience something you've never had before!

Frederico Fellini's masterwork 8 ½ is difficult to approach largely because of its reputation. Many critics also state that the film is so complex that it requires multiple viewings to understand, and this is likely to intimidate many viewers. But in truth, and in spite of its surrealistic flourishes, 8 ½ is more straight-forward than its reputation might lead you to believe.

The storyline itself is very simple. A famous director is preparing a new film, but finds himself suffering from creative block: he is obsessed by, loves, and feels unending frustration with both art and women, and his attention and ambition flies in so many different directions that he is suddenly incapable of focusing on one possibility lest he negate all others. With deadlines approaching the cast and crew descend upon him demanding information about the film--information that the director does not have because he finds himself incapable of making an artistic choice.

What makes the film interesting is the way in which Fellini ultimately transforms the film as a whole into a commentary on the nature of creativity, art, mid-life crisis, and the battle of the sexes. Throughout the film, the director dreams dreams, has fantasies, and recalls his childhood--and this internal life is presented on the screen with the same sense of reality as reality itself. The staging of the various shots is unique; one is seldom aware that the characters have slipped into a dream, fantasy, or memory until one is well into the scene, and as the film progresses the lines between external life and internal thought become increasingly blurred, with Fellini giving as much (if not more) importance to fantasy as to fact.

The performances and the cinematography are key to the film's success. Even when the film becomes surrealistic, fantastic, the actors perform very realistically and the cinematography presents the scene in keeping with what we understand to be the reality of the characters lives and relationships. At the same time, however, the film has a remarkably poetic quality, a visual fluidity and beauty that transforms even the most ordinary events into something slightly tinged by a dream-like quality. Marcello Mastroianni offers a his greatest performance here, a delicate mixture of desperation and ennui, and he is exceptionally well supported by a cast that includes Claudia Cardinale, Anouk Aimee, and a host of other notables.

I would encourage people not to be intimidated by the film's reputation, for its content can be quickly grasped. When critics state the film requires repeated viewing what they actually seem to mean is that the film holds up extremely well to repeated viewing; each time it is seen, one finds more and more to enjoy and to contemplate. Even so, I would be amiss if I did not point out that people who prefer a cinema of tidy plot lines and who dislike ambiguity or the necessity of interpreting content will probably dislike 8 ½ a great deal. For all others: strongly, strongly recommended.

Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer

It's been said before: Marcello Mastroianni plays Guido Anselmi, a fictitious, 43-year-old film director with a personal crisis that stunts his creative flow and his inability to get on with his new film after the enormous success of his previous one. The character is iconically brought to life by the immortal Mastroianni with artificially greyed hair and is universally identified as an alter ego of Fellini himself.

The first time I saw 8½ I was in my teens and hated it. I then rewatched it only a few years later, in my early 20s, and something miraculous happened. It was probably a pivotal moment in my film-viewing experience: it suddenly gave me new parametres by which to judge movies and even art in general. I suddenly learnt this new language, so much more beautiful and sophisticated than anything I had heard before. What was most amazing was that after the first negative experience, I had somehow tapped into this language's secret, and it wasn't in the least bit hermetic or difficult, though more complex and sophisticated than other languages I already knew. Many of the movies I'd considered greats became amateurish or dwarfish in comparison.

To me, this was no longer simply a movie, but Art in a more universal sense of the word, Art that just IS and has nothing to strive for or prove. Which is why I find it so nonsensical and contradictory to call something like 8½ "pretentious" - to me, pretentious is when an insecure auteur is trying consciously and hard to be profound, difficult, original, ground-breaking, and you can see their intent clearly, and detect the effort behind the artifice. Nothing of any of this is anywhere to be perceived in 8½, which makes creating masterpieces look easy.

I admit that 8½ is not an easy movie, nor one for everyone. Visually, fewer movies are as iconic, memorable, original, poetic, funny, inventive, allegorical, exhilarating.

