8 1/2 (DVD)
US Import
One of the greatest films about film ever made, Federico Fellini’s 8½ marks the moment when the director’s always-personal approach to filmmaking fully embraced self-reflexivity, pioneering a stream-of-consciousness style that darts exuberantly among flashbacks, dream sequences, and carnivalesque reality, and turning one man’s artistic crisis into a grand epic of the cinema. Marcello Mastroianni plays Guido Anselmi, a director whose new project is collapsing around him, along with his life, as he struggles against creative block and helplessly juggles the women in his life—including Anouk Aimée, Sandra Milo, and Claudia Cardinale. An early working title for 8½ was The Beautiful Confusion, and Fellini’s masterpiece is exactly that: a shimmering dream, a circus, and a magic act.
SPECIAL FEATURES
- High-definition digital transfer of restored film elements, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on Blu-ray edition
- Introduction by filmmaker Terry Gilliam
- Audio commentary featuring film critic and Fellini friend Gideon Bachmann and NYU film professor Antonio Monda
- High-definition digital transfer of a new restoration of Fellini: A Director’s Notebook, a 52-minute film by Federico Fellini
- The Last Sequence, a new 52-minute documentary on Fellini’s lost alternate ending for 8½ (Blu-ray only)
- Nino Rota: Between Cinema and Concert, a compelling 48-minute documentary about Fellini’s longtime composer
- Interviews with actress Sandra Milo, director Lina Wertmüller, and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro
- Rare photographs from Bachmann’s collection
- Gallery of behind-the-scenes and production photos
- U.S. theatrical trailer
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A booklet featuring writings by Fellini and essays by critics Tullio Kezich and Alexander Sesonske
Cover by Lucien S. Y. Yang