Directed by Federico Fellini • 1963 • Italy
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 8 1/2 (Otto e mezzo) turns one man's artistic crisis into a grand epic of the cinema. An early working title for 8 1/2 was The Beautiful Confusion, and Fellini's masterpiece is exactly that: a shimmering dream, a circus, and a magic act.
Up Next in Essential Fellini
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Juliet of the Spirits
Directed by Federico Fellini • 1965 • Italy
Cinematographer Gianni di Venanzo's masterful use of Technicolor transforms Juliet of the Spirits, Fellini's first color feature, into a kaleidoscope of dreams, spirits, and memories. Giulietta Masina plays a betrayed wife whose inability to come to te...
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Amarcord
Directed by Federico Fellini • 1973 • France, Italy
This carnivalesque portrait of provincial Italy during the fascist period, the most personal film from Federico Fellini, satirizes the director's youth and turns daily life into a circus of social rituals, adolescent desires, male fantasies, an...
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And the Ship Sails On
Directed by Federico Fellini • 1984 • Italy
In Fellini’s quirky, imaginative fable, a motley crew of European aristocrats (and a lovesick rhinoceros!) board a luxurious ocean liner on the eve of World War I to scatter the ashes of a beloved diva. Fabricated entirely in Rome’s famed Cinecittà stu...