The scenes I love are too many to mention, but here are just a few: The steam bath scene when in an odd procession/ritual, the patients are being led into what must be a Turkish bath. All the steam surrounding them, the men wearing sheets that look like shrouds or togas, all looking like mock-ancient Roman dignitaries... Then, through a loud-speaker Mastroianni-Anselmi is told the dried-up, turkey-like Cardinal, will now condescend to meeting him. Before Guido rushes off to meet the Cardinal, all his friends and colleagues beg him to put in a good word for them. This is such a gleeful stab at Italy's grovelling, nepotistic culture of ingratiating oneself to the powers-that-be by paying them lip-service even for the most petty personal advantages. Then Guido stands before the embodiment of Catholic paternalism and his obsequious minions. And everything is at its most pompous and lifeless - this dusty, mummified institution is less in touch with the humanity it's supposed to comfort and advise than it is possible to believe.

I also love the character of Guido's mistress, Carla, played by Sandra Milo at her gaudiest and most voluptuous. Though initially it's difficult to understand what Guido would have seen in her, eventually it become more apparent. Meeting his wife Luisa, you see how well the two women's ways of being complement one another. See for example how she reacts in a simple, good-humoured, self-deprecating way when in the café scene, Guido's elegant, neurotic wife played by Anouk Aimée at her most androgynously attractive - mockingly compliments Carla's tacky outfit for its "elegance". In such instances one gets a sense that though Fellini is parodying his subjects, he also has a fundamental love and human compassion for them.

The prostitute La Saraghina is probably one of the most memorable female characters put to film ever. She is probably somewhere in her 50s and rougher than sandpaper, overweight yet strangely fit and voluptuous, with lots of scary, wild dark hair, overdone raccoon eye make-up caked onto her aggressive, striking, sardonic face as she sits and dances on the lonely beach in Rimini next to her war bunker-home. Guido is fascinated by what is "young and yet ancient", eternal, meaning what is muse-like, archetypically, like the divinely beautiful Claudia character, perfectly embodied by Claudia Cardinale (the ultimate director's muse rather than a real woman or mistress). La Saraghina may not be a young woman like Claudia, she may not represent spontaneity and fresh, uncluttered artistic inspiration like she does, but she is also a muse of sorts - the muse of guilt-free pleasure and non-self-conscious, free, unidealised, earthy femininity. All this is La Saraghina - the town's young boys respond to this in her (including Guido as a child) and are bewitched by her and pay to her to see her demonic yet liberating, visceral dance.

I have so much more to say about this movie, for instance about Nino Rota's memorable score, or how the movie's non-linear structure and juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated scenes emulates the rhythm and mood of dreams to perfection. Also, the scenes featuring Guido's parents and their embodiment of the emotional blackmail, that eternal sense of guilt and the stunting of individuality that the paternalistic institution of family at its most traditional represents in Italy. Or of Guido's touching childhood memories, of the wonderful way in which the movie ends, in a merry-go-round of what really matters in life, when all else has been swiped aside and all that remains is the desire to cherish (with all their imperfections) all those who have really mattered most in our lives...

Fellini's 8 1/2 opens with a stunning dream sequence in which a man is trapped in his car in the middle of a traffic jam. The doors and windows are locked and there is no escape. Other drivers simply sit and stare at him passively. The driver starts to panic as smoke begins to build up within the car. Propelling himself outside a window, he floats over the other cars and soars above the world until he is pulled down a rope attached to a tether on his ankle. The driver is Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni), a film director at odds with himself. Shot in black and white, 8 1/2 is an exhilarating, confusing, irritating, and inspired journey into a man's consciousness. It is not just a look at the inner turmoil of one person, but also a commentary on each person's struggle to make sense of their life. The film's combination of kaleidoscopic images, evocative score by Nino Rota, and amazing performances ensure its place as one of the greatest films of the century.

