This article is from WeChat public account “Salt of Movies (ID: fuckart-movie)” < span class = "text-remarks"> author: Tsaiyu, title figure: film stills

“Eight and a Half”, 1964 Oscar’s best foreign language film. That year, the film was nominated for the best original screenplay, the best director, and the best foreign language film, but in the end it won only one award for the best foreign language film. In terms of awards, it can’t be compared with the history of “The Parasite”, but in the groundbreaking nature of film creation, “The Parasite” can’t be compared with “Eight and a Half”.

Of course, Parasite is a movie with more than eight points, and it is also a film worth learning, which need not be argued at all. But relatively speaking, “eight and a half” is more accurately an art film. His work has also inspired countless directors during these 57 years. In the history of world cinema, Fellini himself has also been joined by Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky and became the “Holy Trinity” of modern art films in the world. “, Represents the insurmountable peak of European art films since the 1960s.

Recently, the creation of Almodovar’s Pain and Glory is also partly attributed to Eight and a Half. Firini’s 57-year-old work is also a film with the director himself as the hero. Wah talks about old age, while Fellini talks about the middle-aged crisis.

As for how groundbreaking is Eighteen and a Half? It goes back to its creative age.

Baibuhan appeared in the quotation: the heyday of the author’s film expansion. Therefore, the film itself is closely related to the author’s theory, and it can even be said that “Eight and a Half” is the “explicit” of the author’s theory. This “explicit” is the theoretical response to the formation of the director’s “implicit” protagonist through the direct use of the director as the protagonist. At the same time, the director also raised other questions about the film itself.

What has similar experience with Parasite is great criticism, and “Eight and a Half” has even been abused by some people. The convenience of being attacked is: “This is completely self-indulgence, no one wants to see your private affairs.” But supporters believe that this gave birth to a unique creative method, and this method is to make Bunuel Of surrealismIn a symbolic way (dreams and hallucinations) entangled with reality (the life at hand), a new realism that belongs exclusively to Fellini is realized.

You can see his creative technique from the opening of the film. How did Fellini introduce his hero? The film begins with “a huge traffic jam, our hero Guido (Marcello Mastroianni) smokes and is trapped in the car, and everyone is watching.” Exaggerated scene It is realized that this is not reality, but a nightmare of the main character director Guido.

When he came to the reality part, he was treated alone in the spa. Through his conversation with the doctor, we learned that he is a 43-year-old well-known director with liver disease and is preparing a new movie.

At the end of this paragraph, Guido looks in the bathroom and changes clothes in the bathroom. At this moment, through the two-layered expression of dream and reality, we understand that the protagonist is in a bad state, and he is in a difficult position. Through two layers of narrative, the consciousness of the protagonist and the body have reached a unity, and this is a narrative miracle in the expression of the film.

Ferini completely considered dreams as a new narrative technique. In the film world at the time, this new creative method had not yet taken shape. It was Fellini’s expansion of fantasy and dreams in film performance. So the key to understanding this film is to understand the relationship between dreams and reality in the film. Dreams are in a wayRealistic mirror.

For us in this era, this method is no stranger to us. For example, “Batton Fink”, whose main character is screenwriter, or “Last Night on Earth” is used. Of course, he was criticized because of his extreme personal color, and traces of Fellini’s life were added.

Guido’s tied leg is directed by director Fellini

From the title “Eight and a Half”, it corresponds to the total number of works previously directed by Fellini. It is also a declaration of his complete break with past creations, but this is not a stream of consciousness movie.

The biggest plot is a sci-fi film director who finally turned into a catastrophe at a press conference. This main plot was hidden in autobiographical films, hidden in Guido and various The woman’s entanglement is hidden in his subconscious dream. In his dreams are his parents, his childhood, his harem, his marriage, and his childless social status.

Someone joked, this film is Guido’s women. But in fact, there is a predicament that modern people may not understand. Most of Guido’s sex is fun, not for the overall needs of human reproduction. Just like the conversation he had when he met the bishop, at that time, he would only ask you two questions: “Are you married?” And “Are you having children?” In 1963 in Italy, the doctrines of marriage and sex in the church were equivalent to social norms and laws.

Guido, a lascivious person, can be said to be defeated in childbirth, and his 43-year-old also implies the age of his wife, which can be said to be his fate today. If he could marry his daughter the same age as his friend, he might break the fate of childlessness.

