8 1/2

Federico Fellini - 1963
In and out; long shots to close shots, seems to be Fellini's rule, along with some very high and low angles. Thoughtful and invenetive, really, without too much strictness. There is a sense of finding the best way to capture a scene that is already happening, regardless of the camera. Which is theatre. The camera can move fast, pans and tracks, around and about the swirling milleu, as Guido is accosted and swoops from room to room, person to person. Also not some of Fellini's favoured framings; half of the frame a close portrait, the other half strecthing to the distance, something usually either walking to or from the camera.
The whites are clearly very original; I would guess he does them by overexposure, or at least a slow film. The whites are not always heavily nuanced, while the darker portions of the frame are pretty soft (also, no huge depth).
Fellini's inteerest is surely in the power of his images, the story a series, a sort of jazz solo. What is the real interest of these images, apart from mere curiousity into the functioning of a man's mind? Perhaps to gain their full power they need the big screen.The play of shades and colours is surely remarkable, but so far...
Is this film self-induglent? Yes. It answers, or rather affirms its own critics, on that count. Fellini wants to say cinema can just be my personal fantasy, which can be confused. What are we then to do when we deeply dislike the fantasist? Guido doesn't seem interested in others; he is deeply unpleasant, making people build sets then stewing over, navel gazing (which Fellini repeats as autocritique incessantly) basically, then blowing them off. If that's the way it is, that's the way it is; the 'truth' of a mind. Maybe. But the truth of a bad, and for that uninteresting, except as documentation, one?