''8½'' ( ) is a 1963 Italian
avant-garde
In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...
arthouse comedy-drama
Comedy drama (also known by the portmanteau dramedy) is a hybrid genre of works that combine elements of comedy and Drama (film and television), drama. In film, as well as scripted television series, serious dramatic subjects (such as death, il ...
film co-written and directed by
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini (; 20 January 1920 – 31 October 1993) was an Italian film director and screenwriter. He is known for his distinctive style, which blends fantasy and baroque images with earthiness. He is recognized as one of the greatest and ...
. The
metafictional narrative centers on famous Italian film director Guido Anselmi (
Marcello Mastroianni) who suffers from writer's block as he attempts to direct an
epic science fiction film
Science fiction (or sci-fi) is a film genre that uses Speculative fiction, speculative, fictional science-based depictions of phenomena that are not fully accepted by mainstream science, such as Extraterrestrial life in fiction, extraterrestria ...
.
Claudia Cardinale,
Anouk Aimée,
Sandra Milo,
Rossella Falk,
Barbara Steele, and
Eddra Gale portray the various women in Guido's life. The film was shot in black and white by cinematographer
Gianni Di Venanzo and features a score by
Nino Rota, with costume and set designs by
Piero Gherardi. Throughout its run Fellini also uses surrealist passages to increase the film's fantastical atmosphere.
''8½'' was critically acclaimed and won the
Academy Award
The Academy Awards, commonly known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit in film. They are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in the United States in recognition of excellence ...
for
Best Foreign Language Film and
Best Costume Design (black-and-white). It is acknowledged as an avant-garde film and a highly influential classic. It was ranked 10th on the
British Film Institute
The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves filmmaking and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery to encourage film production, ...
's
The ''Sight & Sound'' Greatest Films of All Time 2012 critics' poll and 4th by directors.
It is included in the Vatican's compilation of
45 important films made before 1995, the 100th anniversary of cinema.
The film ranked 7th in
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...
's 2018 list of ''The 100 Greatest Foreign Language Films'' voted by 209 film critics from 43 countries around the world.
It was included on the
Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage's
100 Italian films to be saved, a list of 100 films that "have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978". It is considered to be one of the
greatest and most influential films of all time.
Plot
Guido Anselmi, a famous Italian film director, is suffering from "
director's block". Stalled on his new
science fiction film
Science fiction (or sci-fi) is a film genre that uses Speculative fiction, speculative, fictional science-based depictions of phenomena that are not fully accepted by mainstream science, such as Extraterrestrial life in fiction, extraterrestria ...
that includes
thinly veiled autobiographical references, he has lost interest amidst artistic and marital difficulties. While attempting to recover from his anxieties at a luxurious spa, Guido hires a well-known critic to review his ideas for his film, but the critic blasts them. Guido has recurring visions of an Ideal Woman, whom he sees as key to his story. His mistress Carla comes to visit him, but Guido puts her in a separate hotel. The film production crew relocates to Guido's hotel in an unsuccessful attempt to get him to work on the film.
Guido admits to a cardinal that he is not happy. The cardinal offers little insight. Guido invites his estranged wife Luisa and her friends to join him. They dance, but Guido abandons her for his production crew. Guido confesses to his wife's best friend Rosella that he wanted to make a film that was pure and honest, but he is struggling with something honest to say. Carla surprises Guido, Luisa, and Rosella outside the hotel, and Guido claims that he and Carla ended their affair years earlier. Luisa and Rosella call him on the lie, and Guido slips into a fantasy world where he lords over a harem of women from his life, but a rejected showgirl starts a rebellion. The fantasy women attack Guido with harsh truths about himself and his sex life.
