8½
Academy Award × 2·BFI #32
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Guido Anselmi, a film director, finds himself creatively barren at the peak of his career. Urged by his doctors to rest, Anselmi heads for a luxurious resort, but a sorry group gathers—his producer, staff, actors, wife, mistress, and relatives—each one begging him to get on with the show. In retreat from their dependency, he fantasizes about past women and dreams of his childhood.
What critics thought
One of the most celebrated films ever made, 8½ was embraced almost immediately as a landmark of world cinema, with critics across Europe and America treating its dreamlike structure and self-referential subject matter as a formal breakthrough rather than an indulgence. The handful of dissenting voices at its American release — who called it confused or even a fiasco — were quickly drowned out by decades of canonization, though their objections (that the film is more dazzling than moving) still surface occasionally. What critics have never quite agreed on is whether it succeeds as emotional experience or purely as intellectual spectacle.
“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”
Giovanni Grazzini·Corriere della Sera
“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”
Bosley Crowther·The New York Times
“This is a subtler, more imaginative, less sensational piece of work. There will be more people here who consider it confused and confusing.”
Archer Winsten·New York Post
“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.”
Roger Ebert·Chicago Sun-Times
Genres
Drama
Cast & Crew
DirectorFederico Fellini
StarringMarcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, Anouk Aimée, Sandra Milo, Rossella Falk
ComposerNino Rota
8½
Academy Award × 2·BFI #32
Guido Anselmi, a film director, finds himself creatively barren at the peak of his career. Urged by his doctors to rest, Anselmi heads for a luxurious resort, but a sorry group gathers—his producer, staff, actors, wife, mistress, and relatives—each one begging him to get on with the show. In retreat from their dependency, he fantasizes about past women and dreams of his childhood.
What critics thought
One of the most celebrated films ever made, 8½ was embraced almost immediately as a landmark of world cinema, with critics across Europe and America treating its dreamlike structure and self-referential subject matter as a formal breakthrough rather than an indulgence. The handful of dissenting voices at its American release — who called it confused or even a fiasco — were quickly drowned out by decades of canonization, though their objections (that the film is more dazzling than moving) still surface occasionally. What critics have never quite agreed on is whether it succeeds as emotional experience or purely as intellectual spectacle.
“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”
Giovanni Grazzini·Corriere della Sera
“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”
Bosley Crowther·The New York Times
“This is a subtler, more imaginative, less sensational piece of work. There will be more people here who consider it confused and confusing.”
Archer Winsten·New York Post
“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.”
Roger Ebert·Chicago Sun-Times
Genres
Drama
Cast & Crew
DirectorFederico Fellini
StarringMarcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, Anouk Aimée, Sandra Milo, Rossella Falk
ComposerNino Rota
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