Phew, you got it! Thanks @Gordon_Cameron.
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Traffic jam
The movie starts with a suffocating traffic jam, that the protagonist escapes by simply flying away. His flight is short lived however, as he discovers that he is merely a human balloon with string attached and is promptly
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Pulled down to earth
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Fat bottomed girl
Part of the protagonist’s childhood memories is the prositute La Saraghina, who lives in a derelecit house on the shore and will occasionally dance with the boys.
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Spaceship model
Built for the stuck in creative limbo movie the protagonist is working on.
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The shore, but not the Jersey one. And on this shore there lives a whore.
The shoreline of Rimini, where the Italian side of my family hails from just like Fellini, makes several appearances in the film as the setting of childhood memories and most notably the finale, where all the different layers of reality come together. As for the probably confusing “Jersey” clue: it was supposed to be a hint towards the main character’s name: He is a Guido, but not the Italian American kind that spent too much time in a tanning booth.
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Memories and dreams
The film is full of memory based dream/fantasy sequences.
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Indecisive protagonist
Our protagonist cannot make up his mind up to save his life, neither on the creative decisions necessary for the completion of his movie (he even hires a film critic for real time criticism of his creative options) nor on the women in his life.
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More than one Cardinal
Guido gets a rare audience with a cardinal, who also makes an appearance in fanstasy sequences. He is also quite fond of cardinal sins and then there is the gorgeous Claudia Cardinal(e). I’m sorry. I should probably leave these types of clues to the pros like @Djscman.
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Creative crisis
The central theme of the film and also its genesis are a creative crisis. Fellini was suffering just such a crisis having to come up with his next project after La Dolce Vita and the production of 8 1/2 had some similarities to what was depicted on screen. When I first saw this film, I responded very strongly to the feeling of creative block and found some liberation in the explosion of creativity that is the final film. Truth be told, this beatiful confusion is where I stole my user name for this forum from.
This is probably the best opportunity I’ll have to share this interview snippet that I hadn’t seen before. While I don’t share Welles‘ views, it’s quite refreshing to see a director talk this bluntly about his contemporaries:
l actually thought about 8 1/2 at first, because of the Traffic Jam clue. And then again for a moment with the Creative Crisis. But l got more and more convinced we were looking for a Sci-Fi movie, and hence that the Fat bottomed girl couldn’t be anything else than the nickname given to a spaceship…
What about the Pulled down to Earth clue?
You made me want to start watching all Fellini movies, many of which l never watched.
Guido is flying through the sky after escaping the traffic jam and is just above the shore when he realizes he’s not quite as free as he thought, as there is a rope attached to his leg and he gets pulled back down to earth and real life. Snap back to reality, oh there goes gravity.
He’s not wrong about Bergman
Djscman
1990
Aw, that’s sweet of you to call me a pro, but I’m just an unpaid enthusiast. Those were really terrific clues, I just haven’t seen 8(1/2) yet. I know it’s a classic, and when I had Filmstruck it was always in my queue. Maybe I was underwhelmed or merely whelmed by Peter Greenaway’s 8(1/2) Women, but one of these days, I’ll see it.
That was a good clip from the Orson Welles interview too. He could be so deliciously catty. I wish he was still alive today; he’d probably have a great podcast.
Oh god, Welles is the ultimate dinner party guest. I’ve never seen one of his old talk show appearances that wasn’t a total delight.
Can you imagine him and Truman Capote at the same table?
Just don’t let him near the expensive booze.
No wine before its time! hic
What time is it? Its Funny Five time!
Fast food meal
Famous Victorians square off
Crystal key
Disappointed utopian
An actor in the early part of a typecast career
Djscman
1999
That’s a good guess!
I’ll guess Tomorrowland just in case it’s, you know, Tomorrowland.
JoshL gets it in one! It is Time After Time.
- HG Wells has food at McDonald’s
- Wells vs. Jack the Ripper. Let’s get ready to rumble!
- Because plot reasons, the time machine can condemn you to a horrible fate if you don’t put in the sparkly crystal key, or something.
- Wells was hoping for a socialist utopia, but he found… 1970’s San Francisco! Hey, it wasn’t that bad, was it?
- David Warner, who had previously played Reinhard Heydrich in the 1978 ‘Holocaust’ miniseries, was just getting warmed up playing bad dudes. To come: Time Bandits, Tron, Titanic…
JoshL
2001
David Warner is a treasure. I am so happy whenever I see that guy on screen, even if he is usually (always?) a villain. Well, he was a good guy in Penny Dreadful, as I remember, but he wasn’t on it much.
I gotta think of another movie!
