8 1/2

Guido’s first words in the film are “forty-three,” his age. The placement of this detail so early in the film indicates Guido’s preoccupation with it. A recent onset of health problems (he is ostensibly visiting the spa for a mild liver ailment) causes Guido to worry, like any middle-aged man, that his most productive years are coming to a close. The idea of aging is especially terrifying for a man like Guido, because two of the qualities that he values most—his creative ability and his virility—often rely heavily on youth. Fellini makes some direct references to the physical characteristics of Guido’s aging, as when Guido gazes at his wrinkles in his bathroom mirror, when Mezzabotta comments on his gray hair, and when Claudia teases him that he dresses like an old man. Fellini makes a stronger statement, however, with Guido’s response to the sickly guests at the spa and to his aging companions, Mezzabotta and Conocchia. Mezzabotta’s age is emphasized by his much younger American fiancée Gloria, in whose presence he often comes across as ridiculous or pathetic. When Mezzabotta follows Gloria’s lead on the dance floor and performs some vigorous steps, for example, Fellini frames his sweaty efforts from an unbecoming head-on angle to indicate that Guido thinks Mezzabotta is making a spectacle of himself and aging disgracefully. Guido expresses a similar feeling toward Conocchia, his senior collaborator, who embodies Guido’s fear that getting old will diminish his professional relevance.

Fellini’s subjective technique of documenting Guido’s train of thought from reality to daydream and back again, unburdened from traditional perspective shifts and dramatic convention, seems liberating when we view 8 1/2. This placement of daydream and reality side by side comes across as a very convincing depiction of the way in which we actually experience life, reminding us of the mind’s power to transcend everyday reality. But at the same time, the film makes this process, in which observation alternates with imagination, seem somewhat frightening, as it is something over which we have little control. For example, Guido would never choose to have the nightmare of the opening sequence or to imagine his colleagues in the steam baths as hell-bound invalids. His thoughts and daydreams are involuntary. Though this aspect of the mind cannot be consciously controlled, it is interesting to observe the manner in which the subconscious directs it. In the Saraghina sequence, for example, Guido’s subconscious alters the memory to make himself seem more innocent. In Guido’s fantasies about Claudia, excess sound is silenced so that Guido can focus more closely on her. Guido’s dreams seem designed in order to call his attention to his problems. In this way the control of the mind seems constructive, yet the idea of having no free will is frightening.

Critics applauded Fellini’s adept and witty social commentary in La Dolce Vita, and the same element exists in 8 1/2 to emphasize the frivolity of bourgeois society. While guests of a ritzy health spa and people in the film industry may seem like easy targets, the elements that Fellini satirizes are relevant to middle- and upper-class society in general. Fellini embeds his satirical references in dialogue that is sometimes off-screen, making it easy to miss. For example, while Guido eyes Carla at the first grand evening at the hotel, we hear the voices of the American reporter and his wife, an American society woman who writes for women’s magazines. The American reporter is speaking to the French actress and her manager in French, expressing the simple opinion that a film should have a hero. His wife interrupts him twice with her nasal cawing, first with “What the hell are you talking about” then with “I don’t understand a damn bit of that French.” After the second interjection, her husband responds in English with “Oh dear, honey, don’t drink any more.” Fellini’s portrayal of the women’s magazine writer—the standard-setter for millions of women—as a crass drunk points to the foolish herd mentality of contemporary culture. The American reporter’s idle chatting with the French actress in her native tongue makes a subtler point: that reporters will do anything to get their story but really have nothing to say. The couple’s American nationality does not indicate Fellini’s antagonism to America but rather the quick spread of American pop culture worship into Europe.

The most memorable collective body of characters in 8 1/2 is unquestionably its women, who range from a collegiate waif to a movie star to a simple-minded hotel owner. The harem sequence that showcases these women also illustrates the way in which Guido, like many men, is in some way attracted to every woman he’s ever known. Guido feels guilty about having extramarital interest and at certain points expresses the wish not to have such temptation. Fellini articulates Guido’s incredible difficulty suppressing his desire by emphasizing the sensuality of all of the female characters in the film. Carla, Guido’s ever-available, sumptuously beautiful mistress, is the best example, for she personifies sexual temptation itself. Other, more unlikely women also attract Guido, such as the monstrous Saraghina (Guido likes her thick legs and quick hips) and Guido’s homely aunts, with whom he associates being nurtured. In any case, every scene in the film includes women with special features— shapely backs, crowns of blond hair, beautiful voices—that taunt Guido’s intent to behave.

