3. prostitute dance on the beach. When the young Guido is brought into a hall with all the
other priests, his mother is presented there, crying and ashamed of Guido. He starts
over to her before she stops him with a stretched out arm, not wanting to receive him
due to his sinful behavior. But as soon as he confesses, he goes back to the beach to
find the prostitute, Saraghina.
Earlier in the film, Guido dreams that he is with his deceased father in the
cemetery, making Guido feel bad about not having a large enough casket and the likes
(more guilt and shame). Once he lowers his father into the ground, he sees his mother
next to him. She takes him by the head and aggressively kisses him. When Guido pulls
her away from him, she transforms into his wife.
So right now we have a disturbing connection between the mother and his wife.
There’s no sexual situations between Guido and his mother whatsoever. The only two
instances where she is in the film is when he imagines her calling him a fool when he
pulls the trigger of the gun and when she walks away from him during the finale and the
circus ring of life.
It is clear that there is no Norman Bates complex with Guido. But, it is safe to say
that his mother’s negative attitude toward him has psychologically affected the person
he chose as a wife. In almost each instance where Guido is with his wife, she looks
down on him for something or another. When the group goes in the car to look at the
new set for the film, she is annoyed that he didn’t ask her directly if she wanted to go.
After they leave the set and go to the hotel, she accuses Guido of flirting with her
younger sister. At the cafe where the wife is with her friend and Guido, she spots his
4. mistress, Carla. And possibly the last straw, she is furious that Guido changed real life
situations for his screen test of actresses, who were obviously supposed to be his wife.
Here we have a woman who treats Guido the same way that his mother did. Here we
have the mother archetype ruling his life even though we hardly see her in the film. But
further along in our analysis we will have to ask; how much is Guido aware of his
surroundings?
The most important archetype next to his mother in the film is that of the anima.
The anima is an unknown woman and the “male sexual counterpart” that is formed as
the ideal version of the mother (Dreams, 67). Even though she isn’t the mother, she is
the “maternal symbol of salvation”(Burke, 133). The anima is a “life giving factor” that is
held to such high esteem as the perfect candidate to salvation. Jung says it is “a natural
archetype that satisfactorily sums up all the statements of the unconscious, of the
primitive mind…”(Archetypes, 27).
To find such a creature in 8 ½ one need look no further than Claudia, the actress
that Guido wants to cast as his ideal woman. How do we know this? Guido fantasizes
about her throughout the film. The first time we see her, she literally floats over to Guido
to hand him a glass of mineral water at the spa he is staying. He quickly snaps out of it.
You shouldn’t be a Jungian psychologist or Campbellian mythologist to understand that
water represents life. So by handing the water to Guido, he subconsciously believes
that she can save him from the hell around him. To further illustrate her diviness, she is
constantly wearing white. White is best represented as a sign of purity, virgin qualities
about her. In contrast, Saraghina the whore is in black and his mother is in a business
5. suit of grey (further analysis would be intriguing but the madonna/whore dichotomy in
this film is another paper unto itself).
Guido is a complex man. He constantly needs to escape into his fantasies in
order to cope with his director’s block and colorful love life. One of the unsung agonies
that Guido is dealing with is his age. Age is brought up again and again and makes our
protagonist uncomfortable. He is rude to a production manager that we learn has
worked with Guido on several films in the past. During the scene where endless
amounts of people try to get his attention in the hotel lobby, the older manager is the
only one he snaps at. Later that night when Guido refuses to listen to him, the man
throws a fit and says he quits, reminding Guido that “you aren’t the same man you once
were”.
In the same hotel lobby scene, his producer gives him the gift of a watch. As we
know, time is of the essence in starting the film’s production. Jung says time “implies a
state of tension for anybody who lives by the clock...he must do something or the
other”(Dreams, 178). Jung was referring to symbols in dreams, but it’s quite fitting
seeing how our protagonist has his head in the clouds for half the movie. But this is
juxtaposed to another man asking Guido, out of the older gentlemen with him, which
one should play the role of the father (in the movie). Almost nervously, he looks all of
them over and says they are not old enough, although each of them are well into their
seventies.
Alas! Five pages in and we have a problem with Guido that isn’t Oedipal! Guido
is afraid of dying. Of old age. He is experiencing a midlife crisis. From the beginning
6. claustrophobia/car dream, Guido has been experiencing dreams that play a major part
as to his well being. Along with his memories, they are trying to tell him something.
These big dreams occur “mostly during the critical phases of life, in early youth, puberty,
at the onset of middle age...and within sight of death”(Dreams, 77). A man in mid life
crisis “still feels young, and age and death lie far ahead of him. At about thirtysix he
passes the zenith of life, without being conscious of the meaning of this fact….this
moment will be forced upon him...in the form of an archetypal dream” (Dreams, 78).
Guido’s friend, Mario, personifies everything about middle age that Guido is
afraid of becoming. Even though he’s the same age, Mario looks significantly older than
Guido. We learn at the spa that he has recently left his wife of seventeen years and is
engaged to some fruitcake that is half his age. The juxtaposition of these two types of
people is quite comical. To make further fun at the mid life crisis Mario is experiencing,
Guido watches the younger partner out maneuver a huffing and puffing sweaty Mario on
the dance floor. This personification of what the main character fears within himself is
called the shadow. This archetype is everything the character detests but can see within
himself (Archetypes, 20).
Guido wants to control things that are outside of his power. He doesn’t want to
age, but time moves forward. He wants to connect with his wife, but sleeps around with
other women. What he doesn’t realize is that he causes half of his troubles. Out of all
the chaos going on in his life, Guido seems to be running in a loop; in his past he is
caught between his sinful lust for Saraghina and lack of love he feels from his mother. In
his present, he sleeps with a married woman and rolls his eyes when his wife calls him
7. out on it. It’s a pattern that Guido isn’t getting yet. It’s almost as if those sunglasses of
his prevent him from actually seeing. In his dream of every woman in his life taking care
of him in his childhood house, Guido puts them back in line by cracking the whip. The
lack of control he feels he has in his life comes to a head during the test screenings.
The writer he’s working with rambles on about some of Guido’s shortcomings as a
conceptualist, and imagines the self indulgent writer getting hanged by a gesture of his
hand. But then while his wife is watching the screen tests, she realizes that they are
private conversations that she and Guido had had, but this time eskewed more to
Guido’s liking than the actual truth. The lowest of the low hits Guido after the blow out
with his wife. But Claudia, his dream girl, comes in as if to the rescue.
The audience, much like Guido, are unsure what to make of Claudia. As opposed
to her gentle smile and passive movements in Guido’s fantasy, the real Claudia seems
more confident and sharp than he may have wanted. Instead of the white in the
fantasies, she’s in an elaborate black dress and in full control of the car she is driving
(another nice notion of the madonna/whore dichotomy we decided not to get into detail
about).
When asked about the part that he has for her, Guido rambles off about the plot;
a man who has nothing left to give, doesn’t know what people want from him. He says
her character can save the protagonist. All she replies with is “he doesn’t know how to
love”. After assessing it, he tells her that there’s no part for her.
8. This goes right along with Jung’s notion that the anima is just an idea. There’s no way
for Guido (or the character in his film) to obtain the dream girl because she doesn’t
exist.
The finale Jungian aspect that can be applied to 8 ½ is the process of
individuation. “This process is, in effect, the spontaneous realization of the whole man.”
The “I” or ego that every person has splits himself off from connection with everyone
else. Guido feels very much alone, as we can see in his suffocating car in the beginning
of the movie. But because “everything in life strives for wholeness....our conscious life is
continually being corrected...whose goal is the ultimate integration of consciousness
and unconscious,or better, the assimilation of the go to a wider personality” (Dreams,
78). Now, how does Guido achieve this?
Right after he admits that there is no part for Claudia in his movie (life), the
producer and company carry him off to the press conference where the movie is to be
announced, in front of the half built set. Once they get to the tables with all the
microphones, the press start asking questions. Guido doesn’t respond at all. He
contemplates about Conocchio, the old production manager, saying, “if I tried you badly,
I’m sorry. You were the best of them all.” He goes underneath the table and “kills
himself”. The producer had promised that if he pulled out of the film, he would ruin
Guido. Guido is willing to make that sacrifice. It can be see as a “killing of the ego”
(Burke, 135).
The film wraps with Guido besides himself that there are no longer production
strains, and turns his energies with trying to renew his relationship with his wife. All this
9. for the most part is in his head. But the tone is completely different from the Guido we
have seen the entire movie. The mind reader assistant congratulates him, tells Guido
they’re ready to begin, and after our protagonist sees all the faces in his life dressed in
beautiful white. For the last time, Guido directs them with a bull horn as they march
happily with joined hands around the circle. Guido then joins his wife, locks hands, and
becomes a part of the circle. Once all the characters exit, young Guido is spotlighted
playing his flute, until he and the spotlight fades away.
In his inner monologue, Guido asks for forgiveness from his wife, and to accept
him as he is, “forgive me sweet creatures, I didn’t know. I didn’t understand.” Guido has
transcended into understanding the world around him. Instead of fighting the forces he
cannot control, he is willing to set free the things that are not in his power and continue
along the cycle of life.
By becoming aware of himself and symbolically joining the circle, he has
achieved the process of individuation. Guido has learned to love. Claudia was not the
only one to tell Guido he was incapable of it. The two young girls in the beginning of the
movie said he was “incapable of making a love story”. At the press conference, a
reporter asks him about the generalities of love. By making peace with himself, he is
able to love. A great suggestion of this is how everyone not just Claudia is dressed in
all white. This whiteness “conveys the moving paradox that love transfigures without
altering. Guido can now see others in a new light without imposing change”(Burke, 136).
In making 8 ½, Fellini had said, “It didn’t have a central core from which to
develop, nor a beginning, nor could I imagine how it might end”(Burke, 156). In the liner
10. notes to the DVD, there’s a great story of how he was under contract to make another
movie, but he had no idea what it would be about (sound familiar?). At some what of a
revelation, he realized he could make a movie about a writer who had writers block.
That guy became a director and each day on set, Fellini would re write the scenes for
the day and gave his actors less than an hour to learn the new material. But Fellini had
tapped into something. And whether he would admit it or not, the subject matter hit
close to home. By using Jungian philosophy to code what it is that Guido Anselmi went
through, the audience can use their personal consciousness to understand what it is
Fellini was trying to say; in the chaos and order.
