Wednesday, October 13, 2010

When Art Film Smiled at its Own Reflection

Cinephile sounds like a dirty word; I wonder if you called someone a cinephile on the street back in 1964 if they would slug you or invite you for an espresso. The '60s were the beginning of a new breed of audience who not only worshipped film but loved discussing it as one would discuss a novel or, more apt, a work of art. The studio system was on its way out; the era of the director-as-filmmaker-as-auteur arrived.

Considering the art film of the early 1960s – especially those coming out of Europe (and most were; to understand a history of American independent film in those years, you can usually start and stop with Cassavettes) – they were a cure from Hollywood churning out predictable product. If you lived in a large enough city, you had access to at least one old movie palace refurbed as the "art house". Since U.S. movie magazines catering to housewives and starry-eyed teenage girls didn't cover events like Italian Neorealism and the French New Wave, it was up to the audiences themselves to keep the conversation going, to influence friends to see films few newspapers and magazines would even review. By 1964, backlash was inevitable. Art film didn't go mainstream, but they were now commonplace enough to "jump the shark", and no one personified shark jumping better than Federico Fellini.

"What are you working on now? Another film without hope?"

In 1964, Fellini was an international prince of cinema thanks to 8 1/2, released the previous summer. Its success wouldn't make his next film any easier to make, nor would it make it a success, but it did help bring American audiences into avid discussion about world cinema and this movie about the making of a movie. I believe most 21st century Americans would fail to see anything odd about a film director being accused of self-indulgence. As if any artist would choose to create for themselves instead of the all-consuming public. Films are not personal canvasses - they are financed heavily, employ hundreds or thousands of people and live or die on the words of critics, reviewers and word-of-mouth audiences. It is doubtful Fellini made 8 1/2 for himself; his role had always been as entertainer. However, his stock had risen after the triumph, in 1960, of La Dolce Vita, a time capsule of life among the new glitterati in Rome.

Throughout the previous decade, Italy was experiencing an amazing bout of economic success - washing the world with vespas and kitchen appliances, Jackie Kennedy's Cassini suits and Anita Ekberg dancing in Rome's Trevi Fountain. La Dolce Vita was such a sensation that it was inevitable his next project would be closely dissected. The lack of linear narrative was a huge problem for those who were not used to movies employing vignettes, where daydreams and reverie were not bracketed by the convention of wavy lines letting the audience know what was reality or not. How could a movie about making a movie ascribe to reality anyway? 8 1/2 spends the bulk of its time lounging with the film's hero in a health spa - which in postwar Italy had more in common with the shrine at Lourdes than a weekend resort getaway. When we are finally shown a glimpse of movie set, it's a rocketship launch pad out in the middle of nowhere.

The idea of making the main character a film director evolved after the entire plot had already formulated in Fellini's mind. He originally had a Joe Everyguy escaping to a health spa, stressed from juggling wife, mistress, clergy, daydreams, flashbacks, psychoanalysis and mindreading. By the time he got the brainstorm to look in the mirror and make his hero a successful film director, he added muse, producer, critics and journalist to the circus.

In 1964, Fellini was busy on his next film with a similar theme: this time having his hero trying to find herself not through cinema but through the occult. Juliet of the Spirits asked some of the same questions concerning self-analysis - except from a female point of view. In contrast to a film about a famous man who has too many women, this film would focus on a woman who shares her husband. Divorce was illegal in Italy when the film was made, so there was really no big mystery about how the relationship would end up. The project had the added bonus of putting Fellini's wife back to work, the amazing Guilietta Masina, who hadn't had a hit film since she last worked with her husband 7 years earlier.

phantasmagoria (fanˌtazməˈgôrēə)
a sequence of real or imaginary images like that seen in a dream

Philip Kemp, writing in Sight and Sound, said: "'Felliniesque' ... usually means nowadays is 'overblown, self-indulgent, sentimental and featuring monstrously fat women and dwarves'. Less than fair." During the fallout reviews for 8 1/2, critics probably did not know that the film was a direct result of Fellini's forays into psychotherapy: the film is like one long therapy session or a Catholic confessional (same thing). It was also influenced by the fact that Federico had started keeping a journal of his dreams. He even gave a shot at celebrity-endorsing that mysteriously controlled experiment of the 60's, LSD, to unlock his creativity, but somehow did not allow his onscreen counterpart to indulge in anything nearly as trendy. A modern critique of 8 1/2 in Cineaste magazine claimed you could make good use of watching the film on DVD by running the scenes in random order.

Most European critics were unanimous in their praise (although, Derek Malcolm mentioned in The Guardian: "When it came out, the film seemed incomprehensible to many who had hitherto loved his work. In one Italian town, the audience attacked the projectionists."); in America, there were culture clashes. Time magazine thought 8 1/2's "stream of consciousness" fascinating, but "is that a reason for showing it publicly?" It wasn't a problem with sophistication or innovation; it was the idea of European films being told so differently than Americans were used to. Also showing in U.S. art houses circa 1964: Michelangelo Antonioni's Red Desert - another collaboration with his muse Monica Vitti - it received the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Set in a factory-laden Italy, a neurotic young wife feels disconnected from pretty much everything. The film was mostly monochrome with very exact uses of color and not a whole lot happens. However, it's Antonioni, so it is a classic of world cinema.

Critic Pauline Kael was having none of the Fellini love. (It wasn't that she had it out for any foreign film in 1964; she thought Godard's Bande à Part was a "charming" gangster movie.) According to Kael: "Someone's fantasy life is perfectly good material for a movie if it is imaginative and fascinating in itself, or if it illuminates his non-fantasy life in some interesting way. But 8 1/2 is neither..." Then again, she believed 8 1/2 was one of the first movies that some in the audience intentionally showed up stoned.

American cinema wouldn't catch up with the idea of the film director-as-artist until the 1970's when guys like Coppola, Spielberg, Lucas and Scorsese made film a subject one could study in school, like literature and art. We call it independent film now, or just: indies - supposedly small projects bereft of huge financing and studio interference. The advent of DVD means the playing field has evened out for all of world cinema. If you avoid the multiplexes and watch film based on interests and preference, it won't matter what studio is attached to it any more than it will matter how much money was spent on it.




























Works Cited:

Affron, Charles, ed. 8 1/2. Rutgers Films in Print. Rutgers, the State University, 1987.

Celli, Carlo and Marga Cottino-Jones. A New Guide to Italian Cinema. Palgrave MacMillan, 2006.

"Cinema: Director on the Couch." Time. 28 June 1963.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,874998,00.html

Cowie, Peter. Revolution! The Explosion of World Cinema in the Sixties. Faber and Faber, Inc., 2004.

Kael, Pauline. I Lost It at the Movies. Little Brown & Co, 1965.

Kemp, Philip. "FEDERICO FELLINI (1920-93)." Sight & Sound 19.9 (2009): 27. Art & Architecture Complete. EBSCO. Web. 6 Oct. 2010.

Kezich, Tulio. Federico Fellini: His Life and Work. Faber and Faber, Inc., 2002.

Malcolm, Derek. "Federico Fellini: 8 1/2." The Guardian. 22 April 1999.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/1999/apr/22/derekmalcolmscenturyoffilm.derekmalcolm

Monaco, James. "Federico Fellini's 8 1/2." Cineaste 27.3 (2002): 46. Art & Architecture Complete. EBSCO. Web. 6 Oct. 2010.

Mordeen, Ethan. Medium Cool: the Movies of the 1960s. Knopf, 1990.

Stone, Alan. "8 1/2: Fellini's Moment of Truth." Boston Review. 1995.

http://bostonreview.net/br20.3/stone.html

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