When Luisa sees how bitterly Guido represents her in the film, she declares that their marriage is over. Guido's Ideal Woman arrives in the form of an actress named Claudia. Guido explains that his film is about a burned-out man who finds salvation in this Ideal Woman. Claudia concludes that the protagonist is unsympathetic because he is incapable of love. Broken, Guido calls off the film, but the producer and the film's staff announce a press conference at which the filming will commence. Guido attempts to escape from the journalists and eventually imagines shooting himself in the head. Guido realizes he was attempting to solve his personal confusion by creating a film to help others, when instead he needs to accept his life for what it is. He asks Luisa for her assistance in doing so. Carla tells him that she figured out what he was trying to say: that Guido cannot do without the people in his life. As the production crew and cast begin to troop onto the set, Guido's passion revives and he begins to direct. The men and women of the cast and crew start holding hands and walk briskly around in a circle with Guido and Luisa joining them last. The production set is dismantled, Guido salutes the last of the crew members, and the set fades to black.
Cast
Themes
''8½'' is about the struggles involved in the creative process, both technical and personal, and the problems artists face when expected to deliver something personal and profound with intense public scrutiny, on a constricted schedule, while simultaneously having to deal with their own personal relationships. It is, in a larger sense, about the search for meaning within a difficult, fragmented life. Like several Italian films of the period (most evident in the films of Fellini's contemporary,
Michelangelo Antonioni
Michelangelo Antonioni ( ; ; 29 September 1912 – 30 July 2007) was an Italian film director, screenwriter, and editor. He is best known for his "trilogy on modernity and its discontents", ''L'Avventura'' (1960), ''La Notte'' (1961), and '' ...
), ''8½'' also is about the alienating effects of
modernization.
At this point, Fellini had directed six feature films: ''
Lo sceicco bianco'' (1952), ''
I Vitelloni'' (1953), ''
La Strada
''La Strada'', also translated into English as ''The Road'', is a 1954 Italian Drama (film and television), drama film directed by Federico Fellini and co-written by Fellini, Tullio Pinelli and Ennio Flaiano. The film tells the story of Gelsomin ...
'' (1954), ''
Il bidone'' (1955), ''
Le notti di Cabiria'' (1957), and ''
La Dolce Vita'' (1960). He had co-directed ''
Luci del varietà'' (''Variety Lights'') (1950) with
Alberto Lattuada, and had directed two short segments, ''Un'Agenzia Matrimoniale'' (''A Marriage Agency'') in the
omnibus film ''
L'amore in città'' (''Love in the City'') (1953) and ''Le Tentazioni del Dottor Antonio'' from the omnibus film ''
Boccaccio '70
''Boccaccio '70'' is a 1962 comedy anthology film directed by Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, Mario Monicelli and Luchino Visconti from an idea by Cesare Zavattini. It consists of four episodes, each by one of the directors, all about ...
'' (1962). The title is in keeping with Fellini's self-reflexive theme: by his count it was his eight-and-a-halfth film. The working title for ''8½'' was ''La bella confusione'' (''The Beautiful Confusion'') proposed by co-screenwriter,
Ennio Flaiano, but Fellini then "had the simpler idea (which proved entirely wrong) to call it ''Comedy''".
According to Italian writer
Alberto Arbasino, ''8½'' used techniques similar to, and has parallels with,
Robert Musil's novel ''
The Man Without Qualities'' (1930).
The film is unusual in that it is a film about making a film, and the film that is being made is the film that the audience is viewing. An example is the dream sequence of "Guido's Harem" where Guido is bathed and carried in white linen by all the women from the film, only to have the women protest for being sent to live upstairs in the house when they turn 30, and "Jacquilene Bonbon" does her last dance. The Guido's Harem scene is immediately followed by the "Screen Test" depicting the same actors in a theater, each taking the stage for a screen test, being chosen to act for the very scene the audience just watched. This mirror of mirrors is further emphasized at the end where the director Guido sits at the table of the press conference, where the entire table is a mirror reflecting the director in it.
