8 ½ (Otto e Mezzo)

Released: January 2, 1963

Studio: Cineriz (Italy), Columbia Films S.A. (France)

Genre: comedy/foreign

Box Office (numbers in millions):

Domestic: 0.098 Worldwide: 0.201

Adjusted for Inflation:

Domestic: -- Worldwide: 0.68

Directing: Federico Fellini

Screenwriting: Federico Fellini, Tullio Pinelli, Ennio Flaiano, Brunello Rondi

Starring: Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, Anouk Aimee, Sandra Milo, Rossela Falk, Barbara Steele

Review:

“After achieving international acclaim with increasingly expressionistic portraits of the world as he saw it — from the simple circus performers of “La Strada” to the decadent Roman nightlife of “La Dolce Vita” — Italian maestro Federico Fellini lost confidence in his capacity to create. Instead of giving up, he channeled that artistic despair into his most uninhibited triumph: a freewheeling and shamelessly autobiographical movie about a philandering filmmaker’s crippling case of directile dysfunction, full to bursting with past mistresses, childhood memories and psychoanalytic symbology. From the opening anxiety dream, in which Marcello Mastroianni (as Fellini’s self-flattering/flagellating stand-in) claws his way out of a traffic jam, to the climactic rondelet around the rocket set, the blocked director found surrealistic inspiration in his subconscious.” ^VY