8½

Frost's Descent has just passed and the Beginning of Winter is under a fortnight away — the weeks when things withdraw inward. The two films today run in opposite directions: 8½ pulls every action back into one man's head; The General throws every action outward for seventy-nine minutes without stopping.

Nor is it an arbitrary pair. One is a 1963 Italian film in black and white, Fellini's last; the other a 1926 American silent, the one Keaton said he was proudest of. One has far too many words and cannot say a single thing clearly; the other has almost none, and his whole town misreads him.

Together they ask the same question twice: when you are misjudged, do you explain, or do you act?

8½ goes first. The light is going fastest now, and almost all of it happens indoors, inside one head.

一辆车堵在路上。车里的人透不过气，拍窗、踢门，四周车窗里全是面无表情的脸。他挣脱出来，整个人离开地面，飘在城市上空——然后被地面上的人拽了回去。

这是开场的一个梦。醒来的人是 Guido Anselmi，意大利名气最大的导演之一，此刻住在一处温泉疗养地，名义上是休养，实际上是在躲一部他已经答应要拍的电影。剧组已经住进来了，布景已经搭好，制片人天天问什么时候开机，而他连这部片子要讲什么都还没想清楚。

他请了一位影评人来听构思，被当面否掉。他的情妇来了，他把人安排到另一家旅馆。他的妻子也来了。还有一位他想象中的完美女人，一直在等他给出一个合适的说法。

It is Fellini's eighth-and-a-half film by his own arithmetic: six features, one co-directed with Alberto Lattuada, and two short segments. The title is a self-referential joke, and so is the film — it is about a director who cannot make a film, and the film he cannot make is this one.

At the 36th Academy Awards in 1964 it won Best Foreign Language Film and Best Costume Design in black and white, with nominations for Director, Original Screenplay and Art Direction. That same year the New York Film Critics Circle named it Best Foreign Language Film, and it swept all seven Nastri d'Argento awards.

One thing is worth stating precisely: it screened at Cannes in April 1963 to near-universal acclaim and won nothing, because it was shown outside competition — Cannes required exclusivity, and the film was already Italy's official entry for Moscow. On 18 July 1963 it took the Grand Prix at the 3rd Moscow International Film Festival before an audience of eight thousand in the Kremlin; the jury included Satyajit Ray.

Then half a century of rankings: 10th in the 2012 Sight & Sound critics' poll and 4th among directors; 7th on the BBC's 2018 list of the greatest foreign-language films; on Italy's list of 100 films to be saved; on the Vatican's list of 45 important films.

The reviews were never unanimous. Pauline Kael called it a structural disaster, John Simon a disheartening fiasco, Judith Crist said it never touched her. Alberto Moravia called it a private monologue; François Truffaut found it complete, simple, beautiful and honest; Dwight Macdonald called it the most brilliant and entertaining movie since Citizen Kane. Roger Ebert wrote in 1993 that despite everyone else who has tried the same story, it remains the definitive film about director's block.