Thursday, July 14, 2005
Fellini's 8 1/2
Last night John and I watch 8 1/2 by Fellini, not once, but twice. That's five hours of film. The second time we watched with the commentary on, which was the best commentary I've heard on any DVD. I highly recommend buying the DVD to see this.
All of the following info is not my own, but a simple repetition of the commentary on the DVD. It's interesting none-the-less.
If you don't know, 8 1/2 is a movie about a director trying to make a movie. The title is chosen because it's the 8 1/2 Fellini's film directed (he co-directed one film along the way). So the title feeds the complications right away: Fellini's movie is about him trying to make his own movie. And he has no story! No movie! Which was the case with 8 1/2. He almost called it off many times, just as Guido ends up doing in the actual movie.
Ok, let me amend a previous post, which listed 8 1/2 as a neo-realist film. This is not the case. In fact, 8 1/2 was mocked by Italian critics who accused Fellini for abandoning the neo-realist tradition. He does this in the movie's dazzling opening sequence-- the camera sits behind Guido in his car, with no sound, and the first thing that happens is the camera pans up, over the roof, then it pans right and left, all in one long shot, before going back into the car where we see Guido from behind and we realize we are watching a long dream sequence. Well, the camera is truly a character in the movie, and it creates a dreamlike quality that is substantially, un realistic. Guido's caught in a traffic jam, and everyone is still, everyone is watching him. Fog begins to build up in the car and Guido is trapped, he tries to kick the windows, but they won't break. The silence is excruciating in this scene, and eventually Guido opens the window, crawls out in a birth-like sequence, and flies away, soaring through the clouds (like the Christ was flying though the clouds in the opening scene in his last film, I think La Dolce Vita). And who is there on the beach, with a rope around his ankle dragging him down is his agent and the PR guy for the movie studio.
(It is the reality of film making versus the artist freedom. This is something I am bookmarking in my head for later--something I know I'll have to think about in regards to my writing at some point. )
OK, course we don't know who is dragging Guido down when it happens, we don't know who the characters have yet to be introduced. And they won't be for quite a while, long enough that you probably will forget that it was these characters in his dream, and therefore miss the meaning of the sequence. But Fellini doesn't care, because, one, the film works without any meaning. If you watch this film without the subtitles, it is still incredibly moving and powerful. Maybe Fellini expects his audience to remember and work very hard to make that connection later on, or else he expects they will watch his movie many times. HE definitely has this kind of stature at this point in his career. He is quite aware that he has a very observant audience, or, he just doesn't care if anyone gets it, it's his artistic vision.
Which is commenting on the scene itself--how he must sacrifice his vision, must be pulled back to Earth by the film industry.
So, as I have mentioned before, I want to write Felliniesque novels. So I'm going to start by writing that scene, shot for shot true, to the sequence. I want to see if I can recreate the feeling that Fellini creates in the film-- the suffocation, the camera as character outside the main character of Guido--
Think about this: the camera is the narrator, the camera is not in Guido's head, it watches Guido from above. But we are seeing Guido's dream. So Guido is dreaming of watching himself in his dream. Fellini, is making a movie, about himself, dreaming about watching himself get pulled down by reality!
The mirrors go on and on like this throughout the movie. It's unreal. And every choice, I mean every choice is specific, deliberate, and brilliant. There is not one camera movement, one still shot, one set design that isn't perfectly coordinated.
I could go on all day but I'll stop. But watch this movie!
