★★★★★ 5
“The fragments of a life”…
A formidable movie, in the stricter sense of the word. In a looser sense, it has helped shape the way that I’ve seen the world, ‘lo these past six decades. I saw this movie when it first came out, in 1963, at one of my favorite art theaters in Pittsburgh. Like most of us at the time, we’d only viewed rather straightforward movies of “good and evil,” Westerners, and the like. Predictable endings. The director of “8 ½,” Federico Fellini, offered something radically different, a foreshadowing of the stream-of-consciousness technique in literature, how the fragments of one’s life get all jumbled up in the brain. And he provided some takeaways that have long been with me.
I was 16 at the time and took a date who was 15. In re-watching it now, if I thought it somewhat baffling at 16, I wonder what my date thought about the portrayal of the women in the movie, who are “fragments” in the life of the movie director, Guido Anselmi, excellently played by Marcello Mastroianni. There is his wife, Luisa, wonderfully played by Anouk Aimée, who was the motive force behind the re-watching of it now. There is the “virginal” Claudia Cardinale, usually in white (I had not realized that she was originally Tunisian). Sandra Milo plays Guido’s flighty bimbo of a mistress. And so many others: The airline stewardess; the caring mom who wraps the infant Guido in a blanket; the first stripper; the insightful and nagging friend of his wife…
“Upstairs when you are 40.” That was one of the big takeaways. Anselmi is having this male fantasy about his “harem,” all those fragmented women who are there to serve him and do so in complete harmony when he realizes that the “stripper” is now 40 and must go upstairs, the metaphor for being placed on the “discard pile” for being too old. He gets out his bull whip even, to drive her up the stairs. Even at 16, when 40 is more than twice your life away, it did seem a bit harsh, particularly when the same rule does not apply to the guy with the bull whip.
It was also my first viewing of the prototype of those pompous pedantic critics of movies or literature who toss around expressions like “impoverished poetic imagination,” “overabundant symbols,” and, of course, “self-indulgent.”
I was in parochial high school at the time, so the scenes in which the priests were chasing down the young student Guido in order to shame and humiliate him because he found sexual imagery to be of interest, imagine that, strongly resonated. It was also the era that the Catholic Church published “The Index of Forbidden Books,” (which now seems to have been taken over by the woke crowd of today), and thus the scene in which Anselmi has to pay homage to the Cardinal also resonated.
Anouk Aimée is absolutely mesmerizing. She has been a “fragment” of my own life, ever since I viewed “A Man and a Woman” in the ’60’s. Again, she played opposite the equally formidable Jean-Louis Trintignant, of “Z,” “Three Colors, Red,” and so much else, fame. Far more relevantly, the two of them recently played in “The Best Years of Our Lives,” again directed by Claude Lelouch. Aimée is now a young 90. In her role as Anselmi’s wife, Luisa, she wore those glasses that connotated a greater thoughtfulness than him. I searched that ever-so-youthful face watching for the subtle expressions of later movies.
It struck to the core. Luisa is utterly fed up with Guido’s philandering and constant lies. And Guido is suffering from “director’s block” in trying to finish his movie, with what sort of message? Luisa fires off THE classic line that I have long remembered: “But what can you say to strangers when you can’t tell the truth to the one closest to you…”.
The only problem is that I’ve felt that line was said in Ingmar Bergman’s “Scenes from a Marriage.” And maybe that line was ALSO said in Bergman’s movie, which means one more movie I need to watch to find out. As I said earlier, things can tend to get jumbled up in the brain, even more so as one ages. Fellini would understand, maybe Aimée would also. 5-stars, plus for Fellini’s classic, formidable film.
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Reviewed in the United States on March 14, 2023
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