Review: 8 1/2 (1963)

* * * *
Director: Federico Fellini
Starring: Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimee, Sandra Milo, Claudia Cardinale

What's left to say about a film as beloved and influential as Federico Fellini's 8 1/2? Not much, I fear. I can merely affirm its dreamy, sublime greatness. It isn't my favourite Fellini film - that honor goes to La Dolce Vita which, in addition to being a great movie, was the first Fellini film I ever saw and so has a special place in my heart - but it is a great and very entertaining movie. It's easy to see why it influenced so many subsequent films, some of them great in their own right, some of them... not so much.

Oscarstravaganza: A Man and a Woman

* * * 1/2

Winner: Best Foreign Language Film, 1966
Director: Claude Lelouche
Starring: Anouk Aimee, Jean-Louis Trintignant

It’s rare to find a simpler story. There is a man, there is a woman, they fall in love, but the relationship is complicated by the fact that the timing is all wrong. That’s pretty much it, which doesn’t sound like much but Claude Lelouche’s film is more resonant than most films in which the lovers scale a mountain of obstacles and contrivance to get together. With great performances from Anouk Aimee and Jean-Louis Tringignant and an instantly recognizable score by Francis Lai, A Man and a Woman is a film that stands the test of time.

The man and the woman are Anne and Jean-Louis and they meet through their children, who attend the same school. Anne is a script supervisor whose husband was a stuntman and was killed in an accident on set. Jean-Louis is a racecar driver whose wife committed suicide when it looked as if he might not survive a crash during a race. Anne and Jean-Louis are attracted to each other but hesitant to get involved because each is still grieving the loss of their respective spouse. This grief, however, becomes something that they inevitably bond over and soon the time they spend together is no longer about their children, but about themselves and the feelings that they’ve developed for each other.

One of the strongest things about this film is the way that this relationship progresses in such a realistic way. Anne and Jean-Louis become swept away with the idea of being together, with the romantic notion of running off with each other and with combining their fractured families into one and hopefully healing themselves in the process. They do, in fact, run away together but when the moment comes, Anne finds that she can’t go through with it. The loss of her husband is still too fresh for her and she sadly explains to Jean-Louis that while she knows that her husband is dead, he’s not yet dead to her. She and Jean-Louis then go their separate ways, but the feelings that have started to grow are still there and maybe, just maybe, they can find a way to make it work.

Aside from its nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, A Man and a Woman was also nominated for Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Actress. Aimee's performance in the film is really affecting, particularly in that scene when Anne explains to Jean-Louis that she's just not ready to move on yet. It's a quiet performance, there are never any histrionics or over the top dramatics, but it reaches deep and really shows the complexities and the impossibilities of Anne's emotions. I haven't had a chance to see many of Aimee's performances, but in those films of hers that I have seen, she never fails to draw me in. She just disappears so completely into her characters and makes them so real - I can't believe she wasn't a bigger star.

As a director, Lelouche makes some interesting choices. The film alternates between being shot in black and white, full color, and the sepia tones that immediately evoke feelings of nostalgia. The changes usually occur when the film switches from a conversation in the present day to one of the characters remembering something from the past. It's a visual cue for the audience to mentally shift gears and I don't know that it's entirely necessary, but it does give the film a more interesting texture. I'm ultimately pretty ambivalent about this particular choice, finding that it didn't really enhance the story for me but that it didn't take anything away from the story either. What does take away from the story, at least a little bit, is the score. I'm not sure how it played in 1966 but here and now it's immediately recognizable as elevator music (it's that one that goes "da da da da-da-da-da-da da-da-da-da-da" over and again). It's not bad, but it kind of creates an odd mood to the film.

100 Days, 100 Movies: La Dolce Vita (1960)

Director: Federico Fellini
Starring: Marcello Mastioianni, Anouk Aimée, Anita Eckberg

La Dolce Vita is a story of contrast and symmetry – day and night, real and fake, lust and impotence – in the life of a tabloid journalist in Rome. Nearly fifty years after its release, it remains one of the most vibrant and lively of films, and also one of the most philosophically pensive. To spend time with Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) is to ask whether the sweet life is ever really attainable or only just another corrupted illusion.

The film follows Marcello, who is at a crossroads in his life. What he has no longer satisfies him, what he wants he finds doesn’t really exist… or at least not in the idealized way he had conceptualized it. He’s a journalist by trade and wants to become a serious writer but most of his time in the film is spent on one amorous adventure or another. There are three women in his life: Emma (Yvonne Furneaux), his girlfriend who bears the brunt of his anger and frustration as she attempts to domesticate and tie him down; Sylvia (Anita Ekberg), a movie star who drifts briefly into his life and then out again but captures his imagination; and Maddelena (the fabulous Anouk Aimée), a friend with whom he has perhaps the best chance of a successful relationship if only they weren’t both so passive and indifferent.

The genius of La Dolce Vita isn’t in its plot per say (it’s the kind of film where you could make the argument that “nothing” happens because even though things do happen, what’s important is what doesn’t happen), but in its structure. It’s a picaresque tale which follows Marcello from one adventure to another, his presence seemingly the only thing which connects them, but it’s so finitely structured that more connections become apparent when you actually look at the way the narrative is sewn together. The “episodes” usually begin at night and end at dawn and begin with the promise of something only to end with the disappointment of failure. Throughout the film Marcello is seeking something and finding that the source he’s seeking it from is somehow corrupted. For example, in Steiner (Alain Cuny) he sees someone to emulate. He’s a writer who seems to have the perfect life, a fine balance of work and family, of philosophy and love. Later when he learns that Steiner has killed himself and his children, he discovers that what he projected onto him is false. Marcello’s problem is twofold. First, he tries to make things that are “perfect” also be real. The opening and closing of the film foreground this through two religious symbols, the first being the statue of Jesus which flies through Rome via helicopter, the second being a fish that is dragged from the sea. One is beautiful but fake, the other is ugly but real, and both scenes feature a miscommunication between Marcello and a woman wherein she tries to tell him something but he doesn’t understand. As long as he continues to seek flawless perfection and dismiss the things which are ugly/real, he never will understand and the disconnect will forever remain.

Secondly, Marcello thinks that “perfection” can come without effort. He thinks that Steiner’s life just is “good,” not that he’s had to make it so. As protagonists go, Marcello is an incredibly passive one. He seeks things out, yes, but he’s never active enough to hold on to anything or move the plot to the next logical step. He has many romantic entanglements, for example, but at no point in the film can you ever really be sure that he’s had sex with any of these women. Even when he spends the night with Maddelena you can’t really be certain that they didn’t sleep together in only the most literal sense because it makes more sense that they wouldn’t have had sex given the way the film is structured around the promise which comes with nightfall, and the disappointment which greets the morning.

For all its symbolism and philosophy, La Dolce Vita is also a film that can be enjoyed simply for its entertainment value. There are many sequences that will stay with you long after you’ve see it: the famous scene between Marcello and Sylvia at the Trevi Fountain, the crowd that follows the children who claim to be able to see the Virgin Mary, the final party scene which devolves into an orgy of surrealism (if not actually sex). The scene that has stayed most vividly with me, however, is a scene at another party, when Marcello sits alone in a room and Maddelena speaks to him through a fountain. Marcello responds but Maddelena doesn’t hear him; she’s already engaged in an embrace with another man. It’s another miscommunication, another failure to launch for Marcello. It’s the story of his sweet life.