This, more than anything probably, made 8½ the most influential film of the 1960s, liberating filmmakers everywhere from the conventions of time, place, and mode of experience that had prevailed in cinema for decades. But Fellini’s brilliance reaches beyond the surface to include an intricate structure of highly original, highly imaginative scenes whose conjunction creates an unprecedented interweaving of memories, fantasies, and dreams with the daily life of his hero and alter ego, Guido Anselmi. We find almost a catalog of humanity in its stream of faces some of them are momentary visions, while others persist through the film and long after in our memory, such as Saraghina, that lumbering monster transformed into the embodiment of joyous life and movement. Its surface flow of images dazzles us with sharp contrasts of black and white, startling eruptions from offscreen, unexpected changes of scene, and a virtuoso display of all the possibilities and effects of camera movement. The worldwide success of 8½ and its current status high on the list of the greatest films ever made have long since refuted such critics, but they were right on two counts: 8½ is both autobiographical and brilliant. It was perhaps this last level of self-reference that led some critics in the mid-1960s to dismiss 8½ as autobiographical trivia, brilliant on its surface but devoid of significant content-a criticism already made within the film by Daumier, the writer. Notice how everything Guido says about the film he is making turns out to be true of 8½, even the sailor doing a soft-shoe dance how all the screen tests are for roles in the film we are seeing how some camera movements create an ambiguity between Guido, the director in the film, and Fellini, the director of the film, thus taking self-reference one step beyond the work to its maker. 8½ is a film about making a film, and the film that is being made is 8½.

Self-referential enough, but only the beginning. Hence 8 ½ is like an opus number: this is film number eight and a half in the Fellini catalog.

By 1963, Federico Fellini had made, by his count, seven and a half films. If the mark of modernism in art is self-reference, 8 ½ surely goes beyond any predecessor in having itself as its subject. 8½: a bizarre and puzzling title, but one precisely appropriate for this film, which announces in its first frame that modernism has reached the cinema.

8 1 2 federico fellini 1963 torrent