Guido is preparing to shoot a new film with an expensive budget. He constructs a huge spaceship launch pad that costs $80 million but he is unsure of what he wants to say. Guido's dishonesty in dealing with his marriage, his career, and the fact that he really does not want to make the film forces him to falsely mislead people as to his true intentions. He feels like a failure and is physically spent. He checks into a spa to restore his health and well being but the contingent of producers, actors, writers, and hangers on undermine his strength. His feeling of being overwhelmed by personal and professional obligations provides the catalyst for dreams and fantasies that take him back to his childhood.

Fellini shows his encounter with the prostitute Saraghina (Eddra Gale) and the guilt he has to deal with in a confrontation with the Catholic Church. Guido invites his intellectual wife Luisa (Anouk Aimée) to the set but their relationship has turned cold and passionless, and sparks fly when she has to confront Carla (Sandra Milo), his buxom mistress. Guido is misguided but he has an innocence and charm that allows us to overlook his indulgences. He enjoys his pleasures but has a conscience and feels guilty about cheating on Luisa whom he loves and is afraid of losing. He fantasizes that all of the women in his life are together in a harem where they all dote on his every whim. When they finally recognize how little he cares about them, he is forced to suppress their revolt.

As image piles on image and the fantasy becomes indistinguishable from the reality, the viewer may get lost in a maze of dazzling incoherence. Fellini, however, always returns to solid ground and the film offers not only a satire on the frenzy, the uncertainty, and the clash of egos involved with making a film but also a serious commentary on the importance of honesty in a relationship. If 8 1/2 is occasionally exhausting, the ending is invigorating, letting us know that life is a game in which each of us is on the stage performing our roles and the only sane response to its turmoil is to join hands in love and celebrate the moment.

Federico Fellini gets Marcello Mastroianni to play him. Yes. Right? Of course. The artistic block is something that Fellini dealt with all his life - Orson Welles once said that Fellini was a great artist with very little to say - that's part of Mastroianni/Fellini's block - He knows where he wants to go but he doesn't know if he has what it takes to get there - then of course the the distractions or excuses whatever you prefer, they are muses, mothers, loves, wives. I was overwhelmed by the access Fellini provides to his own heart and mind and by the audacity and poetry of the film. 8 1/2 stands alone in the virtual mausoleum of world cinema.

Intellectuals have written volumes on this strange film by Italian New Wave director, Federico Fellini. I am not an intellectual, so my review will be brief. At its most basic, "8 1/2" (a.k.a. "Otto e mezzo") concerns Guido, a film director (supposedly a surrogate for Fellini himself), who is having what amounts to a midlife crisis. Guido is frustrated in his film-making, and by his relations with other people in his life. But the film's story does not proceed in a traditional, linear fashion. Fellini more or less abandons logical narration, in favor of "open form" narration, wherein the story's causal chain of events is broken.

Thus, trying to figure out what is going on in this film can be hard. Guido's fantasies, memories, dreams, and reality co-mingle in a kind of cinematic stew. Fellini presents viewers with a kaleidoscope of surreal B&W images of ordinary objects and eccentric, chattering characters which interact with Guido and with each other, in ways that defy logic, and give breathtaking meaning to the term symbolism. Followers of psychologist Carl Jung would have a field day. In style, the film is flamboyant. In substance, the film is maddeningly subliminal. And yet, even the most metallic cynic, Pauline Kael notwithstanding, must surely appreciate the rareness of Fellini's probing introspection.

Given the bizarre, unstructured content of "8 1/2", I wonder about the issue of necessity. Suppose Fellini had added an extra ten minutes to the screenplay, or deleted ten minutes. Would that have made any difference? Apart from Guido, if this or that character had been deleted, how would that have changed the story's significance? And if, as some have suggested, the film is a mirror image of Fellini's own confused psyche, can the story be construed as an intuition of his future film-making?