Production
In an October 1960 letter to his colleague Brunello Rondi, Fellini first outlined his film ideas about a man suffering from a creative block: "Well then—a guy (a writer? any kind of professional man? a theatrical producer?) has to interrupt the usual rhythm of his life for two weeks because of a not-too-serious disease. It's a warning bell: something is blocking up his system." Unclear about the script, its title, and his protagonist's profession, he scouted locations throughout Italy "looking for the film" in the hope of resolving his confusion. Flaiano suggested ''La bella confusione'' (literally ''The Beautiful Confusion'') as the film's title. Under pressure from his producers, Fellini finally settled on ''8½'', a
self-referential
Self-reference is a concept that involves referring to oneself or one's own attributes, characteristics, or actions. It can occur in language, logic, mathematics, philosophy, and other fields.
In natural language, natural or formal languages, ...
title referring principally (but not exclusively) to the number of films he had directed up to that time.
Giving the order to start production in spring 1962, Fellini signed deals with his producer Rizzoli, fixed dates, had sets constructed, cast Mastroianni,
Anouk Aimée, and
Sandra Milo in lead roles, and did screen tests at the Scalera Studios in Rome. He hired
cinematographer
The cinematographer or director of photography (sometimes shortened to DP or DOP) is the person responsible for the recording of a film, television production, music video or other live-action piece. The cinematographer is the chief of the camera ...
Gianni Di Venanzo, among key personnel. But apart from naming his hero Guido Anselmi, he still could not decide what his character did for a living. The crisis came to a head in April when, sitting in his Cinecittà office, he began a letter to Rizzoli confessing he had "lost his film" and had to abandon the project. Interrupted by the chief machinist requesting he celebrate the launch of ''8½'', Fellini put aside the letter and went on the set. Raising a toast to the crew, he "felt overwhelmed by shame... I was in a no exit situation. I was a director who wanted to make a film he no longer remembers. And lo and behold, at that very moment everything fell into place. I got straight to the heart of the film. I would narrate everything that had been happening to me. I would make a film telling the story of a director who no longer knows what film he wanted to make".

When shooting began on 9 May 1962,
Eugene Walter recalled Fellini taking "a little piece of brown paper tape" and sticking it near the
viewfinder of the
camera
A camera is an instrument used to capture and store images and videos, either digitally via an electronic image sensor, or chemically via a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. As a pivotal technology in the fields of photograp ...
. Written on it was ''Ricordati che è un film comico'' ("Remember that this is a comic film"). Perplexed by the seemingly chaotic, incessant improvisation on the set, Deena Boyer, the director's American press officer at the time, asked for a rationale. Fellini told her that he hoped to convey the three levels "on which our minds live: the past, the present, and the conditional - the realm of fantasy".
''8½'' was filmed in the spherical cinematographic process, using 35-millimeter film, and exhibited with an
aspect ratio
The aspect ratio of a geometry, geometric shape is the ratio of its sizes in different dimensions. For example, the aspect ratio of a rectangle is the ratio of its longer side to its shorter side—the ratio of width to height, when the rectangl ...
of 1.85:1. As with most Italian films of this period, the sound was entirely dubbed in afterwards; following a technique dear to Fellini, many lines of the dialogue were written only during post production, while the actors on the set mouthed random lines. ''8½'' marks the first time that actress
Claudia Cardinale was allowed to dub her own dialogue; previously her voice was thought to be too throaty and, coupled with her
Tunisia
Tunisia, officially the Republic of Tunisia, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered by Algeria to the west and southwest, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Tunisia also shares m ...
n accent, was considered undesirable. This is Fellini's last black-and-white film.
In September 1962, Fellini shot the end of the film as initially written: Guido and his wife sit together in the restaurant car of a train bound for
Rome
Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...
. Lost in thought, Guido looks up to see all the characters of his film smiling ambiguously at him as the train enters a tunnel. Fellini then shot an alternative ending set around the spaceship on the beach at dusk but with the intention of using the scenes as a trailer for promotional purposes only. In the 2002 documentary ''
Fellini: I'm a Born Liar'', co-scriptwriter
Tullio Pinelli explains how he warned Fellini to abandon the train sequence with its implicit theme of
suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death.
