8 1/2 (1963)

"Certainly one of the most intensely personal statements ever made on celluloid.  Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide

Editor's Note Federico Fellini's Oscar-nominated 8 1/2 is a masterpiece of storytelling and cinema. The most autobiographical of Fellini's films, the plot of which concerns a 43-year-old film director who is having a midlife crisis, it is a career benchmark for this magnificent Italian New Wave director. Beautifully choreographed with flashbacks, dream sequences, exaggerated fantasy scenes, and magical surrealist episodes, 8 1/2 is one of the richest, most exuberant movies ever made, in the mode of Fellini's artfully abstract LA DOLCE VITA and AMARCORD. Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) is at a crisis point in his life and his work; in the opening sequence, Guido, suffocating, is caught in traffic with the windows of his car locked shut. He climbs out of the sunroof and literally rises up over the highway into the clouds, seemingly free, when he realizes there's a rope tied around his ankle that is violently pulling him back to earth. Cutting from this dream to the health spa where Guido is trying to recapture his creativity and write the screenplay for his next film, his vices become clear: Guido is self-absorbed, and he's distracted by the fabulous cast of actresses, intellectuals, and eccentrics who have joined him at the spa. Additionally he struggles with Freudian complexes about his wife (Anouk Aimée), his lover (Sandro Milo), his ideal woman (Claudia Cardinale), and his dead parents; and his repressive Catholic guilt follows him everywhere like a haunting mist.

	Anouk Aimee
	Claudia Cardinale
	Marcello Mastroianni
	Sandra Milo
	Frederico Fellini - Director
	Gianni di Venanzo - Director of Photography
	Leo Ferre - Musical Score
	Nino Rota - Musical Score
	Angelo Rizzoli - Producer
	Frederico Fellini, et al. - Writer

A fascinating, surreal view of a filmmaker's efforts to develop a new project, 8 1/2|stars Fellini regular Marcello Mastroianni in this semiautobiographical piece about a movie director's midlife crisis. Replete with fabulous performances and signature Fellini visual touches, it stars Anouk Aimée, Sandro Milo, and Claudia Cardinale. 8 1/2 is a touching, hilarious, and meditative viewing experience. Chicago Sun-Times
"...8 1/2 is the best film ever made about filmmaking....The film weaves in and out of reality and fantasy....It is a film filled to bursting with inspiration..." 05/28/2000 p.5

USA Today
"...The most famous screen treatise ever about the illogical undertaking of making a movie..." 12/28/2001 p.5D

Entertainment Weekly
"...The greatest mind-game movie ever..." 01/11/2002 p.32

Premiere
"...[T]he ideas and texture of 8 1/2 have never ceased to be an inspiration to artists everywhere..." 12/01/2003 p.10

Empire
"[T]he film teems with Jungian imagery, while grappling with the alienating effects of modernity and, overall, the exasperating quest for contentment in an arbitrary and uncertain world." 02/01/2009

Los Angeles Times
"[T]his film retains an ability to enthrall and delight that has not diminished over the years." 04/23/2010

Chicago Sun-Times 10 of 10
Thirty years after Fellini made 8 1/2, films like this have grown rare... The self-indulgence and utter self-absorption of Fellini, two of the film's charms, would be vetoed by modern financial backers... A movie like this is like a splash of cold water in the face, a reminder that the movies really can shake us up... Ironic, that Fellini's film about artistic bankruptcy seems richer in invention that almost anything else around. - Roger Ebert

Washington Post 10 of 10
Never again was Fellini as successful as he was here in his use of film as a theater for soul-searching.... Has there ever been a filmmaker who got more pleasure out of hating his weaknesses than Fellini? Or displayed them with greater pride and verve? - Hal Hinson