Otto e mezzo / 8½

Italy 1962

Dir: Federico Fellini

138 mins

Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, Anouk Aimée

Rating: M - Low level coarse language

Why 8½? With six solo films behind him and three collaborations (counting as a half each), this film was Fellini's 8½ movie. It is also perhaps his most introverted and self-referential. Despite its insular nature, it got under the skin of many and went on to win the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar of 1963. ...

This is a film about film-making and a stricken soul trying to find solutions in a visceral form. Strong reflections of Fellini play across Mastroianni, who is suffering from the expectations of others that he is about to deliver another masterpiece. His character is made all the more potent because Fellini faced many similar problems getting this film made. The production managers, agents, and producers that swarm around Mastroianni are undoubtedly representative of those involved with Fellini's career.

Dreams of the future merge with memories of the past as a fascinating array of imagery is conjured to the screen. The effect is sometimes confusing - but always beautiful - and eventually intertwines to a singular life-confirming realisation that cuts through the madness and embraces it.

Almar Haflidason, BBC

With 8½ Federico Fellini tops even his trendsetting La dolce vita in artistry. Here is the author-director picture par excellence, an exciting, stimulating, monumental creation. ...

Variety

... Thirty years after Fellini made 8½, films like this have grown rare. Audiences demand that their movies, like fast food, be served up hot and now. The self-indulgence and utter self-absorption of Fellini, two of the film’s charms, would be vetoed by modern financial backers. They’d demand a more commercial genre piece.

These days, directors don’t worry about how to repeat their last hit, because they know exactly how to do it: Remake the same commercial formulas. A movie like this is like a splash of cold water in the face, a reminder that the movies really can shake us up, if they want to. Ironic, that Fellini’s film is about artistic bankruptcy seems richer in invention than almost anything else around.

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times