8½ (1963) - The Criterion Collection

Synopsis

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 8½ (Otto e mezzo) turns one man’s artistic crisis into a grand epic of the cinema. An early working title for 8½ was The Beautiful Confusion, and Fellini’s masterpiece is exactly that: a shimmering dream, a circus, and a magic act.

Cast

Guido Anselmi	Marcello Mastroianni
Bruno Agostini	Bruno Agostini
Carla	Sandra Milo
Luisa Anselmi	Anouk Aimée
Gloria Morin	Barbara Steele
The Beautiful Woman	Caterina Boratto
Claudia	Claudia Cardinale

Credits

Producer	Angelo Rizzoli
Cinematography	Gianni Di Venanzo
Screenplay	Ennio Flaiano, Federico Fellini, Tullio Pinelli and Brunello Rondi
Music	Nino Rota
Director	Federico Fellini

Disc Features

High-definition digital transfer of restored film elements (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on Blu-ray edition)
Introduction by filmmaker Terry Gilliam
Audio commentary featuring film critic and Fellini friend Gideon Bachmann and NYU film professor Antonio Monda
High-definition digital transfer of a new restoration of Fellini: A Director’s Notebook, a 52-minute film by Federico Fellini
The Last Sequence, a new 52-minute documentary on Fellini’s lost alternate ending for 8½ (available on Blu-ray edition)
Nino Rota: Between Cinema and Concert, a compelling 48-minute documentary about Fellini’s longtime composer
Interviews with actress Sandra Milo, director Lina Wertmüller, and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro
Rare photographs from Bachmann’s collection
Gallery of behind-the-scenes and production photos
U.S. theatrical trailer
New and improved English subtitle translation
PLUS: A booklet featuring writings by Fellini and essays by critics Tullio Kezich and Alexander Sesonske

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8 1/2: A Film with Itself as Its Subject

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8 1/2: a bizarre and puzzling title, but one precisely appropriate for this film which announces in its first frame that modernism has reached the cinema. If the mark of modernism in art is self-reference, 8 1/2 surely goes beyond any predecessor in . . .

8 1/2: When “He” Became “I”

by Tullio Kezich Dec 3, 2001

The typical mid-life crisis, to which we all fall victim in some major or minor degree, came to Fellini with a slight delay. On the 20th of January, 1960, the day of his 40th birthday, he was, in fact, too deeply engaged in the completion of La Dolce Vita to worry about . . .