Eight and a Half (Otto e mezzo)

Description

Federico Fellini's masterpiece 8 1/2 (Otto e mezzo) shocked audiences around the world when it was released in 1963 by its sheer auteurist gall. The hero, a film director named Guido Anselmi, seemed to be Fellini's mirror image, and the story to reflect the making of 8 1/2 itself. Whether attacked for self-indulgence or extolled for self-consciousness, 8 1/2 became the paradigm of personal filmmaking, and numerous directors, including Fassbinder, Truffaut, Scorsese, Bob Fosse and Bruce LaBruce, paid homage to the film and its themes of personal and creative ennui in their own work. Now that 8 1/2's conceit is less shocking, D.A. Miller argues, we can see more clearly how tentative, even timid, Fellini's ground-breaking incarnation always was. Guido is a perfect blank, or is trying his best to seem one. By his own admission he doesn't even have an artistic or social statement to offer: 'I have nothing to say, but I want to say it anyway.' 8 1/2's deepest commitment is not to this man (who is never quite 'all there') or to his message (which is lacking entirely) but to its own flamboyant manner. The enduring timeliness of 8 1/2 lies, Miller suggests, in its aggressive shirking of the shame that falls on the man - and the artist - who fails his appointed social responsibilities.

D. A. Miller is John F. Hotchkis Professor Emeritus and fomerly Professor of the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley, USA. Most recently, he was Visiting Professor at the University of Tokyo, Japan. His books include Hidden Hitchcock (2016); Jane Austen, or the Secret of Style (2003); Place for Us: Essay on the Broadway Musical (1998); Bringing Out Roland Barthes (1992); The Novel and the Police (1988); and Narrative and its Discontents (1981). He has served on the editorial boards of differences, Film Quarterly, and Novel: A Forum on Fiction. For many years, he wrote a regular column for Film Quarterly called "Second Time Around," which has provided the basis of his most recent book "Second Time Around: From Art House to DVD" (2021). In 2013, he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

D.A. Miller's study of the film suggests that we can now see more clearly how tentative Fellini's groundbreaking incarnation always was, and its enduring timeliness, he argues, lies in its determined shirking of the shame that falls on the man - and the artist - who fails his appointed social responsibilities. -- Sight & Sound ...an excellent addition to one of the finest collections of film criticism ever collated...[Miller] makes an interesting and persuasive argument for his theory and, like much great criticism, sheds new light on a classic film. -- Laurence Boyce * Netribution *