Saturday, September 21 at 7pm MOTION PICTURES: THE META-CINEMATIC 8 ½— 50th anniversary screening! dir. Federico Fellini, Italy, 1963, 35mm, b / w, Italian with English subtitles, 138 min.
IHP presents this special 50th Anniversary screening with a brand new restored 35mm print, courtesy of Corinth Films Marcello Mastroianni plays Guido Anselmi, a director whose new project is collapsing around him, along with his life. One of the greatest films about film ever made, Federico Fellini’ s 8½( Otto e mezzo) turns one man’ s artistic crisis into a grand epic of the cinema. An early working title for 8½ was The Beautiful Confusion, and Fellini’ s masterpiece is exactly that: a shimmering dream, a circus and a magic act.
“ The beauty of the film lies in its confusion … a mixture of error and truth, reality and dream, stylistic and human values, in harmony between Fellini’ s film language and Guido’ s incoherent thoughts. It is impossible to distinguish Fellini from his fictional director. Consequently, Fellini’ s faults coincide with Guido’ s spiritual doubts. The osmosis between art and life is amazing. It will be difficult to repeat this achievement … Fellini’ s genius shines in every single detail in this film, and this is a rare event in film-making. There isn’ t a set, a character or a situation that doesn’ t have a precise meaning on the great stage of Otto e mezzo.”— Giovanni Grazzini, Corriere della Sera, February 16, 1963
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