Author: Li Xiaoyang
In the history of cinema, every film master has a fixed trick: Hitchcock's suspense "McGuffin", Bergman's dream, Ang Lee's reason and emotion, Fellini's woman and carnival. Women are the theme of the movie "Eight and a Half", and as for the dramatic story of what happens to women, Fellini does not care. Indeed, Fellini was never concerned with stories, but with some sort of drowsy state of mind.
Revisiting "Eight and a Half Parts" on the occasion of fellini's birth is of some special significance. Filmed in 1963, in a departure from the style of Italian neorealist cinema, Fellini no longer thinks about grand humanitarianism through theft, as DeSica's Bicycle Thief (1948). In Fellini, the film was destroyed and rebuilt; the narrative was stripped out, and the content of modernism was sent to the screen.
Fellini's films are luxurious, hedonistic, passionate, romantic and imaginative, which is the style of the Baroque and the characteristic of Fellini. "Eight and a Half Parts" tells the story of the film director Guydo who fell into creative anxiety while filming, and at the same time fell into the vortex of feelings. Guydo is a portrait of Fellini, whose set is like a circus, where everyone is waiting for his orders. Faced with the written book, Fellini fell into anxiety, he could not find the subject, only a hazy thought in his head to "depict a person's life on a certain day", so there was the role of Guido played by Mastruanni: constantly tormented by life, entangled in memories, fantasies, emotions and dreams. The characters appear and end in disbelief, and the film becomes a maze of overlapping and gliding. Fellini presided over the beginning and exit of the Baroque labyrinth, and Mastruani was the façade of the labyrinth.
Dreams are the oldest aesthetic activity of mankind and constitute the mechanism of Fellini's cinema. Fellini said: "Life is a long sleep without sleep, we do not live in reality, but live in the world of appearances, dreams are our real life." The fantasy thoughts in my head are not only the reality of my existence, but also the raw material of my film work. "There are two important dreams in "Eight and a Half Parts": one is a dream of not being able to fly into the sky without a car, and the other is a dream of Guydo helping his father enter the grave. What do these two dreams portend? According to psychologist Jung, symbolic symbols express things that cannot be expressed. The dream of not being able to open the window is a symbol of anxiety, and the burial of the father is a metaphor for killing the father.
"Eight and a Half" has many female characters such as mother, wife, and lover. Why are so many female characters in the film? Fellini explains: "It is a male fantasy for all women to live in harmony together. Those women represent different emotions at different stages in a man's life. Fellini's guardian angels were women, as were the enlighteners of Guydo. From the film, the audience can see Fellini's ambiguous attitude: half innocence, half sin. It is strange that this "innocence" and "sin" can be harmoniously kept together in the movie. This relationship began in La Dolce Vita (1960) and continued through Juliet and the Devil (1965) and Casanova (1976).
Every adult man has a little boy in his heart, and Fellini is no exception. Italian director Pasolini wrote in "Naturalistic Elements in the Linguistic Structure of Fellini's Films": "In the final analysis, Fellini has a 'naughty boy' in his heart - for this 'naughty boy', Fellini is willing to resign himself to it, allowing him to show extraordinary cleverness and cunning. Coincidentally, Fellini also used the child's "jealousy" to explain innocence: "Every time a new film is made, the film becomes a jealous mistress who will say' only me!' You can only serve me alone'... When I give everything to her, the relationship will end and it will go into my memory bank. "Once a movie is finished, Fellini falls into a state of lost love. So, the movie is Fellini's innocent lover, and every time a new movie is made, Fellini will fall in love again.
These "more childish" content is somewhat difficult to understand, so that the audience needs to maintain a high state of acceptance when watching the movie. "Fefe, why don't you make some movies that we can understand?" On the way back from the promotion of the movie "The Liar", the taxi driver asked Fellini this. Fellini replied: "That's because I'm shooting the truth, the truth is always ambiguous, and the lie can be understood quickly." ”
The truth is ambiguous, Fellini is obscure, and "Eight and a Half" is difficult to understand. In addition to the director's ambiguous attitude, an important reason is that he infuses all the elements of the Baroque style into the film. For example, the movement transition, such as sculpture and architecture, such as the music of Chopin and Wagner, such as the discussion of Catholicism. These give the film more patterns, details, space and three-dimensionality, opening up the realm beyond the film. These elements constitute cinematic rhetoric and construct meaning. Therefore, to understand the mystery in Fellini's films, we cannot rely on logical reason, but on the rediscovery of sensibility.
The great artist Fellini reconstructed the film as a dreamer, reliving the film version of the Baroque dream. Fellini pays homage to the cinematic aesthetics of the Mélières and Griffiths era, whose films have ornate costumes, metaphorical sculptures, and reconcile elements of drama and burlesque.
Fellini was the vessel, and how many successors stole his cup, imitated him, studied him, admired him. Emile Kusturica stole Fellini's cup and mixed Fellini's revelry and absurd joy into his own wine: "Underground" (1995), "White Cat And Black Cat" (1998); Cai Liang stole Fellini's cup and put the same director's scorched story in Paris, and a bunch of symbolic symbols appeared in Face (2009). Fellini is an open road that leads to Rome, and countless directors start from Fellini's films and go to all directions of film.
(The author is a lecturer at Beijing Film Academy)
Source: Guangming Network - Literary And Art Review Channel