"Otto e mezzo" is not for everyone. Like a Zen koan, "8 1/2" invites frustration. It is above all else a celebration of ambiguity and abstraction, a cinematic experience to ponder, especially on the heels of four or five martinis ... or 8 1/2, if you really want to induce immense intellectual insight. Cheers.

First time I saw 8 1/2 over twenty years ago; I did not like it then and I did not care much for a confused director who did not know how to make his next movie or how to deal with all women in his life. This time it was different. I knew it from the opening scene, from the first sounds of Nino Rota's music. I wanted to know how Guido would balance the demands of his producers and the insecurities of his love life. I sometimes barely could tell the difference between the reality and Guido's surfing the waves of his memory or building the Utopias in his mind where things were exactly the way he wanted them to be – and I really did not want to tell the difference. I just was there, following Guido on his journey where Fellini sent us. Then, that scene came, "La Saraghina's" lurid dance on the beach. There was something in that scene that made me return to it over and over again. What was it? The dancing woman was not young, pretty or graceful. On the contrary, she was fat and ugly but there was something about her – that smile, resilience, the promise of joy that attracted eager schoolboys. It was a last time the young Guido felt happy without guilt and shame that inevitably came after the encounter and stayed with him forever; he learned that joy and punishment are inseparable…

There have been fewer than a handful of films that affected me as profoundly as 8 ½ did:

Tarkovsky's "Zerkalo" – when the master holds the mirror in front of you that reflects his soul and mind, open you eyes and heart, don't say a word, just watch closely.

Tarkovsky's "Andrey Rublev" – What is talent? Is it a God's gift or Devil's curse? Is an Artist free in choosing what to do with that gift?

Bergman's "Persona" – How far can one individual go in opening his soul to the other without losing identity and sanity?

Fellini's –"Nights of Cabiria" – "Dum Spiro – Spero" - While there's life there's hope.

In 8 ½, Fellini explored all these subjects and in the final he took the idea of life and hope ever further: after all the characters in his film disappear from the screen, all what left behind is "a little orchestra of Hope with Love as its conductor". The last that we hear is the magic music of Rota, bringing affirmation, hope and love.

Simply wonderful. Perhaps, one of five greatest films ever made.

8 1/2 remains one of the most original and spellbinding films I know of. One of the beauties of cinema is to merge the artist's memory and fantasy; Fellini certainly utilized this magic to present his story and characters that embody both humanity and mystery. This film is an autobiographical piece (of Fellini himself) about a movie director named Guido, how his life is consumed by his increasing obsession with work. He avoids questions and problems as if they will go away somehow, only to experience more questions and problems. Ultimately, Guido realizes the only way to solve his problems is to face them rather than escaping, accepting himself instead of wishing he was someone else.

The opening sequence--one of the most deftly crafted--is taken from Guido's movie (or his dream - can't remember for sure). The sequence brilliantly captures Guido's problems (which are dealt with in the rest of the picture) and exposes them metaphorically: him STUCK in traffic, TRAPPED in smoke, SUFFOCATING, wanting to escape, and pulled back down by his peers. Guido wants to make a movie about his (and Fellini's) MEMORIES: how once upon a time he learned about a chant that moves pictures, and the time he danced with the fat feminine prostitute figure. The other main component of his movie involves launching into space, a FANTASY that reflects Guido's (and Fellini's) desire to escape from worldly matters. In real life, Guido is having problems with everything from his wife to his movie. So he thinks a beautiful actress, whom he fantasizes but knows little to nothing about, will be the solution to all his problems. When Guido meets the actress, he realizes she can't solve his problems, only he himself has the choice. This realization leads to the film's closure, with Guido having learned what's important to him and the inevitability of taking responsibility.

One of the film's powerful features is ambiguously blending Guido's world with his imaginations. Thus the audience is constantly deciphering the context of what's on the screen. This invitation to participate in the film is welcome, and if we think about it, a person like Guido who lives in his office might not be able to tell at times whether an event happened in his life or inside his mind.

