Film Forum

Italy, 1963
Directed by Federico Fellini
With Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, Anouk Aimée, Sandra Milo
Music by Nino Rota
WINNER Academy Award® – Best Foreign Language Film, 1964
In Italian with English subtitles
Approx. 138 min. 35mm & DCP.

Torn between mistress Sandra Milo and wife Anouk Aimée, while caught idea-less on the verge of an ambitious new production, movie director Marcello Mastroianni escapes into childhood memories and sexual fantasies, until, in the course of a climactic ballet around his space-age set, he finally finds his subject. Seamless, seemingly autobiographical interweaving of reality, memory, and dreams, a stylistic breakthrough and an influence on generations of moviemakers — but, of course, according to the maestro himself, “Of all my films, this has the least reference to personal facts…There is nothing in it beyond what can be seen.” 

PROGRAMMING NOTE: This 35mm print was struck from the original camera negative at L’Imagine Ritrovato in Bologna, Italy, and subtitled at TITRAFILM in Paris, one of the world’s few surviving 35mm subtitling facilities. The print was created entirely photochemically, with no intermediary digital source or restoration. Lasers were used to etch the subtitles directly into the film emulsion, the only subtitling method possible for photochemically-created prints.

Some of the laser-etched titles will occasionally be partly or completely washed out against white backgrounds, making about 15% of the text unreadable or partly readable. Some extended passages of dialogue are affected. “White on white,” unavoidable and common in 35mm prints, once plagued black & white foreign language films. The problem has largely disappeared since the rise of digital projection. Despite this issue, we feel this is an extremely rare opportunity to experience Fellini’s extraordinary imagery in a newly-struck first generation 35mm print. We have added daily screenings of the digital 4K restoration with complete subtitles for those who prefer to see it this way.

DCP Screenings: 
Friday, April 25, 4:10 show
Saturday, April 26, 1:00 show
Sunday, April 27, 7:20 show
Monday, April 28, 12:15 show
Tuesday, April 29, 7:20 show
Wednesday, April 30, 1:00 show
Thursday, May 1, 7:20 show 

Friday, May 2, 4:10 show
Saturday, May 3, 1:00 show
Sunday, May 4, 7:20 show
Monday, May 5, 3:00 show
Tuesday, May 6, 7:20 show
Wednesday, May 7, 1:00 show
Thursday, May 8, 4:10 show  

A JANUS FILMS RELEASE

Trailer

Reviews

“FELLINI’S CHEF D’OEUVRE… HIS ELEGANT, RAMBUNCTIOUS CIRCUS OF A MOVIE! This most grandly self-centered of movie extravaganzas hasn't aged a minute.”
– Vincent Canby, The New York Times

“The best film ever made about filmmaking.. bursting with inspiration. I have seen 8½ over and over again, and my appreciation only deepens. It does what is almost impossible: Fellini is a magician who discusses, reveals, explains and deconstructs his tricks, while still fooling us with them. He claims he doesn't know what he wants or how to achieve it, and the film proves he knows exactly, and rejoices in his knowledge.”
– Roger Ebert

“If all you know about this exuberant, self-regarding 1963 film is based on its countless inferior imitations, you owe it to yourself to see Federico Fellini's exhilarating, stocktaking original, an expressionist, circuslike comedy… It's Fellini's last black-and-white picture and conceivably the most gorgeous and inventive thing he ever did.”
– Jonathan Rosenbaum

“Fellini's film is complete, simple, beautiful, honest, like the one Guido wants to make in 8½.”
– François Truffaut

“8½ has always been a touchstone for me, in so many ways—the freedom, the sense of invention, the underlying rigor and the deep core of longing, the bewitching, physical pull of the camera movements and the compositions (another great black-and-white film: every image gleams like a pearl—again, shot by Gianni Di Venanzo). But it also offers an uncanny portrait of being the artist of the moment, trying to tune out all the pressure and the criticism and the adulation and the requests and the advice, and find the space and the calm to simply listen to oneself.”
– Martin Scorsese