Well, I'm stuck in a hotel in North Carolina for the better part of this week (and next). I had high hopes for catching up on some movies via Netflix, but the hotel wi-fi leaves much to be desired and just isn't going to cut it for watching an entire movie (btw, Criterion has recently added quite a few titles to the "Watch Instantly" library on Netflix).
Anyway, what better time to ruminate on my recent Frederico Fellini double-header? Over the past two weeks, I've ventured into the universe of the Felliniesque, starting with the two most obvious titles, La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2 (the latter just being released on blu-ray on Criterion). I've also been browsing the web for critical analysis as to Fellini's lasting (though possibly fading) appeal.
La Dolce Vita is probably the less loved of the these back-to-back films, abandoning in large part Fellini's association with neorealism but not quite embracing the full-blown dreamscapes of 8 1/2. It is likely remembered by most critics as the dividing line between those two distinct phases of Fellini's career, both of which have their fans and detractors. La Dolce Vita documents the life of gossip columnist Marcello as he fraternizes among Rome's idly wealthy as well as the occasional starlet. If the film embraces a "dreamlike" quality, it is embodied mostly by the late-night and often surreal adventures that drive Marcello away from his girlfriend Emma and toward his inevitable downfall. Ironically, La Dolce Vita was banned in several countries, but my impression of the it ultimately was that it's pretty morally heavy-handed. Maybe it's the wisdom of my own creeping middle age, but there weren't many moments where I found myself admiring Marcello's "glamorous" lifestyle, and Fellini seems to me to have a pretty low opinion of Marcello (though he is charmingly portrayed by Marcello Mastroianni).
Marcello occasionally flirts with a higher road, prodded by his good friend Steiner, who seemingly has the domestic fulfillment that Emma so desperately wishes for herself and Marcello. Steiner also encourages him to work on his novel and abandon his bottom-feeding job. A tragic turn forces Marcello to face both his illusion of Steiner's perfect life and the harsh reality of his own career choice, and it is those final blows that doom Marcello once and for all to a life of shallow, soul-sucking misery.
If it all sounds like a bit of a downer, I guess it is. Though Marcello fancies himself as being one step removed from his rich, decadent subjects, he is time and again humiliated and ridiculed for the association (it's pretty clear that Fellini regards them with equal disdain). When Marcello is forced to see himself in the drunken behavior of his visiting father, I anticipated a turning point that really never arrived. Maybe that was Fellini's point -- that a hollow existence eventually becomes a downward spiral that can't be reversed after a certain point. Marcello faces his fate, and rather than turn away from it (in the conventional modern Hollywood way), he ultimately embraces that fate completely. Perhaps the closing scene is intended to soften the blow by implying that it's never too late to turn back, even if we can't see it clearly.
For all of La Dolce Vita's iconic imagery and characters, I can't say I really enjoyed it. I will definitely watch it again to see how my analysis holds up, but I'm more interested in comparing it to Fellini's other work.
Which brings us to 8 1/2. Often cited as one of the greatest films about filmmaking, 8 1/2 is much better film than that narrow description implies (and much better in my book than La Dolce Vita). There's probably not a single review ever written that fails to mention the context surrounding the creation of 8 1/2. It goes something like this: under the pressure to follow-up his successful film La Dolce Vita, Frederico Fellini struggles to find a story to tell, even as he gathers a cast and crew and even has sets constructed for the untitled - and unwritten - movie. Wanting to tell the story a man who is "blocked," Fellini realizes that his struggle to realize his next film ought to become the basis for the film itself. When pressured to cough up a title for it, he even resorted to the self-referential 8 1/2, as this would technically be his eight-and-a-halfth movie (he co-directed a previous film).