I feel much the same about Fellini's "8 1/2" as I do about his "La Dolce Vita." It's a film that people tell you you should like, and it seems impressive and profound when you're a young lad studying film and don't yet have the courage to go against critical and popular opinion. But once you've gained some cinematic sophistication of your own, you realize what an empty-headed exercise it is.

Federico Fellini is one of the most self-indulgent filmmakers who ever got behind a movie camera, and I simply don't have the interest or patience for the films of his later career. "8 1/2", again like "La Dolce Vita," is dazzling to sit through once, because it looks gorgeous and there's the promise that on a second viewing, once you're no longer distracted by the flamboyant and beautiful visuals, you'll be able to sink your teeth into the rich substance of the film. But then you realize that there isn't any substance, and the film's beauty is only, and sadly, skin deep. And then you're just cheesed that you wasted so much time on it in the first place....

Grade: C+

I saw 8½ in a film class many years ago. Before it began, our professor informed the class this this is one of the greatest films of all time and that Federico Fellini is a filmmaking genius. However, that just proves that cinema is a subjective art form. It doesn't matter how many people say a film is amazing, it can still be awful for some viewers. This movie is the type that most people think of when someone says, "foreign art film." It's pretentious, confusing, and completely boring. Maybe I'll have to trade in my film nerd card for saying all of this, but I don't like most of Fellini's work.

After 8 or 9 unsuccessful attempts in the past, at long last I somehow managed to sit through & stay awake for the entirety of this unfathomable bore but at what personal cost. A towering feat of cinematic boredom that arguably has no equals, this avant-garde surrealist comedy-drama turned out to be exactly what I presumed it would be: too far up its own ass.

Co-written & directed by Federico Fellini, the story of 8½ concerns a famous filmmaker who no longer remembers the film he wanted to make. The idea came from Fellini's own creative block during production and through all the pain that he underwent, he decided to make a story that captures the similar frustrations so that the audience can suffer just as much as he did.

On a serious note though, the film does acquaint the viewers to an extent with the struggles of creating art and the personal sacrifices that the process demands. It's an exhibition of what a director's job actually looks like and how regardless of his professional & personal issues, he's expected to deliver. It is aimless & convoluted like the film within the film coz it is the film within the film.

Overall, 8½ is a tedious, overlong & self-indulgent exercise that left me indifferent to everything it had in store and while I see the brilliance of its metafictional construction, the drama remains an insufferable eyesore filled with characters as bland & uninteresting as they can get. And the dream sequences are even worse. In short, this film is nothing more than a mere tick mark on a checklist for me.

I saw La Dolce Vita recently, and thought it was amazing. Then I saw 8 1/2 and was equally mesmerised. I cannot choose between which was the best of the two, both were equally outstanding and I would deem both as masterpieces as well. That said, I can see why people mayn't like this or La Dolce Vita, but I am not one of those.

I loved the story of 8 1/2. It is a complex yet painfully honest and riveting story, that resonated with me admittedly. I also loved the mix of nightmares, memories, daydreams and frustrating confrontations, they alone made the film so watchable. Once again, Fellini's direction is immaculate. Like with La Dolce Vita, he may have had some troubles as he tried to expand on his reputation as a cinematic genius(a reputation that I think is deserved), but that didn't show to me, instead it showed a director who put so much heart, effort and soul into the film.

The visuals are spot on. The production values and the like are beautifully realised and the cinematography is amazing. With Nina Rota, you get a wonderful score, as evident in La Dolce Vita and The Godfather. 8 1/2 is no exception. The music is beautiful, haunting and memorable and stuck in my head for a long while afterwards, actually it's still there. The acting I have no qualms with- Marcello Mastroianni is exceptional as the tormented film-maker while Anouk Aimee and Claudia Cardinale are equally superb.

