I was fortunate to participate in the Italian Film Culture Week held by the Italian Consulate in Chongqing from September 9th to 10th, 2021. This event finally gave me the opportunity to fully appreciate Fellini's works.
PART/01 Fellini
Fellini is a figure in the late period of Italian neorealism. "Eight and a half" is the culmination of his personal style. The origin of the name of "Eight and a Half" is also very interesting. It has nothing to do with the plot of the movie. Before this movie, he directed 6 movies independently and co-directed 3 movies. The total is seven and a half movies, so this movie It is also logical to become the eighth and a half.
The film tells the story of director Fellini's own plight through the plight of Mastroianni's protagonist Guido. As a director, Guido has fallen into the bottleneck period of creation, which shows many problems he encountered, such as screenwriting problems, casting problems, his own emotional problems, etc. The whole film makes people feel depressed, absurd, and finally nothing. . The whole process is presented in a stream of consciousness narrative technique, which makes people unable to distinguish between dreams and reality, which is rather obscure and difficult to understand, but the genius of this movie is that you don’t need to understand this movie at all. Even if you can't understand it, the emotions in it can be clearly conveyed to everyone watching.
PART/02 Lens Language
Fellini's lens language is wonderful, precise screen scheduling and imaginative expression are very prominent in the film.
In the traffic jam scene at the opening of "Eight and a Half", Guido is locked in the car and trying to escape, while the faces of the people around him have weird expressions and are completely indifferent. There is also an eerie subjective traverse shot here, as if there is a person staring indifferently outside the camera. And just after Guido escaped, he flew into the sky and was dragged back to reality. There was a very depressing atmosphere at the beginning.
Guido is undergoing therapy after returning to reality, going to a sanatorium to relax, dreams and reality begin to intertwine, and the girl he dreams of appears. The scheduling of this scene in the sanatorium is very exciting. Hundreds of characters are in their own movement rhythm, and the scene changes are also very rich. The flexible use of long-range, panoramic, close-up, and close-up, the whole performance is smooth and fast, and the rhythm is tight, showing the director. power.
When Guido had a conversation with the film critic after taking the holy water, he never gave him a single shot after the film critic spoke, and Guido in the picture obviously showed an absent-minded state, as expected, the camera turned, Start meeting old friends. Excellent camera language can convey a lot of information. This section is a very wonderful case. Through simple performances and simple camera sequences, the story is not explained, and it also conveys the emotions of the protagonist very well.
PART/03 plot
childhood
There is a childhood scene of Guido in the movie. Of course, this is not just Guido's childhood, but more of Fellini's own childhood portrayal. Guido spends money to make a tall and plump woman dance rumba and is caught and punished by the teacher of the church school. Children are curious. Paying money to a woman is not for lust, but for curiosity to see her dance, yes An exploration, while punishment is an act of restraint, a restriction on freedom, a restriction on exploring the world. This made me think of the statue of Jesus that was transported away by helicopter at the beginning of The Dolce Vita. This is a kind of human liberation. In his other works, he can also feel a strong desire for freedom, the exploration of human nature, and the desire for love. This theme runs through Fellini's entire directorial career.
suppressed
In his films, a group of characters often appear in neat rows, speaking one by one with the movement of the camera. This movie is no exception. Just like the part of being taught in the childhood play, the teacher in the church sits neatly, the camera pans sideways, sentence after sentence, and there is absolutely no room for breathing. And the group play of the women behind. The lines follow one sentence after another, and the subjective lateral movement of the lens brings a strong sense of oppression, and can feel the oppression, pain, and helplessness of life. The language of the shot brings the content of the shot to life, with a strong emotional foreshadowing. This is why we may not fully understand the plot, but we can clearly feel the emotions in it.
circus
In addition to the superb language of the lens, there is an element that is also frequently present in Fellini's other works: the circus. Fellini is a person who loves circuses very much. He likes the absurdity of the circus and the sinful feeling of the clown. He liked to watch circuses since he was a child, and even joined for a period of time. He once said: Movies are very similar to circuses. In fact, if there were no movies, I would probably become the owner of the circus. From his films, we can fully feel his emotion for circus. In the final scene, all the characters, including the deceased, line up in a circle, sing and dance like a circus, with Guido joining in, and then exiting together. Afterwards, a child in white led four people to the center of the stage, blowing a trumpet like a clown in a circus, and then the four of them exited the stage, leaving only the child standing under the spotlight, and then the child was also in the light that gradually went out. Exit.
PART/04 Awakening
This shot is like a horn, heralding the end of this dream. There may be a bit of confusion when I see it here, but when the scene lights come on at the end of the film, I just woke up like a dream. We just followed Mastroianni across 58 years to see a Fellini dream, that's all.
A friend who went to see it with me asked me: Do you think Italians today can understand this film? I replied, I don't know, but it doesn't matter to me whether I can read or not. Different people watching this movie should get a very subjective feeling, a thousand viewers, a thousand Hamlet. It is the wonderful thing about this work that everyone can say two sentences about their own unique feelings after reading it.
PART/05 Conclusion
During his lifetime, Fellini won a Venice Silver Lion, a Cannes Palme d'Or, 5 Oscars: four Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film and an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement. He entered the film market in 1950 and stopped filming in 1990. In the past 40 years as a director, he has built his own aesthetic system, which has had a huge impact on the world's films. Many contemporary films can also see his shadow. Someone once said that a director only makes one movie in his life. This sentence is reflected most vividly in Fellini's body. He stepped out of neo-realism, and the films he shot were more expressive, more stream-of-consciousness, and the language of the shots was full of poetry, and he walked out of a path that was completely his own style. Such a breakthrough in the environment at that time could not help but let him People admire. The ideas conveyed in his directing career seem to have never changed, and he has always maintained a heart of exploration and a heart of love. Most of the films also express liberation and love. He really only made one movie in his life, that is, his own life made up of 24 dream fragments.
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