DIRECTOR: Federico Fellini
PRODUCERS: Angelo Rizzoli
SCREENPLAY: Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano,
Tullio Pinelli’ Brunello Rondi
PHOTOGRAPHY: Gianni Di Venanzo
EDITORS: Leo Catozzo
PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Piero Gherardi
COSTUME DESIGNER: Piero Gherardi
MUSIC: Nino Rota
WITH: Marcello Mastroianni (Guido
Anselmi), Claudia Cardinale (Claudia),
Anouk Aimée (Luisa Anselmi), Sandra
Milo (Carla), Rossella Falk (Rosella),
Barbara Steele (Gloria Morin)

REVIEW

One of the best films ever made about filmmaking, it’s simultaneously critical of its director’s self-importance and childishness and celebratory of the possibilities of the medium. Marcello Mastroianni stars in perhaps his definitive role as Guido Anselmi, an acclaimed Italian director who tries to rest at a spa while juggling his
anxieties about his marital and extramarital woes, his difficult and demanding relationships with his producer, writer and cast, his past, and his upcoming film. He shifts back and forth between reality, fantasies of idealized women, and his past misdeeds. On top of it all, he fears that his creativity is running thin and that his new film is little more than disconnected ideas.
​
— Max O'Connell, IndieWire

All of the images (real, remembered, invented) come together into one of the most tightly structured films Fellini made. The screenplay is meticulous in its construction–and yet, because the story is about a confused director who has no idea what he wants to do next, “8 1/2” itself is often described as the flailings of a filmmaker without a plan. “What happens,” asks a Web-based critic, “when one of the world’s most respected directors runs out of ideas, and not just in a run-of- the-mill kind of way, but whole hog, so far that he actually makes a film about
himself not being able to make a film?” But “8 1/2” is not a film about a director out of ideas–it is a film filled to bursting with inspiration. Guido is unable to make a film, but Fellini manifestly is not.
​
— Roger Ebert, RogerEbert.com

FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

Canterbury 
Monday, 17 February, 7:30pm
CLASSIC CINEMA selection >>