Overall, this is a masterpiece, I love everything about it. 10/10 Bethany Cox

Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 is revolutionary.

Marcello Mastroianni brilliantly plays the troubled film director Guido which gets mixed up in his own dreams and memories as he tries to find ideas for his next film, while getting constantly annoyed with his producers, crew, friends and his wife. This is told with stunning visuals and great narrative.

8 1/2 can be seen as Fellini's own autobiographical story and is definitely one of the best films I have ever seen.

My rating: 10/10

The film closed and the credits rolled, but still I didn't move. I felt like I had just gone to a confession. Why this is I don't know. 8 1/2 is obviously a film that takes much thought and repeated viewings to even begin to comprehend. Reading the other comments I found viewers have said the film is a test of patience. I on the other hand felt exactly the opposite. I thought it was enthralling. From the famous opening scene on I had left my seat,... I was inside 8 1/2. But perhaps that is more of a personal statement then anything else. I didn't find it boring in the least, but it's easy to see how others can. I really don't think 8 1/2 is a film for an audience. As a matter of fact I don't know who it's for. It's very hard to decide just what fellini has on his mind. I think perhaps, among other things, it is an image of his mind. A twisting confused mind, like a great collection of random thoughts all squeezed into a single narrative. Maybe also he is trying to evaluate reality. What is real after all? He mixes dreams and true life together in one beautifully filmed picturesque of lies. I'm sure anyone reading this has heard all about how the 8 1/2 is an autobiographical film. Well it is, but even at that it's much more. Amazingly 8 1/2 is a film about the making of itself. Think about that for a second. I sincerely doubt that this has ever been done before. To a degree Fellini made the film as he experienced it. I think that 8 1/2 is probably the most true to life movie ever made. No Joke!!! This is because it's not just life. Everyday living is so much more than just a simple narrative. It's a complex web of reality, dreams, fantasy, and so on. Fellini not only captures the characters feelings, he digs down and captures everything, even what they don't know about themselves. In the end we have the image of a certain time period in a certain mans life. But not just on the outside, how others see him. We are given the rare privalege to see inside his mind, see everything he sees, thinks, and experiences. Let me tell you it's quite a trip!!! Well, I could go on but I won't. I feel 8 1/2 is a masterwork, and I'm only 14 years old. I have only seen it once but I look forward to seeing it many times again. Great, bold, brilliant, and all the usual praise. Certainly better than La Dolce Vita. Those who haven't seen it need to. Watching it is a commitment, but it's a very rewarding one. Those who can really put themselves to the test are in for a huge treat.

*** E-mail me with your comments. ***

I watched this film in Italian, with English subtitles.

I went into 8 1/2 expecting an exciting story about memories and dreams, something in a similar vein to Inception, minus the action. What I got was a confusing story of a man struggling in his career and life, running alongside a seemingly anthological and unrelated set of his memories and dreams.

While I do believe there is some weight on the viewer to be smart and attentive enough to understand the director's vision, the rapid and unexplained switches between reality and fiction within 8 1/2 left me lost. It often took me a few minutes to realise a scene was in fact a memory or thought of Fellini's. The reality was strangely dreamlike, leading to everything becoming convoluted. While this was most likely intentional, to represent the protagonist's confusion and blurring of real life and dream, it made the film so much harder to comprehend.

Now, you may be thinking that I should simply watch the film again, until I can finally understand it, however the film has a critical flaw here - it was rather unenjoyable. If it had been entertaining enough to warrant enough rewatches, it would potentially be far better received by me. My main two problems were with the characters and the story. Every character outside of Guido blended into one, with the exact same personality of a disdain for Guido. The story was slow moving, confusing, and relied on characters to push it forward; characters which I did not care for. So from an entertainment standpoint, this film was a boring, two hour drag. The horrendous syncing of dialogue didn't help at all.

