“I thought my ideas were so clear. I wanted to make an honest film. No lies whatsoever. I thought I had something so simple to say. Something useful to everybody. A film that could help bury forever all those dead things we carry within ourselves. Instead, I’m the one without the courage to bury anything at all. When did I go wrong? I really have nothing to say, but I want to say it all the same.”
Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 (1963) is one of the most honest films I have ever seen. The film concerns itself with Guido Anselmi, a famous director trying to create his next movie. Unfortunately for Guido, however, are a never-ending ring of producers, admirers, and lovers who will not allow him the clarity he needs to create an honest film. Driving Guido through the quagmire he finds himself in is a genuine desire to offer a pure, honest form of self-expression in his film.
The film has been called the “greatest film about filmmaking.” It features an early example of post-modern self-reference – Fellini wrote the film during a bout of writers block, burdened by producers and fans in the same way Guido is in the film. Fellini titled the film 8 1/2 as he saw it as his 8 1/2th film – he had previously made 7 1/2; that is, six feature lengths, two shorts, and one film he co-directed.
Whereas Fellini features the same hang-ups as Guido does in the film, Fellini succeeds magnificently where Guido seems to fail. Many of the critiques Guido reads about his own film are applicable to Fellini’s film as well – “…the film (is) a chain of gratuitous episodes which may even be amusing in their ambivalent realism….enough of symbolism and these escapist themes of purity and innocence.” It seems as though Guido is trying to make his own 8 1/2. Well, Fellini succeeds at least.
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