8 1/2 (1963): a Filmwell dialogue

This is the first installment in a series of dialogues originally published at Filmwell, a film blog founded by myself and Michael Leary. Michael and I began working our way through discussions of the Top Ten films from a recent Sight & Sound Greatest Films poll. Then life became too demanding, and we had to postpone the series's completion. We're hoping to re-start the engine, posting it both here at Looking Closer and there at Filmwell, and make more progress this time.

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Overstreet:

8 ½

Leary:

8 ½

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Overstreet:

8 ½Night of the Living Dead

Leary:

In Salman Rushdie’s recent New Yorker piece, he recalls Amis describing his instant notoriety as “vanishing on the front page.” This is a good approximation of the shock we feel in this intro. It is a very modern form of shock, isn’t it? Our identities, especially those of the artist or pop culture hero, have become a valuable public commodity. In his dream, he is able to shrug off that insanity – even if just for a moment. The edit between his escape and the following shot of the rope tethering him to his fame may be his one moment of respite in the entire film.

Overstreet:

Recently, I've found myself struggling in my creative endeavors, and that opening scene showed me images that felt familiar. They "rang true" in an emotional way. I wouldn't call it "writer's block." I'd describe it as a kind of paralysis, or a kind of starvation, during which attention from outside, emotionally demanding relationship troubles, a sense of homelessness, and the demands of the "business" side of art all conspire to distract, fragment, and exhaust the artist's energy. He cannot rest. He's misunderstood. He's exploited. And yet he goes on inviting more and more chaos into his life. He turns to the church out of instinct, but finds only the same cold, dry legalism that seemingly drove him away. He turns to women, but finds only frivolous and fragmenting distraction.

I wouldn't compare myself to Fellini, of course; I'm not a famous artist or a celebrity. But I've found that even a modest level of success can be the worst thing for a creative person.

Leary:

Joan of Arc

This flashback is posed as a representation of his experience of the Catholic Church. He is confused. Why is what he witnessed on the beach “a deadly sin”? As an adult, this confusion has taken an aesthetic shape. Why is he not able to translate these fundamental experiences of life, spirituality, and love into film? That is all he really wants to do. These images and memories keep bubbling up, but no one is willing to accept them as legit creative urges because they are not financially viable or philosophically interesting.

Overstreet:

do

For Guido, the good is clearly the enemy of the best here. And I’m inclined to see “the best” as his wife Luisa, who has every right to be as monstrously angry as she is in this film.

Leary:

This film really gets that. It is an honest film because it doesn’t attempt to fix Guido or explain his malaise. Toward the end, Guido says: “I wanted to make an honest film, with no lies of any kind... I thought my ideas were so simple. That would help us to bury all that is dead inside us." While Guido’s attempt fails, it seems that Fellini’s hasn’t. When Guido’s wife shows up, everything starts to get a bit Certified Copy, doesn’t it? Guido’s “divided loyalties” begin emerging in the film as digressions and fantasies. It becomes harder to tell where Fellini is drawing the fantasy line at times.

Overstreet:

8 1/2

Further, I remembered it being an expression of despair and meaninglessness, but this time it felt more like a confession in which the artist exposes his own guilt and acknowledges his own helplessness to save himself. Like a modern Ecclesiastes, he seems to feel that all is vanity, but only because he has squandered the blessings given to him. He has allowed himself to accept the adulation of a world whose affections are questionable at best, and at worst, for sale.

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Leary:

Wall-E

Overstreet:

I have no argument with anyone including this in Top 10 of All-Time list. I assume you've seen it more than once. Did it show you something new this time?

Leary:

And then there are many moments which involve the unveiling of figures or faces. A hat covers a woman’s face until the last moment, and then her eyes and smile dawn upon us. In another shot a woman’s profile is shrouded by sheer cloth until she tilts it back across the frame. His wife with glasses and without. In housemaid garb and not. The large woman begins to show up in his fantasies again.

Taking these two formal elements together, Fellini seems to be evoking his or Guido’s inability to see things properly. Every now and then a glimmer of something breaks through. But then we are quickly shuttled back to the constant circus which is this film. There is something almost Gospel of John-like about his formal use of light and darkness, revelation and concealment.

Overstreet:

8 1/2

Moreover, I find it to be one of the most consistently enthralling works of cinematography I’ve ever seen. For an artist who depicts himself as being burned out, he seems to be having a world of fun behind the camera and in the editing room.

Leary:

Every generation we hear a director say that movies need to die so that cinema can begin. This seems to be what is happening at the end. But what do you make of it? You have talked much about the film as a confession. What is happening with the band, and the actors, etc…?

Overstreet:

Would anything but a self-effacing laugh make sense as a conclusion to this, his confession, his testament to his own contradictions, hypocrisies, failures, and self-imposed imprisonment? Joining hands with the circus performers and dancing in a circle, he’s surrendering with a sigh that recalls the last words of The Book of Ecclesiastes.

Then again, so many people are seeking to blame him or manipulate him, to demand genius and then ridicule his ideas. Maybe he’s just teasing his critics here. That hellish press conference near the end recalls Bob Dylan’s incredulity toward the press in “Ballad of the Thin Man” … a connection that resurfaces in Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There, when a Dylan press conference is stylized like a scene from 8 ½. Here, at the end of a masterpiece sure to confound self-appointed authorities on art, Fellini concludes by joining the circus to which they’ve consigned him. A martyr for the cause.

Which brings us to Movie #9 on the list: The Passion of Joan of Arc.

Leary: