Summary
Snapping out of his reveries, Guido finds himself listening to Daumier, who is yet again targeting Guido's film for its dependence on Guido's childhood memories.
Guido and his colleagues retire to the spa's steam rooms, where his producer tells him he must think about whether audiences will relate to the film. Guido looks around, and everyone in the steam room seems to be falling asleep.
A husky female voice announces that the cardinal is awaiting Guido's presence again. A man brings him clothes in which to dress and urges him to confess everything. Various other strangers give him advice and ask for favors to request of the cardinal.
Guido meets the cardinal in another steam room, where he tells the man he's unhappy. The cardinal asks why he believes he should be happy and recites four Latin tenets from Origen's homilies.
Suddenly, Guido is pacing through a carnival of some kind in the hotel plaza. He notices a woman smoking and realizes it's his wife, Luisa. They dance, and she teases him about having an affair. He admits that he hasn't made much progress on his film.
Luisa sneaks off alone but is intercepted by Guido's producer, who forces her, Guido, and Rossella (Luisa's friend) to get in his car. Luisa suddenly seems angry.
Along with the rest of the crew, they drive to the elaborate countryside set built for Guido's film; it is built of scaffolding several stories high on which they will project an image of a spaceship.
Everyone climbs the structure's stairs as the producer explains the premise of the film: people fleeing a thermonuclear war board a spaceship to another planet. Luisa's sister remarks that the set is just like Guido, a "self-portrait."
Enrico, Luisa's brother-in-law, offers her his jacket and asks why she seems down, but Luisa denies feeling bad. Guido also asks Rossella why Luisa is sad, she replies that she feels lost and wants Guido to change. Guido confesses he's confused by his own film and wonders where he went wrong. Rossella is spiritual and tells Guido that the spirits say he's free but has to "choose soon."
Analysis
In this section, Fellini continues to develop the sense of irony surrounding critiques of Guido's film. For example, as Guido emerges from his memory of Seraghina, he finds himself listening to Daumier skewer his film idea yet again, mocking the notion that Guido's childhood memories could be interesting to an audience. Of course, the irony here lies in the fact that Fellini has just given us, as viewers, access to Guido's childhood memories, access that is (contrary to Daumier's opinions) integral to our understanding of Guido's relationship to women and to Catholicism.
We also see Fellini blend reality and fantasy more indistinguishably than previously when Guido visits the cardinal in the spa's steam room. It remains unclear in this sequence whether we are watching a surreal yet literal occurrence unfold, or seeing a depiction of Guido's fantasies yet again. Fellini accomplishes this fluidity by allowing his camera to glide forward as if it embodies Guido's subjectivity transitioning between waking and dream states of being. The presence of steam in this sequence likewise flirts with the dramatic convention wherein smoke connotes the start of a dream sequence. By supplying and subverting these formal conventions, Fellini builds on the scene's surreal tone.
Also integral to this section of the film is the image and symbolism of the gargantuan spaceship set built for Guido's film. In itself, the set functions as an allusion to the biblical Tower of Babel, a structure that ultimately crumbled when God punished its builders for their hubris. As Guido's friends and family climb the set, his sister-in-law remarks that the structure is a "self-portrait" of Guido, an empty, "pompous shack." In this context, the set contributes to the film's foreboding mood, as it foreshadows the day when the structure will come crashing down.
There is irony in this set, as well, since it seems to be the antithesis of Guido's search for authenticity and honesty in his filmmaking. Until Guido's producer explains to their friends that the film Guido is making is a science fiction film, it is unclear to us what his film is actually about. In fact, Fellini seems intentionally to obscure this crucial detail until this scene, building confusion around the nature of the film by characterizing it with seemingly dissonant qualities.
In effect, this contributes to the sense of absurdity that pervades the film, since Guido's film gradually builds into a kind of Frankensteinian monster that eludes his control. This lack of control extends to his relationships, as well, which we see most clearly in this section, as Guido's wife arrives in town. In this way, the image of the spaceship set is a physical equivalent for the emotional mess in which Guido finds himself as a result of his affairs and impossible standards for women.
