Product Description

One of the greatest films about film ever made, Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 (Otto e Mezzo) turns one man's artistic crisis into a grand epic of the cinema. Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) is a director whose film-and life-is collapsing around him. An early working title for the film was La Bella Confusione (The Beautiful Confusion), and Fellini's masterpiece is exactly that: a shimmering dream, a circus, and a magic act. The Criterion Collection is proud to present the 1963 Academy Award® winner for Best Foreign-Language Film-one of the most written about, talked about, and imitated movies of all time-in a beautifully restored new digital transfer. Disc two features Fellini's rarely seen first film for television, Fellini: A Director's Notebook (1969). Produced by Peter Goldfarb, this imagined documentary of Fellini is a kaleidoscope of unfinished projects, all of which provide a fascinating and candid window into the director's unique and creative process.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6802 in DVD
• Brand: Image Entertainment
• Released on: 2001-12-04
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Black & White, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: Italian
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 138 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
Federico Fellini's 1963 semi-autobiographical story about a worshipped filmmaker who has lost his inspiration is still a mesmerizing mystery tour that has been quoted (Woody Allen's Stardust Memories, Paul Mazursky's Alex in Wonderland) but never duplicated. Marcello Mastroianni plays Guido, a director trying to relax a bit in the wake of his latest hit. Besieged by people eager to work with him, however, he also struggles to find his next idea for a film. The combined pressures draw him within himself, where his recollections of significant events in his life and the many lovers he has left behind begin to haunt him. The marriage of Fellini's hyperreal imagery, dreamy sidebars, and the gravity of Guido's increasing guilt and self-awareness make this as much a deeply moving, soulful film as it is an electrifying spectacle. Mastroianni is wonderful in the lead, his woozy sensitivity to Guido's freefall both touching and charming--all the more so as the character becomes increasingly divorced from the celebrity hype that ultimately outpaces him. --Tom Keogh

DVD features
Criterion truly out did themselves with Fellini's masterpiece 8 1/2. Not only is the digital transfer stunning, but it's also loaded with extras. The anamorphic widescreen (aspect ratio 1.85:1) has few noticeable artifacts and looks extremely vibrant. The Mono Italian audio track is crystal clear and Nino Rota score sounds wonderful. 8 1/2 is incredibly autobiographical and unless you are a Fellini scholar a lot of the innuendos may be missed. Luckily, there is an amazing duel commentary, which provides many historical and metaphorical interpretations putting the surrealistic images into perspective. The second disc includes two documentaries and candid interviews with those who worked closely with Fellini providing an interesting 'inside' perspective. If there is one Fellini film to own, it is 8 1/2, and this Criterion DVD is the one to get. It is absolutely flawless. --Rob Bracco

