Fellini's Magical 8 1/2
[Pierson is an American screenwriter, director, producer, and educator. In the following essay, he discusses the thematic strengths of 8 1/2, focusing on Fellini's depiction of the character Daumier.]
Actors, and most directors, want to experiment, improvise, fly on gossamer wings of inspiration into all kinds of irrelevancies and distractions. The story is, to them, a series of situations to embroider and exploit. The screenwriter's job is to throw cold water on all this and try to keep everyone focused and on track. The screenwriter becomes something between a conscience and a critic—an irritating, nagging presence, defending the director against the director's own wonderful, but irrelevant, ideas.
In forcing the director to firmly address story problems, instead of just having fun, the writer often comes to be perceived as the story problem. Then a new writer is hired, one who will shut up and do as he or she's told.
Fellini's first treatment of the screenplay, 8 1/2, was not a story at all but a short letter to Brunello Rondi, one of the credited writers of the movie. Fellini describes a confused film director facing a picture he wants to make, for which he has only the intimation of a feeling, and a few characters, in mind. The letter lists a few of these and goes on to generalizations about themes, moods and tone. It is to be a comedy, making fun of the predicament of a very serious, but terribly flawed, man.
The character of the screenwriter, Daumier, in 8 1/2 is played by a prominent writer, Jean Rougeul. With a hawkish, disapproving face, he carries himself with authority. Like his namesake, the 19th-century caricaturist, Daumier hates and derides pretentiousness, sentimentality, stupidity and betrayal of intelligence by seductions of mystery and sex. He is a tough guy.
Daumier is also ugly, as Guido (Marcello Mastroianni), the director of the movie-within-the-movie, is not. Daumier is a man whom women have always ignored in favor of the Guidos of the world. Thus, he is always ready to remind Guido of the way in which Guido's sensuous appetites undermine his sense of who he might become, and what his true powers might be.
Two ugly men are as aware as Guido of magic and mystery: Daumier, the screenwriter who insists upon reality, structure, form, sacrifice and truth; and Maurice, the moth-eaten magician with false teeth, whose feats of mind reading he himself is amazed at—when they work. As with Guido, his art is a mystery to him.
Daumier remains earthbound by logic, and he will never know the joy Guido experiences through his magic. As the closing scene of 8 1/2 begins, with the scaffolding of the spaceship set and the beach in the background, the magic seems to have deserted Guido, forcing him to abandon the movie.
Fellini has gone out of his way to explain that 8 1/2 should not be interpreted to mean that only mystery and emotion are the keys to truth and happiness. Emotion without conscience leads to the hedonistic, useless world he held up to scorn in La Dolce Vita (1960). "The sleep of reason produces monsters," Goya wrote. That is, in a sentence, what Daumier the screen-writer is saying to Guido the director.
As the final scene progresses, Fellini weaves a wonderful counterpoint between picture and dialogue that is, to me, one of the high points of cinematic craft. Stylishly but invisibly, he moves the audience to a new perception.
As Guido walks away from the abandoned set—his dream which is already being demolished—his body is shrunk in despondency. The camera cuts to Daumier, erect and proud, disdainful and correct, waiting by the car in the parking lot. Daumier begins a monologue, as the center and point of view of the scene.
Guido is passive, listening. Fellini makes him almost invisible to us, while Daumier fills the screen and, talking, talking, gets into the car. Now, Guido is only half-seen—outside the car, walking around, finally getting in, too bereft of will to start the engine. All the time Daumier is speaking of the weakness of his vision, the uselessness of the picture, the silliness of his conception. Daumier says that the only right thing he has done is what he is doing now—abandoning the film. But with each cut and camera move, Daumier becomes less and less visible. Conversely, Guido, sinking deeper into himself, gathers inner strength and becomes the focus of the scene.
Daumier is filmed now through the windshield of the car, so that reflections half-conceal him. He is a talking shadow, while Guido fills our field of vision with his pain and concentration.
Something is happening inside Guido, in reaction to the writer's denunciation of his character and art. We begin to anticipate Guido's reaction. Our curiosity becomes so acute that we, like Guido, are no longer listening to Daumier at all. As the writer grumbles on, unaware of the apparitions gathering around them, he finally becomes invisible to the audience as well as Guido.
The resolution to the film arrives with Maurice, Guido's magical alter ego, who dances up beside the car and begins to summon all of Guido's creatures from the past. Guido has a rush of feeling, as his magic powers as an artist start to return. "What is this sudden joy that makes me tremble," he asks, "gives me strength, life?"
Critics complained that Fellini disarmed criticism of 8 1/2 by putting the worst that could be said about it into the film itself. After Daumier's constant carping at Guido, what is there left to say? But they miss the point. An artist is not complete without the magic and mystery of art tempered by the craft and cunning of science—heart and mind together. The writer (in this case) is the cunning craftsman and moral conscience; the director (in this case) is the source of poetic inspiration, generosity and feeling. It is not a license to fly, free of all rules, nor of rigid adherence only to that which can be rationally explained. Art is a resolution of conflict. And it produces new, unexpected results—in this case, the most beautiful and satisfying ending of any film I know, with the possible exception of the ending of Les Enfants du Paradis.
It is also deeply satisfying to hear a screenwriter given full voice to lambaste the director; for screenwriters of the world to stand with fists upraised.
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