Fellini nearly abandoned 8½ until his own block became the story
In April 1962, with sets built and actors cast, Federico Fellini sat down to write his producer a letter admitting he had lost his film. A crew member interrupted, inviting him to toast the production. Standing before them in shame, Fellini realised the answer: make a film about a director who no longer knows what film he wants to make.
The idea had been circling since an October 1960 letter to his colleague Brunello Rondi, which sketched a professional man, perhaps a writer or theatre producer, forced to pause his life by a minor illness that warns him something inside is blocked. Fellini toured Italy searching for locations and, in effect, for the film itself. Even after signing with producer Rizzoli, casting Marcello Mastroianni and naming the hero Guido Anselmi, he still could not decide what Guido did for a living.
The title was a joke at his own expense. By his count he had made six features, a co-directed debut and two short segments, so this was film number eight and a half. Co-writer Ennio Flaiano proposed La bella confusione, and Fellini briefly wanted to call it Comedy, an idea he later judged entirely wrong.
On screen, Guido retreats to a spa with director's block, dodging his mistress, his estranged wife and a production crew that follows him to the hotel, while drifting into dreams and childhood memories. The structure folds in on itself. A fantasy in which he rules over a harem of the women in his life is followed by a screen test where the same actresses audition for the scene just watched, and at the final press conference the table is a mirror. The ending turns to acceptance: a circus parade, cast and crew joining hands in a ring.
Shot in black and white with a score by Nino Rota, the 1963 film won Oscars for foreign-language film and black-and-white costume design. In the 2012 Sight and Sound polls critics ranked it 10th of all time and directors 4th, and the Vatican included it among 45 important films marking cinema's centenary.
Source: 8½