Thus, 8 1/2 is widely considered one of the first films to so blatantly draw upon the life of its director. Fellini would later warn against taking the film too literally, but there's no doubt how much of the director is to be found in the fictional director Guido Anselmi. On paper, the plot, such as it is, seems pretty thin. Like La Dolce Vita, the plot is rather beside the point; the cast of characters who inhabit Guido's worlds (both real and internalized) who are the main attraction, and Guido's struggle to reconcile their roles in his own life is the primary source of tension. It is when Guido realizes that all of them must be part of one grand tapestry that he finds his muse for his next film.
I was struck by several things in 8 1/2. First, for film that is widely considered the quintessential foreign arthouse flick, it's really quite accessible. Whereas La Dolce Vita is weighed down by excessive moralizing and a depressing conclusion, Fellini seems much better equipped to accept the inherent messiness and ambiguity of life. Obviously, he sympathizes with Guido much more than Vita's Marcello, despite the fact that they suffer some of the same aimlessness. Leaving the autobiographical aspects aside, 8 1/2 feels like the work of a director who has genuinely grappled with his own vision and is all the more sympathetic and mature as a result.
What I most enjoyed about 8 1/2 is the way in which Guido struggles to reconcile the female relationships in his life. Much has been made about Fellini's audacity in casting his own mistress Sandra Milo in the role of, yes, Guido's mistress (though this may be more myth than fact as their romance probably started during the shooting of 8 1/2). Guido spends most of the "dreamlike" sequences in the film obsessing over how the women in his life - wives, mistresses, actresses, even strangers - fit into his view of himself. Though it's an admittedly narcissistic and male egocentric perspective, I found it romantic nonetheless (many women might understandably not share my opinion). Women play complicated roles in Guido's life, and he makes things intentionally more so complex by drawing them closer to his orbit. For instance, he invites his wife Luisa to visit him despite the fact htat his mistress Carla is already visiting him. The invitation appears genuine and heartfelt (albeit ill-advised and selfish), in that Guido seems to need the attention of both women. It's clear that he still loves Luisa even though they have drifted into largely separate lives. In Carla, he sees something of his younger self, before the uncertainty of middle age set in. She is a relatively simple creature, lacking the complications that an older woman - and 15 years of marriage - inevitably bring. Woven into his vision of womanhood are the memories of his mother, childhood nannies, actresses, a large rump-shaking whore, Luisa's good friend Rosella, and most tellingly, Claudia Cardinale as his pure vision of Ideal Woman. None of these women (or visions of them) are individually able to spark Guido's film to life. Only after he sees them as part of a larger picture does he finally discover the inspiration for his movie.
I probably won't do myself any favors at home by admitting that I see a lot of truth in Guido's view of women, even if his behavior toward them isn't always praiseworthy.
And, of course, there is Fellini's use of dream imagery, which frequently intertwines with the "real" scenes. It's some measure of the film's influence to note that the technique has become such a staple of films ("arty" films, in particular) that the sequences in 8 1/2 seem rather conventional by comparison. In 1963, many audiences were puzzled by them, but the sequences tend to be rather cleanly delineated and give a fairly clear insight into the mind of Guido. Many critics also cite numerous metaphors for Guido's impotence, both artistic and sexual, but these are more subtle than, say, Guido fantasizing about a harem of all of the women he's loved or desired. He keeps them in line with a whip - just in case subtle isn't your thing.
I'm sure it's quite obvious that I'm pretty smitten with 8 1/2, far more so than with La Dolce Vita. There's a school of Fellini fans who swear by his neorealist La Strada (which I've not seen), but I'm sure I'll find other Fellini films hard to top 8 1/2. It is certainly the most quintessential of Fellini's films, the very definition of the popular term "Felliniesque." It would be easy to hold 8 1/2 against Fellini, if only because it gave many other directors license to put themselves at the center of their own work. Such an approach would normally be the death of art, but the magic of 8 1/2 is that Frederico Fellini turned a basically horrible premise and turned it into something enduring and magical.
(La Dolce Vita is available from Koch/Lorber in a really excellent deluxe DVD edition. 8 1/2 is available from Criterion on DVD and in a just-released and utterly gorgeous blu-ray edition. The extras on both sets are top-notch.)
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