I was talking to my baby sister and we were talking about movies and the film studies class she was taking. She was bemoaning her teacher- 'He's okay but he just likes action stuff like Taken. He doesn't really appriciate movies that i like, like Fellini's 8 1/2...'. I was thinking 1. Here i am claiming to be a cineasté and i haven't seen any Fellini. 2. She's my 16yo sister- she not allowed to know more about anything than me. And dutifully 8 1/2 was chucked on the ol' LoveFilm list,
What i'm going to say next might sound silly but after watching 81/2, i totally understand where that perfume advert style comes from. It was like an eureka moment, that you have when you find something that was the original inspiration for something, that you didn't actually realise was necessarily inspired by something in the first place; like hearing a Muddy Waters record- 'When was this made?...(?!)...Wow.'. I don't know if that all sounds stupid but it made me understand the origins of that style, by which i mean- clean shapes, stark lighting,perspective changing by moving the focus, sparse dense dialogue. I mean if anyone wants to get snooty and talk shit about style over content, just say '8 1/2, what was that?'. I mean i'm into it; it's an eternal classic because it's stylish and artistic and ambitious but i'd tender that it's got so much to say over it's 2hrs, it doesn't really get it together to say anything and i'm not saying it necessarily
has to but it's so concerned with being cool and fresh the story takes the backseat... Style over content.
I thought the idea of a man burdened the need to fulfil his creative potential or return to the level of past glories and the rag-tag circus of producers and actors that surround him charming. We can all relate to that feeling of wanting to make a masterpiece but not knowing where to start and if you've done it before, not remembering how you did it in the first place but i just feel like the dialogue is prohibitively dense and philosophical but may that will change over further viewings. I don't know were i got the idea that 8 1/2 was one of Fellini's first movies. If anything this is an artist hitting the sweet spot of their creativity. I mean, he's just so assured in his choices and it's just proven to be so influential, bleeding into other motion arts like tv and music videos but fashion too. The director played by Marcello Mastroianni dresses just like Tom Ford and Karl Lagerfeld do today, which is not to say he orginated the style but just perpetuated that 'always classic' formal style that Gucci and YSL do...
In a first for a post on the blog, i couldn't just choose 1 picture or poster for the post; i had to choose 3 images to credit how enigmatic the imagery is...
1 comment:
Just read your review
interesting comments, i think to fully understand this movie you have to have watch previous Fellini movies to understand why it is so focused on style, you also have to understand the time of which this movie was made.
It was at a time when TV's weren't widespread and cinema was more important to people (because now for social and ethic issues in a story all we have to do is switch on a TV set and watch a soap). Fellini was producing pictures at a time when the whole of Italy was churning out neorealism films like there was no tomorrow. In this (and the masterpiece that is La Dolce Vita) he made a huge and bold step away from that, and in turn, helped form what we know as cinema today.
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