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8½

1963 film directed by Federico Fellini

8½ is a 1963 film about a harried movie director who retreats into his memories and fantasies. It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 36th Academy Awards in April 1964.

Marcello Mastroianni is Guido Anselmi
Directed by Federico Fellini. Written by Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, Federico Fellini, and Brunello Rondi.


Guido Anselmi

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  • Accept me as I am. Only then can we discover each other.
  • Enough of symbolism and these escapist themes of purity and innocence.
  • I thought my ideas were so clear. I wanted to make an honest film. No lies whatsoever. I thought I had something so simple to say. Something useful to everybody. A film that could help bury forever all those dead things we carry within ourselves. Instead, I'm the one without the courage to bury anything at all. When did I go wrong? I really have nothing to say, but I want to say it all the same.
  • My Dears... Happiness consists of being able to tell the truth without hurting anyone.
  • All the confusion of my life... has been a reflection of myself! Myself as I am, not as I'd like to be.
  • The truth is: I do not know... I seek... I have not yet found. Only with this in mind can I feel alive and look at you without shame.

Writer

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  • It's better to destroy than create what's unnecessary.
  • You see, what stands out at a first reading is the lack of a central issue or a philosophical stance. That makes the film a chain of gratuitous episodes which may even be amusing in their ambivalent realism. You wonder, what is the director really trying to do? Make us think? Scare us? That ploy betrays a basic lack of poetic inspiration.
  • Destroying is better than creating, when we're not creating those few truly necessary things.
  • Life is so full of confusion already, there's no need to add chaos to the chaos.

Other

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  • Pace, il produttore: Why piece together the tatters of your life - the vague memories, the faces... the people you never knew how to love?

Dialogue

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Claudia: I don't understand. He meets a girl that can give him a new life and he pushes her away?
Guido: Because he no longer believes in it.
Claudia: Because he doesn't know how to love.
Guido: Because it isn't true that a woman can change a man.
Claudia: Because he doesn't know how to love.
Guido: And above all because I don't feel like telling another pile of lies.
Claudia: Because he doesn't know how to love.
Guido: Could you walk out on everything and start all over again? Could you choose one single thing, and be faithful to it? Could you make it the one thing that gives your life meaning... just because you believe in it? Could you do that?"
Claudia: I don't know... could you?"
Guido: No, the character I'm thinking of couldn't. He wants to possess and devour everything. He can't pass anything up. He's afraid he'll miss something. He's drained.
Claudia: That's how the film ends?
Guido: No, that's how it begins. Then he meets a girl at the springs. She gives him water to heal him. She's beautiful... young, yet ancient... child, yet already a woman... authentic, complete. It's obvious that she could be his salvation.
[Looks over at Claudia]
Guido: You'll wear white... with long hair, just as you do now.

Cast

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