When I was teaching undergraduate classes, a lot of students began their essays with a similar personal anecdote: “I didn’t know what I was going to write about for this essay. But then I saw [insert film we are studying here] and I became inspired to think about…” and so forth. I constantly harped about how a story about writer’s block was the most uninspired way to begin any creative project. Of course, I conveniently left out the caveat: unless you’re Federico Fellini.
8 1/2 succeeds because though the subject is director’s block, the film shows Fellini at his most imaginative and intuitive. As critic Alexander Sesonske points out, “everything Guido says about the film he is making turns out to be true of 8½, even the sailor doing a soft-shoe dance; how all the screen tests are for roles in the film we are seeing; how some camera movements create an ambiguity between Guido, the director in the film, and Fellini, the director of the film...”
Fellini was neither the first nor the last director to examine on film what it means to be an artist. SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN a decade earlier was a cheeky self-reflexive study of the Golden Age of Hollywood. The 2002 film ADAPTATION is about a screenwriter adapting an impossible book. Even Lena Dunham’s HBO series GIRLS shows a struggling writer finding her voice, facing the very same critiques of her work in the show that she does in “real life.”
What all of those work have in common is the deeply felt insecurity running through them. The protagonists are scared they are not talented enough, well-connected enough, or good looking enough to “make it.” Though the movie industry has always been obsessed with portrayals of itself, these films resonate because they explore self-doubt and anxiety. 8 1/2 takes plenty of laudable creative risks, but its emotional center is what makes the film prescient today.
— Diana Martinez, Film Streams Education Director
