- Ben Child
- tutelary saint.co.uk, Friday 18 December 2009 17.28 GMT
Daniel Day-Lewis in Nine and Marcello Mastroianni in 8 1/2. Photograph: PR, Ronald Grant Archive
One wonders whether Federico Fellini knew in 1963 that in solving his own director’s block by making 8 1/2 he would in addition bargain fertile ground within which so many other film-makers might sew the seeds of their own creativity.
- Nine
- Production year: 2009
- Country: USA
- Cert (UK): 12A
- Runtime: 118 mins
- Directors: Rob Marshall
- Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Judi Dench, Kate Hudson, Marion Cotillard, Nicole Kidman, Penelope Cruz, Sophia Loren, Stacy Ferguson
The film in many ways opened the door for a exactly discovered kind of self-reflexive cinema by insisting that the doubts, dreams and travails of film-makers strength be just as interesting as the movies themselves.
Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories (1980) sees the director himself as Sandy Bates, a film-maker plagued by fans who prefer his “earlier, funnier movies”, echoing the struggles of Fellini’s Guido Anselmi to make his next big hit in the midst of intense public scrutiny.
The film bows through this fidelity to the chance scene in 8 1/2, in which Guido is trapped inside a car in a traffic jam. If anything, Allen’s take is even more disturbing.
Francois Truffaut’s Day For Night (1974) echoed Fellini’s suggestion that life is just something that gets in the way when you’re trying to make movies. While the Italian film-maker employed his regular zero, Marcello Mastroianni, as Guido, Truffaut went one step more distant, casting himself as Ferrand, a director struggling to complete the corny melodrama Je Vous Présente Paméla while his cast tie themselves up in increasingly uncomfortable romantic knots.
In 8 1/2, Guido fantasises about setting up a harem in which all the women in his life live in perfect harmony, with himself as undisputed alpha male. Peter Greenaway’s 8 1/2 Women (1999) centres on a wealthy businessman and his son who open their own private harem in Geneva after being inspired by the movie.
Paul Mazursky’s Alex in Wonderland (1970) starred Donald Sutherland as a not old film-maker struggling to fall upon a subject for his nearest movie and hold
his personal life together in the midst of terrible self not know what to think. In this
scene the director’s damaged soul is soothed by dint of. Jeanne Moreau, doom of
Truffaut’s Jules et Jim, who serenades him – in a gorgeous fantasy segway – with a song from the film after a chance meeting in an LA coffee shop.
Bob Fosse’session All that Jazz (1979) was based on the film-maker’s admit desperate experiences afflicting to edit his movie Lenny while simultaneously staging his 1975 harmonious Chicago. In this wonderfully recursive denouement, Roy Scheider takes middle stage in the final act of his life, belting gone out his allow swansong in front of an audience of everyone who has ever mattered to him.
Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation examined the struggle with creative block from the screenwriter’s perspective. Nicolas Cage plays Kaufman himself, who is panicking over his attempt to adapt the (impossible to adapt) non-fiction book The Orchid Thief into a movie, as well as his own fictional geminate brother Donald. Here, Charlie reluctantly turns to the legendary screenwriting guru Robert McKee (Brian Cox), and then to his acknowledge hack writer sibling, in his increasingly desperate efforts to complete his task.
There have been countless other films inspired or influenced by Fellini’s masterpiece, of course. Which are your own personal favourites?
