Federico Fellini : Artist in Search of Self
8 ½ (1963) Federico Fellini
8 ½ (1963)
Biographical and focus on movie directors experiencing personal crises at the height of their careers
Testifies to Carl Jung's theories of personality
Individuation
The film deals with the transition from youth to middle age
Creative process
Cognitive unconscious
which regulates personality by means of dreams and fantasies
Rare and authentic view into what is usually the hidden side of personality
Can we be sure that Fellini portrayed himself truthfully?
The title of the film, can be said to be an anti title:
it was conjured spontaneously during a press interview.
Can we also be sure that we are not selectively superimposing our own theories and meanings onto a work of art?
Fellini warned of this danger and speculated that intellectuals would find too many Joycean meanings in the film.
"I've never read James Joyce"
Fellini’s Intentions
“I knew that everyone would talk about autobiography. Now it is true that all the episodes in 8 ½ refer to my life, but some of them gradually became distorted, while others took shape during the shooting”
Jungian Theory
emphasized a cognitive unconscious and interpreted psychic disturbances as the individual's attempt to achieve a wholesome integration of the various parts of the personality.
Similarities of myths, symbols, and dreams of otherwise divergent cultures.
Personal Unconscious
base collective character
Collective unconscious (pure form)
universal in nature and consist of primordial images which have been accrued in the course of human evolution.
Projections dreams and myths
Archetypes
inherited feelings, thoughts, and memories.
manifest in dreams, fantasies, and art.
Corresponds to human experiences
Individuation
This process is a blueprint — or paradigm of self-actualization
successfully coming to terms with archetypes and understanding how they are expressed in the various components of the personality of an artist is theme of 8 ½
Shadow
Personality which is normally repressed
Shadow of psyche is as unique as the shadows we cast
embodies all those characteristics that an individual refuses to recognize as part of oneself.
“Dark” side of personality
must be confronted and acknowledged as part of one's personality.➜ Only then can the shadow be controlled and can the individual progress on the path of psychological growth
Guido Meets His Shadow 8 ½
3 levels
First level = deals with the film set and all of the pressures a director faces in production.
Second level = is that of his memories of his boyhood
Third level = focuses on his dreams and daydream
Daumier, his scriptwriter
Shadow of Guido that "appears as a cold and negative intellectual" which "personifies poisonous judgement and negative thoughts that have been held back”
The victory of the artist over the negative shadow by Daumier
Fellini broke a work relationship with scriptwriter Tullio Pinelli that had lasted almost twenty years
caused by a fundamental disagreement over the role of boundless imagination in the creative process
Individuation
Fellini
He will feel no need to express himself as an artist. It is only pursuing this vision that can never be quite reached and held, that the artist is stimulated to give the best of himself
Conti, I., & McCormack, W. (1984). ‘Federico Fellini: Artist in Search of Self’. Biography, 7(4), 292-308. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/23539111.pdf?ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_SYC-4802%2Ftest2&refreqid=search%3A1fb74be006c3082fa5c978d45d85662d
Federico Fellini: I'm a Born Liar
(Damian Pettigrew's new documentary study of Fellini’s career)
He assembled figures to speak of their association with Fellini. Friends and associates of Fellini focus on defining aspects of his personality.
Italo Calvino
➜ discussion of Fellini in Pettigrew's documentary,
➜ follows the thesis of one of his most perceptive critical essays on Fellini's indebtedness to popular culture in Italy = "The Autobiography of a Spectator"
➜ remind us that in spite of Fellini's famous reputation for fabricating stories about himself, whether one tells the truth or not is immaterial to a psychoanalyst
➜ Calvino mistrusts writers who pretend to know the entire truth about everything
Damian Pettigrew
➜ It is, indeed, true that Fellini mistrusted self-congratulatory discussions of his own work and preferred to let his films speak for themselves
➜ Fellini:
⬥ "I don't have any universal ideas and I think I feel better not having them”
● In spite of Fellini's modesty, the popularity of his films denies Fellini's claim that his work does not have universal appeal
⬥ "I don't want to demonstrate anything. I want to show it”
● Fellini's preference to privilege image over ideology explains in large measure why his first declaration is untrue
⬥ Fellini believed art is a lie that tells the truth.
➜ Pettigrew's documentary captures perfectly the ambiguity in Fellini's personality and his work in this regard.
