8½
Entry updated 3 August 2026. Tagged: Film.
Italian film (1963). Cineriz/Francinex. Directed by Federico Fellini. Written by Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli and Brunello Rondi. Cast includes Anouk Aimée, Guido Alberti, Claudia Cardinale, Rosella Falk, Marcello Mastroianni, Sandra Milo and Barbara Steele. 138 minutes. Black and white.
This acclaimed film – generally regarded as one of the best ever made; it received a 1964 Oscar as best foreign language film – is of associational interest because it is about a director who is planning to make an sf film. Veteran director Guido Alselmi (Mastroianni) has begun assembling a cast and crew for the film, and he has constructed a set of a Spaceship ready to launch, vaguely explaining that the plot involves people endeavouring to fly into space to escape a dying Earth. But for some reason he is unable to actually begin working on the film; when asked to explain his inaction, he is consistently evasive. Instead, he is distracted by visits from his wife (Aimée), mistress (Milo), and others, and he occasionally experiences hallucinations. Eventually, he decides to abandon the film project, as he and others engage in a celebratory dance around the spaceship set that is now being disassembled.
The title reflects the fact that, at this point in his career, Fellini had directed six films, co-directed one film, and directed two segments of other films; so Fellini regarded this one as his 8½th film.
Despite the absence of any stated rationale for Alselmi's reluctance to complete the project, one tempting explanation is that he cannot deal with the special challenge of making an sf film – just as Fellini himself, despite his prodigious imagination, never ventured into the genre. (Fellini did write for the Flash Gordon Comic strip during World War Two, but he later declined an invitation to direct a Flash Gordon film.) Since the film is routinely seen as semi-autobiographical, then, it could also be said to represent Fellini's own discomfort with sf. Critics usually ignore the story of the projected film and focus on the interpersonal conflicts that dominate the film, which could also be said to suggest that Alselmi is not engaged with the film because he lacks any real interest in Space Flight.
The film was later adapted as the Broadway musical Nine (1982) and the resulting film Nine (2009), but these did not include any sf references; the planned film was now described in the movie version as the director's tribute to his native Italy, the sort of thing that Fellini could have directed in his sleep. Also, while Fellini's film accepts and does not criticize Alselmi's decision to give up on the film, the musical is unpleasantly set upon chastising and punishing him for the unforgivable sin of not making a movie. [GW]
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