In 1960, Federico Fellini consulted the famed psychologist Ernest Bernhard, describing one of his dreams by sketching it on paper. A talented cartoonist, Fellini had already published numerous drawings and comics in humor magazines and newspapers by this time (Kezich 13). Consequently, Bernhard suggested that Fellini continue to sketch his dreams in a journal (Tornabuoni 103).
The result was two leather-bound books filled with cartoons documenting Fellini's wild dreamscapes over a period of 20 years and entitled "The Book of Dreams." The books were mass-published in 2008, only after the original volumes were extricated, via a complex legal battle, from the vault in Rome where they had been stored since Fellini's death in 1993 ("Federico Fellini: The Book of Dreams"). These dreams and sketches heavily informed the way Fellini wrote and structured 8 1/2, amongst other films.
Although friend and biographer Tullio Kezich writes that Fellini wasn't an avid filmgoer as a child, he also notes that young Federico named the four posts of his bed after the four prominent movie theaters in his hometown of Rimini, already aware of the connection between dreaming and filmmaking (Kezich 8-12).
"The show began the moment I closed my eyes," Fellini once wrote. "First a velvety darkness, deep and transparent, a darkness that led into another kind of darkness." When he completed one dream, lying at one corner of the bed, he believed, "the show in that corner had come to an end, and so [he] switched to the next bedpost."
Just as in his films, Fellini seems to fluidly drift between comedy and tragedy in his Book of Dreams. Whereas many of his drawings include voluptuous naked women in silly, vulgar situations, other drawings reveal his fear of death and failure.
"On the top floor of a very tall skyscraper, I am shooting a scene that is very difficult, not from the stylistic point of view, but rather because of incredible complications in the shooting...Suddenly, we hear the noise of breaking glass, and I am informed that on the floor below a crazed father has hurled his own child out of the window, smashing the glass. Terrified, I watch the child's body fall into the abyss."
As he grew older, Fellini dreamed less, or else was less able to remember his dreams. He claimed to suffer from insomnia and, like the character of Luisa in 8 1/2, had to take tranquilizers in order to sleep, therein dampening his ability to dream.
"I must say that, despite these pills and tablets, and despite my being rather less effervescent than I was at thirty or forty, at the end or beginning of each new film I have a dream that ties in with what I'm doing, a dream that in some subtle way offers a foretaste of the result and the way the film will be received" (Tornabuoni 103).