Customer Reviews

Classic, but not quite great
8½ is suffused with the fictive childhood memories of Fellini's onscreen doppelganger, Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni), which- if the DVD experts on Fellini, and those I've scanned in gathering background information, are correct- are merely Fellini's own true memories transferred to film. They can result in some interesting themes and scenes for the film, but often, most manifestly in the Saraghina and Cardinal digressions, they make far too much of points that could more easily and poetically been conveyed onscreen. Both of these motivs waste a good twenty or more minutes of the film's running time....As for the famed narrative- or meta-narrative. Let me give a brief rundown of what 8½ is about. The film opens with shots of 43 year old married filmmaker Guido Anselmi in a traffic jam. It is obviously a dream sequence- or is it a scene from the film that he is to make, the one this film is about? It is clearly a set piece, and after escaping from his car window, as if from the uterus, he takes to the air, and becomes a kite, pulled back down to earth by whom we later recognize as the filmic representatives of Claudia Cardinale (playing herself), the actress who is to star in Guido's film within this film. As he falls to earth he wakens at a health spa where he is recuperating from a breakdown of some sort, along with his screenwriter, a dense film critic named Daumier (Jean Rougeul). Outside the spa he has a vision of a virginal white clad goddess, also played by Claudia Cardinale- although she is a separate character from the Claudia Cardinale who later appears as an actress in 8½. She manifestly represents an idealized vision of love and femininity to Guido. Daumier then criticizes Guido's ideas for his upcoming film as immature and self-indulgent, as Fellini obviously is striking the first blows for his film's claim to greatness.
He then spots Mario Mezzabotta (Mario Pisu), an old friend who is squiring around a dark, sexy young American girl he intends to marry. Her name is Gloria Morin (Barbara Steele, Mario Bava's horror film diva). Guido then heads to the train station to meet his gauche and buffoonish married mistress Carla (Sandra Milo). He already regrets asking her to come, until that night they play a game of hooker and john, and she eagerly plays her naughty role to sexual perfection. Guido falls asleep and dreams of his parents at a cemetery, His father (Annibale Ninchi) is dead, and his mother (Guiditta Rissone) kisses him lasciviously, then pulls back to reveal it is his wife, Luisa (Anouk Aimée). Later, Guido tries to avoid movie types and reporters who are after the story of what his next film will be about. Some entertainment ensues at the hotel, and Guido is reminded of a mysterious childish saying from his past, asa nisi masa. This nonsense phrase is the film's equivalent of Citizen Kane's Rosebud. How this all turns out is well known and detailed by others.
Incidentally, there is some confusion over why the film is called what it is called. The truth is that the film's final title 8½ refers to the number of films Fellini directed to that point- six features, two short (½) films, and his first film, half a feature, Luci del Varieta, which he co-directed with Alberto Lattuada, thus totaling 7½ films. This was therefore his 8½th film. As for the critical reception and continuing misconstruals this film receives, both positive and negative, it is easy to see why. Much of this confusion is recapitulated in the film's original title La Bella Confusione (The Beautiful Confusion). It is not clear whether or not this internal artistic confusion was genuine, in Fellini's case, but it does not matter to his puppet, Guido Anselmi, for intent is meaningless in art. The end result is all, always all. Thus, 8 ½ is a weird mélange of Freudian pop nonsense (id, ego, superego), and Salvador Dalì lite imagery, that badly dates the film intellectually. All of it is well handled, in beautiful black and white cinematography by Gianni de Venanzo, with an intriguing and well-placed musical score by Nino Rota, to enhance the artificiality of it all, but all the personal references, which in the film do little to enhance an understanding of Guido, even as they may lend obsessive critics insight into Fellini's life, drag the film down by its own overblown heft....8½ improves with rewatching, but it's still too long, filled with clumsy satire- Saraghina and the Cardinal, pointless digressions, and the like.

The Last Great Fellini Film
After 8 films, having acquired the status of an Italian icon (a much criticized one, of course, as with all Italian icons, which Italians - and Italo-Americans like me - take particular joy in tearing down) and overwhelming international fame, Fellini felt himself trapped, boxed in by demands and expectations and unable to create. So he shattered the box, threw away his script and wrote this outrageous, self regarding, egoistic, surreal and utterly brilliant meditation on ....himself! His predicament, his creative problems, his loves, his childhood, his aging, his fantasies. As in the most famous scene, he takes the whip and makes the elements of his life dance around him... at least until he is overwhelmed. And, for most folks, it works utterly. You are swept away in the swirl of images and emotions, and willingly allow yourself to go along for the ride. The world, as with most of the reviewers here, loved it. After all, despite the relentlessly inward focus of the film, these concerns of life, love and aging are our own concerns, too. His unforgettable images resonate with most of us. Although not everyone is willing to go along for this particular ride, as attested to by the much smaller number of extremely negative reviews. Hey, if you don't like the roller coaster, don't get on one!

But once you have taken such an extreme and self indulgent step - where do you go next? Sadly, that is one problem which Fellini never solved. After this, he mostly just made "Fellini films", repeating the same motifs and images that once seemed so daring, far past the point of self parody. To be sure, there are some wonderful moments in "Amarcord" and "Roma". In fact he rarely made a film without some things of real interest. But never again was he anywhere near as consistently good, as much on the cutting edge of international film, as he was in the ten years from 1953 to 1963. I Vitelloni (1953), La Strada (1954), Nights of Cabiria (1957), La Dolce Vita (1960), 8 1/2 (1963): How many directors have a run like that, with so many unforgettable images?

Italian Film Classic
Excellent Film by Fellini. A bit of a break from Italian Neo-Realism, but it works and it must be seen numerous times in order to get further into the meaning of what he is projecting or attempting to get across to the audience.