An early title for what is now 8 1/2 was "La bella confusione," or "A Beautiful Confusion." This was an appropriate title at the time, since Federico Fellini was long unsure about the premise of his next film after his successful La Dolce Vita.
At one point, Fellini even wrote his producer, Angelo Rizzoli, to say that he would give up on the film that would become 8 1/2. While writing the letter, however, he was interrupted by his film crew celebrating a birthday; at the celebration, his crew, which had been growing frustrated with his lack of communication about the film they were waiting to shoot, toasted him and the film in an act of goodwill. Embarrassed, Fellini went home and ripped up the letter, deciding to push forward with the project (Kezich 239).
Filmmaking itself was reaching a kind of identity crisis at the time, since the early 60s saw the introduction of color film, which would later achieve dominance over black-and-white (Kezich 238). Perhaps equally important was the introduction of "auteur theory," developed by French theorists and filmmakers like André Bazin and François Truffaut. According to auteur theory, film directors should be assigned more stylistic and authorial credit for a film, since they possess singular control over the vision for a film, a realization that film scholar D.A. Miller has called the "emancipation proclamation of 'personal' filmmaking" (Miller 13).
As Fellini geared up to shoot 8 1/2, auteur theory was not only a popular theory, but a bona fide commercial force, since a well-known director's name on the marquee was often how theaters sold tickets (Miller 12). This phenomenon is a palpable backdrop in 8 1/2, wherein the film's success lives and dies on Guido's articulation of his creative vision for it.
In 1960, Fellini also began to log his dreams by sketching and writing about them in a journal, another clear influence on what would become 8 1/2. The idea for this journal came when Fellini attempted to explain one of his dreams to famed Jungian psychologist Ernest Bernhard, who suggested that he keep an animated dream log. The result was Fellini's Books of Dreams, several leather-bound volumes of drawings in ink and felt-tip pen.
"'When I was about six or seven,' he wrote, 'I was convinced that we lived two existences—one with our eyes open, and one with them closed'" (Fellini, qtd in Tornabuoni 103).
In an illustration from 1961, for example, Fellini talks with a cardinal. "In a dark room weakly illuminated by candles," Fellini writes, "Cardinal Montini stares into the darkness with his icy eyes...It is evident that he does not believe for a moment the Christian message that critics, scholars, and priests have found in my films" (Fellini, qtd in Tornabuoni 104).
Although many of the direct influences on Fellini in 8 1/2 remain hazy, friend and biographer Tullio Kezich supposes that Fellini drew on Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries, the writing of Marcel Proust (which deals heavily with memory and dreams), and Pieter Bruegel's paintings of the Tower of Babel. Today, 8 1/2 has itself inspired numerous films and will continue to influence filmmaking for a long time.
