When little Guido joins his schoolmates at the beach to ogle the prostitute Saraghina, she is seen as the towering, overpowering, carnal figure a young adolescent would remember. In other cases, we see real memories that are skewed by imagination. Sometimes the alternate worlds are pure invention, as in the famous harem scene where Guido rules a house occupied by all of the women in his life-his wife, his mistresses, and even those he has only wanted to sleep with. Some critics complained that it was impossible to tell what was real and what was taking place only in Guido's head, but I have never had the slightest difficulty, and there is usually a clear turning point as Guido escapes from the uncomfortable present into the accommodating world of his dreams. The film weaves in and out of reality and fantasy. Much of the film takes place at a spa near Rome, and at the enormous set Guido has constructed nearby for his next film, a science fiction epic he has lost all interest in. It begins with a nightmare of asphyxiation, and a memorable image in which Guido floats off into the sky, only to be yanked back to earth by a rope pulled by his associates, who are hectoring him to organize his plans for his next movie. It is told from the director's point of view, and its hero, Guido ( Marcello Mastroianni), is clearly intended to represent Fellini. '8 1/2' is the best film ever made about filmmaking.

But true of all great films, while you know for sure what you've seen after one viewing of a shallow one. Here is Stone on the complexity of '8 1/2': 'Almost no one knew for sure what they had seen after one viewing.' True enough. The printed word is ideal for ideas film is made for images, and images are best when they are free to evoke many associations and are not linked to narrowly defined purposes. A filmmaker who prefers ideas to images will never advance above the second rank because he is fighting the nature of his art. The critic Alan Stone, writing in the Boston Review, deplores Fellini's 'stylistic tendency to emphasize images over ideas.' I celebrate it.

The earlier films, wonderful as they often are, have their Felliniesque charm weighted down by leftover obligations to neorealism. What we think of as Felliniesque comes to full flower in 'La Dolce Vita' and '8 1/2.' His later films, except for 'Amarcord,' are not as good, and some are positively bad, but they are stamped with an unmistakable maker's mark. This conventional view is completely wrong.

8 1 2 federico fellini 1963 torrent