Tullio Pinelli
(Fellini's scriptwriter on many of his most important works)
discusses the important role of scripts in Fellini's career
quite rightly rejects the popular notion that Fellini always improvised on the set
Giuseppe Rotunno
(Fellini's cameraman on a number of major films)
offers interesting insights into Fellini's use of light
confirms Pinelli's rejection of the theory that Fellini valued improvisation over careful planning.
Dante Ferretti
(set designer)
describes how Fellini would devote great attention to even the most minute details on a set, leaving nothing to chance
employed hundreds of sketches produced with Magic Marker pens to convey the visual images in his head to his collaborators
Daniel Toscan du Plantier
(Fellini's French producers)
documentary explodes another myth about Fellini - that producers considered him irresponsible for costly production overruns
concludes that Fellini never capriciously wasted funds but always insisted only on incurring the expenses required to produce the desired esthetic effect
Among the topics Fellini addresses are :p of reality to fiction
the relationship of reality to fiction
the former is mistrusted, the latter is praised
the question of improvisation
Fellini rejects it, declaring that making a film is similar in its attention to detail to the launching of a rocket ship into space
Fellini does believe in what he calls disponibilità or openness to possibilities on the set that have not been envisioned prior to shooting
inspiration
Fellini has no use for waiting for inspiration, believing that creative artists who do so merely waste precious time in relying upon such a Romantic concept
alienation
Fellini asks how a man can be a film director, a vocation that is akin to being a magician, if he or she lacks faith in the future
imagination
for Fellini, film directing involves a combination of the qualities of a simple artisan and that of a medium
imagery
for Fellini, cinema is first and foremost painterly, relying upon light more than dialog
esthetics
regardless of whether something is beautiful or ugly, culturally sophisticated or simple, Fellini's only criterion of value is whether a work of art is "vital" or alive
In the neorealist cinema from which Fellini's cinema developed,
★ a protagonist's environment usually shaped his or her character and, therefore, his or her destiny
★ Fellini abandons the socially defined protagonists of neorealist cinema for eccentric individuals with special links to the world of entertainment and whose personalities all embody a fascination with dreams and fantasies.
★ accepts a Pirandellian definition of character as bifurcated between
⚬ "mask" (how a character acts in society) and
⚬ the character's more authentic "face" (the character's truer aspirations, ideals, fantasies, and illusions).
Bondanella, P. (2003) ‘Federico Fellini: I'm a Born Liar’, Cinéaste, Vol. 28, No. 4, pp. 54-56. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41689648.pdf?ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_SYC-4802%2Ftest2&refreqid=search%3A1fb74be006c3082fa5c978d45d85662d
Other References:
Burke, F. (1979) ‘Fellini's Drive for Individuation’, Southwest Review, 64(1), 68-85. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/43469136.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A7c18df0af969518c31971605
Conti, L.C. (2012) ‘An Overview of Federico Fellini: Biography, Filmography, Bibliography’, January 2. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/4436599/An_Overview_of_Federico_Fellini_
Costello, D. P. (1981) ‘Layers of Reality: "8½" as Spiritual Autobiography’, Notre Dame English Journal, 13(2), 1-12. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/40062410.pdf?refreqid=excelsior
Federico Fellini, New World Encyclopedia, Available at: https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/
Flint, P.B. (1993) ‘Federico Fellini, Film Visionary, Is Dead at 73’, The New York Times, November 1. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/01/obituaries/federico-fellini-film-visionary-is-dead-at-73.html
Hirsch, F. (1975) ‘Amarcord by Federico Fellini’, Film Quarterly, 29(1), 50-52. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1211841.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Aacf0e0ad17546cb042dc5a3889e
Peri, E., & Fellini, F. (1961) ‘Federico Fellini: An Interview’, Film Quarterly, 15(1), Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1210563.pdf?ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_SYC-4802%2Ftest2&re
Rossini, E. (2012) ‘Lessons From Fellini’, May 8. Available at: https://elenarossini.com/2012/05/lessons-from-fellini/
The Editorial Unit. (2018) ‘If all art is autobiographical, how should we approach it?’, The Up Coming, April 11. Available at: https://www.theupcoming.co.uk/2018/04/11/if-all-art-is-autobiographical-how-should-we-approach-it/