Risk factors for suicide include mental disorders, physical disorders, and substance abuse. Some suicides are impulsive acts driven by stress (such as from financial or ac ...
for an upbeat ending. Fellini accepted the advice, using the alternative beach sequence as a more harmonious and exuberant finale.
After shooting wrapped on 14 October,
Nino Rota composed various circus marches and fanfares that would later become signature tunes of the maestro's cinema.
[Kezich, 245]
Soundtrack
Reception
Critical response
First released in Italy on 14 February 1963, ''8½'' received widespread acclaim, with reviewers hailing Fellini as "a genius possessed of a magic touch, a prodigious style".
Italian novelist and critic
Alberto Moravia
Alberto Pincherle (; 28 November 1907 – 26 September 1990), known by his pseudonym Alberto Moravia ( , ), was an Italian novelist and journalist. His novels explored matters of modern sexuality, social alienation and existentialism. Moravia i ...
described the film's protagonist, Guido Anselmi, as "obsessed by eroticism, a sadist, a masochist, a self-mythologizer, an adulterer, a clown, a liar and a cheat. He's afraid of life and wants to return to his mother's womb ... In some respects, he resembles
Leopold Bloom, the hero of
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...
's ''
Ulysses'', and we have the impression that Fellini has read and contemplated this book. The film is introverted, a sort of private monologue interspersed with glimpses of reality .... Fellini's dreams are always surprising and, in a figurative sense, original, but his memories are pervaded by a deeper, more delicate sentiment. This is why the two episodes concerning the hero's childhood at the old country house in
Romagna
Romagna () is an Italian historical region that approximately corresponds to the south-eastern portion of present-day Emilia-Romagna, in northern Italy.
Etymology
The name ''Romagna'' originates from the Latin name ''Romania'', which originally ...
and his meeting with the woman on the beach in
Rimini
Rimini ( , ; or ; ) is a city in the Emilia-Romagna region of Northern Italy.
Sprawling along the Adriatic Sea, Rimini is situated at a strategically-important north-south passage along the coast at the southern tip of the Po Valley. It is ...
are the best of the film, and among the best of all Fellini's works to date".
Reviewing for ''
Corriere della Sera'', Giovanni Grazzini underlined that "the beauty of the film lies in its 'confusion'... a mixture of error and truth, reality and dream, stylistic and human values, and in the complete harmony between Fellini's cinematographic language and Guido's rambling imagination. It is impossible to distinguish Fellini from his fictional director and so Fellini's faults coincide with Guido's spiritual doubts. The
osmosis
Osmosis (, ) is the spontaneous net movement or diffusion of solvent molecules through a selectively permeable membrane, selectively-permeable membrane from a region of high water potential (region of lower solute concentration) to a region of ...
between art and life is amazing. It will be difficult to repeat this achievement. Fellini's genius shines in everything here, as it has rarely shone in the movies. There isn't a set, a character or a situation that doesn't have a precise meaning on the great stage that is ''8½''". Mario Verdone of ''Bianco e Nero'' insisted the film was "like a brilliant improvisation ... The film became the most difficult feat the director ever tried to pull off. It is like a series of acrobats
icthat a tightrope walker tries to execute high above the crowd, ... always on the verge of falling and being smashed on the ground. But at just the right moment, the acrobat knows how to perform the right somersault: with a push he straightens up, saves himself and wins".
''8½'' screened at the
1963 Cannes Film Festival in April to "almost universal acclaim"
[Alpert, 180] and was Italy's official entry in the later
3rd Moscow International Film Festival where it won the Grand Prize. French film director
François Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut ( , ; ; 6 February 1932 – 21 October 1984) was a French filmmaker, actor, and critic. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave. He came under the tutelage of film critic Andre Bazin as a ...
wrote: "Fellini's film is complete, simple, beautiful, honest, like the one Guido wants to make in ''8½''". ''Premier Plan'' critics André Bouissy and Raymond Borde argued that the film "has the importance, magnitude, and technical mastery of ''
Citizen Kane
''Citizen Kane'' is a 1941 American Drama (film and television), drama film directed by, produced by and starring Orson Welles and co-written by Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz. It was Welles's List of directorial debuts, first feature film. ...
