8½ (1963)

Fed­eri­co Fellini’s two biggest smash hits were both filmed in black-and-white. But we recall La Dolce Vita as black – the chic night of the Via Vene­to. And we recall 8½ as white – the clouds through which the film’s hero floats in the open­ing dream sequence; the steam room bil­low­ing at his spa; the blown-out sun­shine blind­ing his stone court­yards. 8½ is the ethe­re­al one.

The con­text is always clear when this film’s action tran­si­tions from real­i­ty to dream to mem­o­ry to fan­ta­sy. And the sto­ry is not dif­fi­cult — Mas­troian­ni drifts and dodges as Fellini’s alter ego Gui­do, a film direc­tor who strug­gles to calm his nerves, reach a break­through from cre­ative block, fend off ques­tions from col­leagues and jug­gle a wife and a mis­tress as they threat­en to col­lide. Some may find 8½ dis­ori­ent­ing upon first view­ing, because of the flu­id­i­ty with which its modes of real­i­ty seep into one anoth­er, and maybe because the very look of it, even dur­ing its most lit­er­al pas­sages, feels like a break- away from phys­i­cal to psy­cho­log­i­cal space. To enter 8½ – whether or not you’ve seen his sev­en-and-a-half pre­vi­ous films – you have to wan­ton­ly descend into Fellini’s mind.

Once tuned into its wave­length, 8½ releas­es rewards that make clear why it reg­u­lar­ly appears on great­est film lists and is a touch­stone for beloved con­tem­po­rary auteurs from Mar­ty to Woody to Gilliam to REM. Yes, there are the end­less­ly par­o­died set pieces: the serv­ing of min­er­al water accom­pa­nied by ​‘Ride of the Valkyries’; the suf­fo­cat­ing traf­fic jam; the pri­mal rum­ba of Saraghi­na; the harem of Guido’s mind, in which his whores and vir­gins turn on him, even though he has a bull­whip. Yes, the film is a dex­ter­ous, whistling pageant of the uncon­scious and the imme­di­ate, the lan­guid and the intense, freeze-frames and full-motion. It finds both the fren­zied despair and the inher­ent com­e­dy in per­son­al col­lapse, in fear of women and in the extrav­a­gan­za of dra­mat­ic enter­prise. But above its know­ing vir­tu­os­i­ty is a naked sin­cer­i­ty, and each time you revis­it the film’s ever more famil­iar haze, you realise it’s a film to grow old with.

8½ was not just the point at which Fellini’s career became con­sumed in his mag­i­cal, the­atri­cal and grotesque obses­sions but also the moment they assumed ele­men­tal pro­por­tions. The flash­backs to boy­hood Gui­do, run­ning away from a bath, or learn­ing the incan­ta­tion ​‘Asa Nisa Masa’, evoke a vul­ner­a­ble, dis­tant core of being. The flur­ry of guilt, self-doubt, libido, impo­tence, Catholic duty, crit­i­cism and mither­ing Gui­do suf­fers through his odyssey offers a map of life’s stresses.

The end­ing, of ring­mas­ter Gui­do con­duct­ing all around him into a pro­ces­sion, indulges the cathar­tic fan­ta­sy of untan­gling the world through art – although it’s dra­mat­ic for­mal­i­ty by that point, because Fellini’s direc­tion has been doing that through the whole show. What this all adds up to is a mind palace stuffed with secrets and shak­en for play – this is a movie that makes nav­i­gat­ing life’s cir­cus seem more manageable.