But from a technical standpoint? This film is fantastic. Where I was lost by the film, I was often momentarily mesmerized by the cinematography, the lighting, the colour. Shots such as Guido's leg tied to a rope, or a young Guido being cornered by his mother for a bath. The use of the camera was decades ahead of its time. Sets were heavily saturated with light to create an almost ethereal, heavenly atmosphere. Clean shadows were intelligently and intentionally cast, generating some enchanting images. Fellini had clearly mastered the camera and the light, just not the pen.

Rating: 6.8/10

--Admin-- Violence - One hanging, no blood.

Sex/Nudity - Only implied once.

Language - If there were any they were in Italian.

Miscellaneous Themes - None.

Put simply, 8 1/2 (Italy, 1963) is about a man simultaneously suffering from a midlife crisis and from "artist's block," the sudden onset of creative paralysis. Yet nothing about this Federico Fellini masterpiece can truly be understood simply. Mixing memory, fantasy, and reality, Fellini offers up an intense, semi-autobiographical psychological study of Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni), a film director imprisoned by his own success and riven by the conflicting claims of carnal desire and spiritual guilt, of the need for power and the need for love and approval, of high artistic aspiration and the fear of commercial failure.

Fellini's oft-expressed opinion that cinema lagged decades behind arts like painting, theater, and literature, no doubt partly motivates the avant-garde style and sensibility found in 8 1/2, a clear break from the director's roots in the Italian Neo-realist movement. The film's unusual title alludes to Fellini's having completed seven and a half prior films and also suggests that film number eight and a half remains in perpetual progress. As many commentators have observed, 8 1/2 is a film about the creation (or abortion) of 8 1/2 itself. This sort of artistic self-reflexivity is a key characteristic of postmodern art, but is traceable in Italian literature at least as far back as Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author, an influential monument of modern drama written in the early part of the 20th century.

In 8 1/2's unforgettable surrealistic opening sequence, the film's protagonist is introduced through two nightmares. In the first, Guido is claustrophobically trapped in an automobile stuck in traffic. In the second, he is floating like a balloon above a beach until an anonymous figure pulls him down via a rope fastened to his leg, and he falls into the ocean. As classic Freudian nightmares, Guido's relate to his anxieties about success and failure, love and death. They thus form a prelude to the film's more realistic sequences, in which the sources of Guido's anxiety become clearer - especially his troubled personal relationships with women, his Catholic upbringing with its guilt-mongering sexual repression, and the multitude of difficulties he faces as a film director attempting to create art within a collaborative and commercial context.

The realistic plot elements of the film are anchored to Guido's retreat to a health spa where he hopes to find the tranquility and inspiration to complete his stalled film project. Instead, he is besieged by demands and questions from his co-writer, his producer, his wife (Anouk Aimee), his mistress (Sandra Milo), actors and staff, news reporters, the clergy, and casual passersby. Sequences involving these characters segue without warning into and out of daydreams and memories, most importantly Guido's eerie encounter with his parents in a courtyard/cemetery, the prostitute Saraghina's sensual rumba along with the humiliating punishment young Guido receives for observing it, and the infamous "harem sequence," in which Guido is at first docilely served and worshiped by women from his real and fantasy lives and then must tame their fierce revolt with a patriarchal whip.

Perhaps the film's most perplexing character is the hauntingly beautiful young woman in white (Claudia Cardinale). Introduced as a Muse-like apparition at the spa and later arriving in the flesh to play an equivalent part in Guido's film, the character has been suggestively interpreted in Jungian psychoanalytical terms as the repressed anima (feminine element) of Guido's subconscious, reunification with which is necessary to establish his psycho-synthesis or balance. Although such an interpretation may seem a bit heavy, it is supported by a childhood flashback where, surrounded by the loving women of his extended family, Guido is taught a magic phrase by his older female cousin: "asa nisi masa." Decoded (remove every "s" and un-double the vowels), the word is "anima." A magician dredges up the word from Guido's subconscious in a key scene midway through the movie, and the restorative power it represents seems an important part of the film's final scene as well.