''. It has aged twenty years of the avant-garde in one fell swoop because it both integrates and surpasses all the discoveries of experimental cinema". Pierre Kast of ''Les
Cahiers du cinéma'' explained that "my admiration for Fellini is not without limits. For instance, I did not enjoy ''
La Strada
''La Strada'', also translated into English as ''The Road'', is a 1954 Italian Drama (film and television), drama film directed by Federico Fellini and co-written by Fellini, Tullio Pinelli and Ennio Flaiano. The film tells the story of Gelsomin ...
'' but I did ''
I Vitelloni''. But I think we must all admit that ''8½'', leaving aside for the moment all prejudice and reserve, is prodigious. Fantastic liberality, a total absence of precaution and hypocrisy, absolute dispassionate sincerity, artistic and financial courage these are the characteristics of this incredible undertaking". The film ranked 10th on
Cahiers du Cinéma's
Top 10 Films of the Year List in 1963.
Released in the United States on 25 June 1963 by
Joseph E. Levine, who had bought the rights sight unseen, the film was screened at the Festival Theatre in
New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
in the presence of Fellini and
Marcello Mastroianni. The acclaim was unanimous with the exception of reviews by
Judith Crist,
Pauline Kael, and
John Simon. Crist "didn't think the film touched the heart or moved the spirit".
Kael derided the film as a "structural disaster" while Simon considered it "a disheartening fiasco".
[Kezich, 247] ''
Newsweek
''Newsweek'' is an American weekly news magazine based in New York City. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely distributed during the 20th century and has had many notable editors-in-chief. It is currently co-owned by Dev P ...
'' defended the film as "beyond doubt, a work of art of the first magnitude".
Bosley Crowther praised it in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' as "a piece of entertainment that will really make you sit up straight and think, a movie endowed with the challenge of a fascinating intellectual game ... If Mr. Fellini has not produced another masterpieceanother all-powerful exposure of Italy's ironic sweet lifehe has made a stimulating contemplation of what might be called, with equal irony, a sweet guy". Archer Winsten of the ''
New York Post
The ''New York Post'' (''NY Post'') is an American Conservatism in the United States, conservative
daily Tabloid (newspaper format), tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The ''Post'' also operates three online sites: NYPost. ...
'' interpreted the film as "a kind of review and summary of Fellini's picture-making" but doubted that it would appeal as directly to the American public as ''
La Dolce Vita'' had three years earlier: "This is a subtler, more imaginative, less sensational piece of work. There will be more people here who consider it confused and confusing. And when they do understand what it is aboutthe simultaneous creation of a work of art, a philosophy of living together in happiness, and the imposition of each upon the other, they will not be as pleased as if they had attended the exposition of an international scandal". Audiences, however, loved it to such an extent that a company attempted to obtain the rights to mass-produce Guido Anselmi's black director's hat.
Fellini biographer
Hollis Alpert noted that in the months following its release, critical commentary on ''8½'' proliferated as the film "became an intellectual cud to chew on".
[Alpert, 181] Philosopher and social critic
Dwight Macdonald, for example, insisted it was "the most brilliant, varied, and entertaining movie since ''Citizen Kane''".
In 1987, a group of thirty European intellectuals and filmmakers voted ''Otto e mezzo'' the most important European film ever made. In 1993, ''
Chicago Sun-Times
The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily nonprofit newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has long held the second largest circulation among Chicago newspaper ...
'' film reviewer
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert ( ; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American Film criticism, film critic, film historian, journalist, essayist, screenwriter and author. He wrote for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. Eber ...
wrote that "despite the efforts of several other filmmakers to make their own versions of the same story, it remains the definitive film about director's block". ''8½'' was voted the best foreign (i.e. non-Swedish) sound film with 21 votes in a 1964 poll of 50 Swedish film professionals organized by Swedish film magazine '.
