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June 8, 2008
We had a frustrating night last night trying to access ABC 2 through a digital set top box so that we could watch Dr. Strangelove. We gave up after an hour or so.
We decided to watch a DVD of an early Federico Fellini film I Vitelloni--- it is one about alienated middle-class parasites confronted with their worthlessness and with the bleakness of their futures. I was interested in the camera work and the use of black and white. Only the film was in Italian with no subtitles. For a while we thought that it was the TV not working because of us playing around trying to access ABC2. Silly us.
So we watched 8½ instead---a film about the making of a movie and a director's block.
 The central character is supposed to be directing an ill-defined science fiction film but has lost interest amid artistic and marital difficulties. As he struggles half-heartedly to work on the film, a series of flashbacks and dreams delve into his memories and fantasies. They are then frequently interwoven with reality.
The complexity lies in the delicate balance of real world vs. fantasy world vs. flashback scenes. It signifies Fellini's turn toward dream, imagination and memory after La dolce vita that drew inspiration from the dream theory of Carl Jung. If what is presented is a subjective collection of episodes and images, the embodied spectator’s bodily experience of this cinema lead to us falling asleep!
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