Hollywood has such a bad habit of taking something which is good and twisting it, squishing it and pummeling it until it fits into the dvd case of a Hollywood film. Don't get me wrong, Hollywood has changed the way that film is made and seen. It is a cultural institution of the highest value (please take with a grain of salt). The problem is that not only have they changed Cinema, they have changed, remodeled and re-invested the specific film itself. With James Camerons Nine having been just released I feel a surge of anger and sorrow because a lot of people out there will see this film and never know that there was an 8 1/2. Now, I dont want to be to quick to judge because I haven't had the chance to go see Nine, but I think it would be fair to say that it will be a very homogenized version of Fellini's classic film.
8 1/2 is a masterpiece of Italian Cinema. Released in 1963 it embodies the ideals, beliefs and struggles of the Modern Italian Man. This film discusses the miracle of post-industrial, post-war, post-religious society and delves into the psychosis of a man who has come out the other side of the considerable amount of change that was the Modernization of Italy. Now, I just can't see how Hollywood is really going to capture that.
Fellini uses themes of the dream and illusion to create fissures in reality, throwing us a metaphor of the confusion of the modern man. Sometimes this film can be very self-indulgent, "His mistress shifts to whore; his mother turns into his wife. His childhood women, his nanny, his grandmother and La Saraghina, a prostitute who inhabited an abandoned beachside bunker in his youth, all march freely from Guido's subconscious across the screen. All his lovers converge for a harem sequence where they are all amenable to one another - or subdued with a whip as in La Seraghina's case". Fellini via Mastroianni somehow does this with charm.
Marcello Mastroianni: Love of my life
Nine certainly boasts a considerable amount of talent (Dame Judy Dench need I say more) and I am very much looking forward to seeing it. If Daniel Day-Lewis is half the man that Mastroianni is then it will be well worth it. Plus who doesn't want to see silver screen divas like Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Kate Hudson, Sophia Loren and Fergie all fight it out for the spotlight. I guess its just important to pay homage to the original and the original intent, because after all it is a brilliant film!
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