8½

Director: Federico Fellini, Federico Fellini, Federico Fellini, Federico Fellini, Federico Fellini, Federico Fellini

1963 / 138min / DCP

Creative impasse and erotic incontinence have never made for such spectacular entertainment as in Fellini’s fantastic film à clef, starring Marcello Mastroianni as renowned filmmaker Guido Anselmi, trying to keep a deeply personal passion project on the rails while beset by paparazzi, producers, priests, flashbacks, and fetishistic fantasies. A carnivalesque farce that doesn’t just go behind the scenes of a movie but inside the mind of the movie’s scenarist, with Anouk Aimée, Claudia Cardinale, and Sandra Milo superb as the trio of women—wife, muse, and mistress—who variously torment and are tormented by Guido.