esrosedotblog

8 1/2 (1963)

I watched 8.5 today--well most of it. Fellini did this one right after completing LA DOLCE VITA. It is all about directing a film which doesn't seem to exist.

It is widely assumed that all of Fellini's stuff is autobiographical; but if he was as fucked up as this guy (Marcello Mastroianni--his film to film alter ego) he would never have made any film at all. I think that it is a joke on himself and all the people who want him to be something that he is not. It is just Fellini doing Fellini.

It is hard to get to the original core of this film since it has been so widely imitated (try Terry Gilliam who keeps trying to channel Fellini. They even interview him on this DVD. Off limits to me*. I like TG but for himself). This is the original, the urtext of the tortured auteur theme. No plot, all dreams, maybe visions, wild stuff. I liked it; but I got tired of it. Black and white? Small screen?

It shows up on everyone's top-films-ever-list including the NYTimes1000. I give it a 4 on the Netflix 5 scale. I just couldn't hang in that long.

* With regard to not watching the Gilliam interview; there are some rules in this film thing that I am doing (the NYT100 best plus others). One is that we do not watch the interviews or screw around with the film's order. We do not stop the film. There are no repeats. You get what you get.

I know that this flouts the technology and the 'wonder' of DVD but I am of a view that if God meant us to listen to lectures about movies he would have made us critics; and to mess with their timing and sequence, he would have made us directors. I am neither.

Incidentally, this is another reason not to like the big Film Festival. People always want to TALK about the goddam films. I just go to SEE them. And so on. Rant.