''
The Village Voice
''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture publication based in Greenwich Village, New York City, known for being the country's first Alternative newspaper, alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf (publisher), Dan Wolf, ...
'' ranked the film at number 112 in its Top 250 "Best Films of the Century" list in 1999, based on a poll of critics. ''
Entertainment Weekly
''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American online magazine, digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, ...
'' voted it at No. 36 on their list of ''100 Greatest Movies of All Time''. In 2000, Ebert added it to his "
Great Movies" list, calling it "the best film ever made about filmmaking", concluding "I have seen ''8½'' over and over again, and my appreciation only deepens. It does what is almost impossible: Fellini is a magician who discusses, reveals, explains and deconstructs his tricks, while still fooling us with them. He claims he doesn't know what he wants or how to achieve it, and the film proves he knows exactly, and rejoices in his knowledge." ''8½'' is a fixture on the British Film Institute's ''
Sight & Sound'' critics' and directors' polls of the top 10 films ever made. The film ranked 4th and 5th on critics' poll in 1972 and 1982 respectively. It ranked 2nd on the magazine's 1992 and 2002 ''Directors' Top Ten Poll'' and 8th on the 2002 ''Critics' Top Ten Poll''. It was slightly lower in the 2012 directors' poll, 4th
and 10th on the 2012 critics' poll.
[ The film was included in '']Time
Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...
''s All-Time 100 best movies list in 2005. The film was voted at No. 46 on the list of "100 Greatest Films" by the prominent French magazine ''Cahiers du cinéma'' in 2008. In 2010, the film was ranked #62 in ''Empire
An empire is a political unit made up of several territories, military outpost (military), outposts, and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a hegemony, dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the ...
'' magazine's "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema". It was also ranked number 1 when the asked 279 Polish film professionals (filmmakers, critics, and professors) in 2015 to vote for the best films.[*
*
* ]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...
, ''8½'' has an approval rating of 97% based on 61 reviews, with an average score of 8.5/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Inventive, thought-provoking, and funny, 8 1/2 represents the arguable peak of Federico Fellini's many towering feats of cinema." On Metacritic
Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...
, the film has a weighted average score of 93 out of 100 based on 23 critic's reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".
Awards and nominations
''8½'' won two Academy Awards
The Academy Awards, commonly known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit in film. They are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in the United States in recognition of excellence in ...
for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Costume Design (black-and-white) while garnering three other nominations for Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Art Direction (black-and-white). The New York Film Critics Circle also named ''8½'' best foreign language film in 1964. The Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists awarded the film all seven prizes for director, producer, original story, screenplay, music
Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...
, cinematography, and best supporting actress ( Sandra Milo). It also garnered nominations for Best Actor, Best Costume Design, and Best Production Design.
At the Saint Vincent Film Festival, it was awarded Grand Prize over Luchino Visconti
Luchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo (; 2 November 1906 – 17 March 1976) was an Italian filmmaker, theatre and opera director, and screenwriter. He was one of the fathers of Italian neorealism, cinematic neorealism, but later ...
's '' Il gattopardo'' (''The Leopard''). The film screened in April at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival to "almost universal acclaim but no prize was awarded because it was shown outside the competition. Cannes rules demanded exclusivity in competition entries, and ''8½'' was already earmarked as Italy's official entry in the later Moscow festival". Presented on 18 July 1963 to an audience of 8,000 in the Kremlin
The Moscow Kremlin (also the Kremlin) is a fortified complex in Moscow, Russia. Located in the centre of the country's capital city, the Moscow Kremlin (fortification), Kremlin comprises five palaces, four cathedrals, and the enclosing Mosco ...
's conference hall, ''8½'' won the prestigious Grand Prize at the 3rd Moscow International Film Festival to acclaim that, according to Fellini biographer Tullio Kezich, worried the Soviet
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
festival authorities: the applause was "a cry for freedom". Jury members included Stanley Kramer, Jean Marais, Satyajit Ray
Satyajit Ray (; 2 May 1921 – 23 April 1992) was an Indian film director, screenwriter, author, lyricist, magazine editor, illustrator, calligraphy, calligrapher, and composer. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest and most influ ...