Why Guido is so, the second memory of his childhood in his dream can be the answer. He was punished by the priest for his childhood dancing with Sarah Gina. The text behind him is “shame.” Everyone’s pointing and mother’s disappointment have hints at sex.

His attitude towards women starts from this matter. The most absurd part of the whole film is that Guido walks into his harem. All the women, from his friend’s Claudia, who is as old as his daughter From his actor to his wife, Luisa (Anouk Aimée), and mistress Carla (Sandra Milo, Sandra Milo). In the fantasy of the entire harem, He is like a Tang Dynasty existence.

If this is his nature, but not as divorced and remarried as his friend, this is in contrast to how his friend resolves the middle-aged crisis, which is due to his fear of shame, or Catholicism Discipline. In addition, Fellini has claimed more than once that his films are a process of liberation of his own human nature, “liberating myself from the education that was imposed on me as a child”. Naturally, he can see this in his expression of childhood dreams. In the end, his middle-aged crisis turned into “self chaos” and could not be started.

The process of watching “Habubu” is like an analysis over and over again. The first time I watch the director ’s creations are messy, the second time I see a sense of comedy, and the third time I have to match various information. Analyze its meaning. And it may not be until the fourth and fifth passes that he observes the design of his audiovisual language, and how he designed it.

Fellini even put a note on the camera, “Remember, this is a comedy.” The film involves French comedies (when recalled at night), Italian songs and dances (when talking about the script), and so on. The film is indeed a comedy, because when Guido’s wife bumped into his lover, Guido was fantasizing about his wife and lover, and they had a good talk. It was also an interesting movie.

The theme of the film is too difficult to understand because it is too highly correlated with the subconscious, unlike the poor and hate feelings of Parasite, which is direct and realistic, or the class nature of discrimination due to smell. Hatred. “Eight and a Half” seems too abstract and needs to be refined and reorganized to get a feeling.

For example, the inexplicable appearance of the circus, where Fellini realized what he once said, “If you are not a director, you may now work in the circus.” If you do not understand Fellini’s views and personal expressions, Maybe I can’t figure out what this circus is. This is not to blame others for saying that this movie is too private. After all, details like the taste in Parasite are a universal phenomenon, and for the screenwriter, it’s an example of the law.

And if you think this ending is a bit weird, because this is really a paragraph added later, the design of the original script should be darker. The design of this scene was originally placed on the train. Everyone he met in his life was sitting in front of the dining table in white clothes, his face was dull, and the end of the story was towards the night train, and the screen gradually turned black.

Why should we interpret the various subconscious themes? What do you do with the general audience? I read a sentence some time ago, if something subconscious does not enter consciousness, it will become yoursfate. If this becomes our method of self-analysis, can we get rid of the so-called fate?

In the movie, Guido always shouted (asa nisi masa) in his dreams, and Miller, the author of the film review “Eight and a Half”, deliberately consulted scholars before he solved the mystery of the word, “femininity” The word (anima) is cobbled upside down. This word is Carl Jung’s expression of unconscious femininity in male character, while Fellini is a new apprentice of analytical psychology, and the two cannot be separated.

So, Guido’s attitude towards women comes from her deeper psychology. He doesn’t necessarily know, but the audience can understand. In other words, others may not know it, but they can know it by methods such as analytical psychology.

Finally, regarding the film industry itself, the director’s response at the end returned to reporters and film critics can be seen at a glance. Questions and answers about political opinions and attitudes are more important than anything else. “Why not make love movies?” And “Are you divorcing?” Those who criticize the movie for being too addicted to themselves, but are constantly asking the director Guido’s personal life.

Guido has only silence, coupled with free thoughts, and his wife asks him, “When can I really get married?” He said a lot, including the problem of having no children. The female reporter sneered at “he has nothing to say.” The director Jiang Lang who everyone was waiting for was exhausted, because that was the big news.

The end of the film is the circus carnival in the setting of the original science fiction movie. The last shot is a performance by Xiao Guiduo. The spotlight goes out and the audience leaves. Perhaps the metaphor is that when Jiang Lang was running out, he went to Fellini himself at the circus. In reality, “Eight and a Half” became the last film originally created and initiated by Fellini and became his greatest movie.