The Dreamworld Aesthetic of 8½

Through its visionary cinematography and costume design, Federico Fellini’s 1963 film masterfully blurs the lines between memory, reality and fantasy.

This feature is the first in our summer series, La Dolce Vita: A Celebration of Italian Screen Style, in partnership with Disaronno.

Asked to describe the anarchic ‘plot’ of what would turn out to be one of his greatest cinematic achievements – a towering, madcap, melancholy exploration of artistic endeavour, male ego and personal failing – writer/director Federico Fellini settled on a rather ambitious statement. He sought to depict, he said, the three different planes “on which our minds live: the past, the present, and the conditional – the realm of fantasy.”

You might say that when it comes to the costuming of these impish, dreamlike figures, fantasy is as much a factor as is any impetus toward realism. They are symbolic as much as they are corporeal, with protagonist Guido Anselmi (played by the dashing Marcello Mastroianni) an autobiographical stand-in for Fellini himself. Piero Gherardi was the man for the job: the costumer and set designer would become a second-time Academy Award winner for 8½ off the back of his 1960 win for La Dolce Vita.

For the insouciant elegance of Guido, a trim black suit is the uniform of choice. Guido dons Neapolitan-style tailoring in the form of this silk suit – some say it’s Brioni – along with a white cotton shirt, black tie and black-frame glasses. His suit is less angular and more rounded around the shoulders than traditional 1960s tailoring – not to mention paired with penny loafers to suggest a rather more bohemian, unconventional side to his character’s supposed professionalism. You can also see it in the character’s unusual choice of headwear – a rather incongruous, old-fashioned hat – which is remarked upon by other characters in the film.

Meanwhile, in contrast to the rather tidy black-clad Mastrioanni, the women of the film are peacocks, dressed in various degrees of surrealist adornment. Guido remains both tormented by and in thrall to the women of the film – Anouk Aimee is chic and miserable as Luisa, his long-suffering wife, disguising her malaise behind black wraparound sunglasses.

Guido’s mistress, Carla (Sandra Milo), wears only negligee, ostentatious white furs and heavy makeup – vulgarity writ large. But Claudia Cardinale plays an actress (who shares her first name) whom Guido casts as his ‘Ideal Woman’. She’s enigmatic and carefree, a beguiling and unknowable figure who can only exist in fantasy. “You’ll be dressed in white with your hair long, just the way you wear it,” Guido tells her, notably mentioning clothing.

But we never actually see this vision materialise; instead, Claudia is black-clad in their nocturnal foray through Rome, far from the innocent pastoral figure he seems to be idealising her as for his screen role. Her LBD drips with matching black feathers – not the only bird-like echo in the film, and reflecting the more stark reality: less dove, more raven. Indeed, the hatwear worn by women throughout the film is strikingly avian – no doubt a reflection of the symbolic importance of flying and birds to traditional Jungian dream interpretation.

It is ultimately Cardinale’s style which has the greatest import for 8½ because she is a figure of such projection and fantasy, the muse to an artist desperate for inspiration and a man who is spiritually and sexually conflicted. Failing to fall into the Madonna-mistress dichotomy, the playfulness of her clothing seeming to be either entirely in black or white feels ironic. There’s no objectivity in the way she is seen by Guido. And it’s that subjectivity which is the guiding principle of Fellini’s world of dreams.

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