Though the presence of religion pervades 8 1/2, the film offers no clear religious message—a setup well matched to Guido’s ambiguous attitude toward religion. In short, Guido isn’t sure how he feels about faith and the church. He began moving away from the church as an adolescent, when he discovered that the rigors of devout Catholicism would not accommodate his emerging libido. Despite this early separation, the middle-aged Guido has a deep respect for Catholicism and yearns to understand it. In his dream involving his parents, he is wearing a clerical robe, and before his appearance at the fountain he is touched by a solemn moment he witnesses between the cardinal and his attendants in the elevator. Guido makes sure to seek the cardinal’s advice and approval for the script in his film, but during the interview the cardinal seems distant, commenting on a birdcall and asking Guido questions about his family life. The wisdom of the cardinal seems equally inaccessible in Guido’s daydream of their meeting in the steam baths, during which the cardinal recites biblical quotations in Latin and barely acknowledges Guido. Preoccupied with aging, which inevitably leads to death, Guido makes an earnest effort to understand the religion of his upbringing. Nonetheless, the spirit of Catholicism evades him.

Guido’s life is fraught with professional concerns. The introductory nightmare sequence during which Guido, blissfully escaping into the clouds, is pulled down by men from the film industry, is a clear symptom of his stress. Although Guido’s occupation involves him perhaps a bit more personally than other jobs would—for his artistic production depends on his professional stability—Fellini’s description of the interminable nagging and never-tied loose ends of Guido’s career is nevertheless universally relevant. For example, during Guido’s physical exam, which takes place directly after the nightmare sequence, Fellini depicts the absurdity of society’s acceptance of jobs that invade the personal sphere. Guido sits, leaning forward with his pajama top pulled over his head so that the doctor can listen to his breathing, and allows his collaborator, Daumier, who is wearing a robe, to come in to talk about the script. The level of intimacy with his coworkers that Guido is accustomed to accept seems almost ridiculous. Fellini completes the statement with a flourish at the end of the scene: Guido escapes his doctor and Daumier by slipping into his bathroom, where he expects to find privacy, but is afforded only a moment to himself before a phone—a phone in the bathroom, no less—begins to ring.

Toward the beginning of the mind-reading magicians scene, right after Gloria and Mezzabotta dance together, Guido wears a funny-looking false nose, fondling and tapping it. Guido, bored with the entertainment and his company, has apparently shaped the false nose from a dinner roll. More than a mere idle gesture, making the false nose contributes to the film’s extended Pinocchio metaphor. In the well-known story, when the puppet Pinocchio tells a lie, his nose grows. Guido, thinking of himself as Pinocchio, relates his dishonesty to his nose and taps it with his finger at significant moments. Right before Guido’s first daydream of Claudia serving him spring water, for example, Guido taps his nose. He repeats the gesture at the café right before the harem fantasy. In both instances, Guido is uncomfortable before he plunges into his fantasy, and the fabrication seems to be a sort of defense mechanism for him. Guido’s glasses, which he touches or pulls away from his eyes before moments of fantasy or dishonesty, have a similar symbolic significance.

Since the producers are eager to start shooting Guido’s film, they begin construction of a rocket launch pad that Guido designed even before he had completed a screenplay to accommodate it. As it turns out, Guido realizes that science fiction is the wrong artistic direction for him and gives the orders to tear it down before construction is even complete. The launch pad, which consumed two hundred tons of concrete alone, is a prodigious mistake with important symbolic significance. Like the fabled Tower of Babel, the shuttle is a symbol of arrogance, but rather than signifying Guido’s attempt to be closer to the gods, the shuttle alludes to his creative pretension. Guido spends much of his professional life among doting admirers, and without proper criticism to temper their praise, he feels an excess of artistic license that allows him to “lie,” as he puts it, or to be artistically insincere. The potentially phallic nature of the launch pad apparatus also suggests a reminder of Guido’s sexual arrogance and infidelity.

The traffic jam of the opening sequence represents the suffocating presence of the film industry in Guido’s life, which he escapes miraculously by floating into the sky. He is free for only a few moments before two businessmen, the manager and the publicist for actress Claudia Cardinale, yank him back down to Earth with a rope. Guido struggles briefly with the rope before he descends. The rope serves as a symbol of the film industry’s control and near ownership of Guido’s life. The producers who fund Guido’s creative projects nag him, the press never leaves him alone, and Guido himself is tied to his movies by his own concerns about artistic integrity. Toward the end of the film, during the screen tests, Guido takes advantage of a delicious opportunity to reverse the rope’s symbolic function when he imagines his producers using it to hang the irritating Daumier.

Fellini was interested in the work of Carl Jung, the psychologist who wrote that the anima (the repressed feminine component of the male unconscious mind) is responsible for the connection to the spring, or source of life, in the unconscious mind. Likewise, the supposedly curative spring in 8 1/2 has symbolic meaning that is at once related to female psychology and youth. The spring, then, is a perfectly appropriate “cure” for Guido’s major challenges, which include confusion with women and fear of aging. Claudia Cardinale, whom Guido plans to cast as his lead actress, is a personification of these qualities of the spring. This link between Claudia and the spring is especially clear in Guido’s fantasy of her in his bedroom, during which she repeats, “I want to create order, I want to cleanse.” The moment when Guido decides not to include Claudia in his film is thus doubly meaningful because while it marks his creative revelation, it also signifies his realization that there is no simple “cure” to his challenges.