, and screenwriter Sergio Amidei. The film was nominated for a BAFTA Award
The British Academy Film Awards, more commonly known as the BAFTAs or BAFTA Awards, is an annual film award show hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) to honour the best British and international contributions to f ...
in Best Film from any Source category in 1964. It won the Best European Film Award at Bodil Awards
The Bodil Awards are the major Denmark, Danish film awards given by the Danish Film Critics Association. The awards are presented annually at a ceremony in Copenhagen. Established in 1948, it is one of the oldest film awards in Europe. The awards ...
in 1964. The film also won National Board of Review Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Influence
Later in the year of the film's 1963 release, a group of young Italian writers founded Gruppo '63, a literary collective of the neoavanguardia composed of novelists, reviewers, critics, and poets inspired by ''8½'' and Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco (5 January 1932 – 19 February 2016) was an Italian Medieval studies, medievalist, philosopher, Semiotics, semiotician, novelist, cultural critic, and political and social commentator. In English, he is best known for his popular ...
's seminal essay, ''Opera aperta'' (''Open Work'').
"Imitations of ''8½'' pile up by directors all over the world", wrote Fellini biographer Tullio Kezich. The following is Kezich's short-list of the films it has inspired: '' Mickey One'' (Arthur Penn
Arthur Hiller Penn (September 27, 1922 – September 28, 2010) was an American filmmaker, theatre director, and producer. He was a three-time Academy Award nominee for Academy Award for Best Director, Best Director, and a Tony Awards, Tony Awa ...
, 1965), '' Alex in Wonderland'' ( Paul Mazursky, 1970), '' Beware of a Holy Whore'' ( Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1971), '' Day for Night'' (François Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut ( , ; ; 6 February 1932 – 21 October 1984) was a French filmmaker, actor, and critic. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave. He came under the tutelage of film critic Andre Bazin as a ...
, 1974), '' All That Jazz'' ( Bob Fosse, 1979), '' Stardust Memories'' (Woody Allen
Heywood Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg; November 30, 1935) is an American filmmaker, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades. Allen has received many List of awards and nominations received by Woody Allen, accolade ...
, 1980), ''Sogni d'oro'' ( Nanni Moretti, 1981), '' Planet Parade'' ( Vadim Abdrashitov, 1984), '' A King and His Movie'' ( Carlos Sorín, 1986), 1993), '' Living in Oblivion'' ( Tom DiCillo, 1995), '' 8½ Women'' (Peter Greenaway
Peter Greenaway, (born 5 April 1942) is a British film director, screenwriter and artist. His films are noted for the distinct influence of Renaissance and Baroque painting, and Mannerist painting in particular. Common traits in his films a ...
, 1999), and '' 8½ $'' (Grigori Konstantinopolsky, 1999).
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese ( , ; born November17, 1942) is an American filmmaker. One of the major figures of the New Hollywood era, he has received List of awards and nominations received by Martin Scorsese, many accolades, including an Academ ...
included ''8½'' on his ballot for the ''Sight & Sound'' poll. In conversation with the Criterion Collection, he named it one of his favorites: What would Fellini do after ''La dolce vita''? We all wondered. How would he top himself? Would he even want to top himself? Would he shift gears? Finally, he did something that no one could have anticipated at the time. He took his own artistic and life situation—that of a filmmaker who had eight and a half films to his name (episodes for two omnibus films and a shared credit with Alberto Lattuada on Variety Lights counted for him as one and a half films, plus seven), achieved international renown with his last feature and felt enormous pressure when the time came for a follow-up—and he built a movie around it. ''8½'' has always been a touchstone for me, in so many ways—the freedom, the sense of invention, the underlying rigor and the deep core of longing, the bewitching, physical pull of the camera movements and the compositions...But it also offers an uncanny portrait of being the artist of the moment, trying to tune out all the pressure and the criticism and the adulation and the requests and the advice, and find the space and the calm to simply listen to oneself. The picture has inspired many movies over the years (including ''Alex in Wonderland'', ''Stardust Memories'', and ''All That Jazz''), and we’ve seen the dilemma of Guido, the hero played by Marcello Mastroianni, repeated many times over in reality—look at the life of Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan; born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Described as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture over his nearly 70-year ...
during the period we covered in '' No Direction Home'', to take just one example. Like with ''The Red Shoes'', I look at it again every year or so, and it's always a different experience.
