8½
Director: Federico Fellini
Country: Italy/France
Year: 1963
Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale,
Anouk Aimée
Duration: 138mins
Regarded as
Fellini’s finest and most personal work, and the best film ever made about an
artist’s creative crisis, the hallucinatory and imaginative 8½ is one of
cinema’s most recognizable touchstones, having inspired R.E.M’s Everybody
Hurts video and Rob Marshall’s musical Nine, among numerous others.
Starring Marcello Mastroianni as Fellini’s alter ego, 8½ revolves around
a famed director who is overwhelmed by the large-scale science fiction
production of his next film. As he struggles with the search for inspiration,
his personal life becomes a living hell due to constant haranguing by his
producers, his wife and his mistress. The film is notable for its sublime usage
of flashbacks and dream sequences which are interwoven with reality. Winner of
two Oscars, including Best Foreign Language Film.
#10 in Sight & Sound’s 2012 Greatest Films of All Time
Poll
06/10/2013(Sun): Post-screening talk with Geoffrey Wong