Of course the ending of 8 1/2 presents an especially difficult interpretive challenge since the film seems to end twice - and in contradictory ways. The first ending occurs at a pre-release press conference where Guido – in a complete state of alienation, frustration, and despair – crawls under a table and pulls a gun on himself. The camera cuts away, and we hear a gunshot. Has Guido shot himself or only contemplated doing so? Impossible to say for certain. In any case, the next sequence shows him apparently alive and present at the disassembly of his film's primary set: a launching pad for an insistently phallic rocket ship. At that point a second, seemingly happier ending kicks in, one in which Guido comes to terms with himself, his wife accepts him for who he is, and key characters from all phases of his life re-appear to join him at a circus performance where Guido as ringmaster leads them in a celebratory march. It is a finale reminiscent of Shakespeare's The Tempest, and, if only a fantasy, a powerful one.

The juxtaposition of these two endings has - to say the least - bewildered critics and general audiences ever since the film's original release. For some, the contradictions indicate the director's confusion and the film's essential incoherence. For others, they lend a rich ambiguity and provocative brilliance to the film. I would certainly cast my vote for the latter view. 8 1/2 is an endlessly fascinating film that rewards multiple viewings even if - or probably because - its mysteries are impossible to definitively resolve.

This film describes the internal life of a movie director who is unable to complete a film.

Guido Anselmi is the director who feels overwhelmed by his world--his work, his women, his life, and the movie he is supposed to make. He feels he has lost control. The movie is mostly scenes within his head as he believes he has lost his voice as a director. The opening scene of his feeling oppressed in the midst of a traffic jam is classic.

Numerous memories flashback to him as the movie proceeds, but often in overblown, cartoonish directions. It is not really a downer; Wikipedia calls it a surrealist comedy-drama. The cartoonish, over-the-top edge prevents it from being morbid.

The film has a happy ending, though apparently it was not the ending originally filmed.

I'm glad I saw it so that I have a sense of what it's about. But it's not really my cup of tea in a movie. I prefer more realism and a more straightforward storyline. But if you like bending reality and exploring the headspace of creative people, you might well enjoy it. All of Fellini's filming passions are there--circuses, parades, well-endowed women. There is a lot of very creative filmography; he certainly knows how to show a scene with impact.

"I have nothing to say," the hero says at least 4 times in the course of this film. Nothing is more true of Fellini's masterpiece. But beginning with this notion, the director takes us on a 2.5 hour epic to justify why he must say it nonetheless. That itself is rather clever and original, but--aside from the autobiographical elements which some may find tedious--it comes across as simply a glorified self-validation.

In this respect I equate Fellini to Salvador Dali (who is ironically my favourite painter). Neither artist had anything definitive to say, yet they did it in the most artistic way possible. Stylistically it's well crafted; images are stirring, masterful and expressive. But there is no backbone, no profound underlying message to tell the viewer except "I have nothing to say." Toward the second half of the film, this is voiced in a poignant monologue by one of the characters in the film (the film critic), and the hero's response is one of inarticulate exasperation. And so we see that, if anything, the point of this movie is to express Fellini's own purposelessness and ennui. This was the original "slacker film".

This was my first Fellini film, and I'm afraid it was a disappointment. My second Fellini film was ROMA which was an utter disaster (even Fellini fans should avoid that one like the plague). I've been told that the ideal way to indoctrinate oneself to Fellini is to start with LA STRADA, then NIGHTS OF CABIRIA, then JULIET, followed by LA DOLCE VITA... and only if/after you've developed the taste for such things should you try 8 1/2.

My advice to you newbies, should you decide to see this film anyway, is don't think too hard. Treat it as if you're watching an autobiography, complete with director's commentary reminding you why you're watching. This film is Seinfeld without the jokes... a show about nothing.