Musical adaptation
The Tony-winning 1982 Broadway musical '' Nine'' (score by Maury Yeston, book by Arthur Kopit) is based on the film, underscoring Guido's obsession with women by making him the only male character. The original production, directed by Tommy Tune, starred Raúl Juliá as Guido, Anita Morris as Carla, Liliane Montevecchi as Liliane LaFleur, Guido's producer and Karen Akers as Luisa. A 2003 Broadway revival starred Antonio Banderas, Jane Krakowski, Mary Stuart Masterson
Mary Stuart Masterson (born June 28, 1966) is an American actress and director. After making her acting debut as a Child actor, child in The Stepford Wives (1975 film), ''The Stepford Wives'' (1975), Masterson took a ten-year hiatus to focus on ...
and Chita Rivera. The play was adapted into a 2009 film, directed by Rob Marshall and starring Daniel Day-Lewis as Guido with Nicole Kidman, Marion Cotillard, Judi Dench, Kate Hudson, Penélope Cruz, Sophia Loren, and Fergie.[Kezich, 249-250]
See also
* Asa Nisi Masa
* List of Italian submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
* List of submissions to the 36th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film
* List of films considered the best
This is a list of films voted the best in national and international Opinion poll, surveys of Film criticism, critics and the public.
Some surveys focus on all films, while others focus on a particular genre or country. Electoral system, Voti ...
References
Bibliography
* Affron, Charles. ''8½: Federico Fellini, Director''. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989.
* Alpert, Hollis. ''Fellini: A Life''. New York: Paragon House, 1988.
* Bondanella, Peter. ''The Cinema of Federico Fellini''. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.
* Bondanella, Peter. ''The Films of Federico Fellini''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
* Fava, Claudio and Aldo Vigano. ''The Films of Federico Fellini''. New York: Citadel Press, 1990.
* Fellini, Federico. ''Comments on Film''. Ed. Giovanni Grazzini. Trans. Joseph Henry. Fresno: The Press of California State University at Fresno, 1988.
* Kezich, Tullio. '' Federico Fellini: His Life and Work''. New York: Faber and Faber, 2006.
External links
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''Chicago Sun-Times'' review
by Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert ( ; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American Film criticism, film critic, film historian, journalist, essayist, screenwriter and author. He wrote for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. Eber ...
Guardian.uk review
by Derek Malcolm
Derek Elliston Michael Malcolm (12 May 1932 – 15 July 2023) was an English film critic and historian.
Early life
Derek Elliston Michael Malcolm was born on 12 May 1932. He was the son of Douglas Malcolm (died 1967) and Dorothy Vera (died 196 ...
''8½: A Film with Itself as Its Subject''
– an essay by Alexander Sesonske at The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home video, home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films". A "sister company" of art film, arth ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:8 1 2
1963 films
1963 comedy-drama films
1960s French films
1960s French-language films
1960s Italian films
1960s Italian-language films
Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award winners
Films à clef
Films about dreams
Films about film directors and producers
Films adapted into plays
Films directed by Federico Fellini
Films produced by Angelo Rizzoli
Films scored by Nino Rota
Films set in Rome
Films shot in Rome
Films that won the Best Costume Design Academy Award
Films with screenplays by Federico Fellini
French black-and-white films
French comedy-drama films
Italian black-and-white films
Italian comedy-drama films
Italian-language French films
Self-reflexive films
Semi-autobiographical films
Films with screenplays by Ennio Flaiano