"A sign of the times" - An Essay on Fellini and Antonioni's parallel films

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8½ (1963)

directed by Federico Fellini

La Notte (1961)

directed by Michelangelo Antonioni

Watching La Notte reminded me of how much I love 8½, which sounds horrible, but just listen.

The fascination with (and anxiety of) a mysterious future is what ties these two films together: it’s the Sixties, everything feels new and different, modernity is knocking at the door, well it smashed it open actually, and now it all is and feels bigger, faster, more productive. And these artists are desperately trying to make sense of this change, looking for meaning, purpose, beyond the wreckage.

Antonioni and Fellini, two masters of Italian cinema, making movies two years apart from each other with the same male actor as the protagonist, telling two sides of the same story.

I absolutely and unconditionally love Fellini and in particular his masterpiece 8½, so my preference is inevitably more on his side, but I must say La Notte was a very pleasant surprise. It’s captivating and enchanting and you can feel the artistry that created it, the intellectual and extremely sensitive mind that crafted it, you can feel the hands of its maker preparing this world for us to step into and enjoy, almost as if we were giants walking into a tiny urban architectural model for a school project. And it’s actually so much more than it seems, the characters' development is impressive, the cinematography is otherworldly and the story is tormenting and simply perfect. It is a little absurd, just as I like it, but more rational, more grounded and practical than Fellini’s dreamy visions, you can touch it and feel it and it is human: physical and mortal. It’s a great film.

So, Fellini and Antonioni share a time and a world, a love for cinema, poetry, elegance, for beauty and the inner journeys of the soul, a passion for this new time that’s coming and is both scary and exciting, as well as a nostalgia for what’s in the past: “the last time we came here this railway was working” says Giovanni to Lidia in La Notte, and again when Giovanni says “I have no more ideas, just memories”. It’s bittersweet, it’s heartbreaking, it's beguiling, it’s wonderful.

In front of (and in contrast with) the desolation of the artist facing this upsettingly fast-moving changing time there’s money and pleasures: wealth, abundance and a desperate feeling of emptiness.

“The absurd”, said Albert Camus, “is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world”.

These lives of entertainment and fun, are lives of constant dissatisfaction. The splendour of cars and clothes and food and music leaves souls unfed, unnourished. Big buildings, traffic, a record that teaches you english, capitalism at its finest and solitude, confusion, estrangement. Alienation.

Valentina: all the luxury and all the sadness in the same person, looking for vices to fill this constant need for more, no love ever being enough. Guido Anselmi: fame, success, money, a wife, a mistress, a film, but never quite satisfied. “Life would be bearable if there weren’t any pleasures” / “La vita sarebbe sopportabile se non ci fossero i piaceri” says Giovanni Pontano in La Notte quoting Charles Sainte-Beuve.

One moment in La Notte I really enjoyed is the conversation between Giovanni and the magnate at the party. “Ogni miliardario vuole il suo intellettuale” / “Every billionaire wants his intellectual” Lidia said before. The capitalist asks the author about his art, and what would he do if he weren't a writer. Giovanni answers by saying that writing feels obsolete to him, being closed in a room, alone, incapable of finding an automatism to replace it, whereas working in the industrial business you deal with real stuff, real people: “The rhythm of life and time is in your hands (the industrialists’ hands), maybe even the future is in your hands” / “Il ritmo della vita e del tempo è nelle vostre mani, forse anche il futuro è nelle vostre mani”. To those words the magnate answers carelessly, almost distractedly: “Il futuro è probabile che non cominci mai”, in English : "it is possible that the future will never begin".

Giovanni will later tell the reason why he can’t write anymore to Valentina: “Si chiama crisi, siamo in molti oggi ad averla” / “It's called a crisis, it's many of us who have it today”. I think this is Antonioni explicitly describing his reality, his condition, and it's the same as Fellini. It's a time of crisis.

Crisis can mean many things. Crise, crisis, "decisive point in the progress of a disease," also "vitally important or decisive state of things, point at which change must come, for better or worse," from Latinized form of Greek krisis "turning point in a disease, that change which indicates recovery or death" (used as such by Hippocrates and Galen), literally "judgment, result of a trial, selection," from krinein "to separate, decide, judge". I'll interprete it here as change. To be in a crisis, is to be in the middle of a shift, a mutation in your life, in your world, and that is precisely what both Fellini and Antonioni are going through. As Nina Simone says "You can't help it. An artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times."

These stories are so similar, yet so different. 8½ has been described as Fellini’s testament, his autobiographical surreal feature film. La Notte isn’t Antonioni’s life; sure, you can hear his voice through the words of his characters but it is not him you’re seeing, it’s pieces of him mixed with his imagination and a lot of fiction.

But the biggest difference may be that Antonioni is not trying to make fun of this world, he’s not criticising it, he’s simply portraying it, and his picture is not as shocking and provocative as the one Fellini aims to create. It’s much more modest, practical, descriptive.

8½ shows a frivolous universe, that is extreme, eccentric, artificial, drastically unrelatable and yet so close to our human experiences, much more complex, layered and intertwined, there isn’t one simple truth, one explanation, one point of view.

It is incoherent and contradictory. There is so much beauty and extravagance to the point it feels nauseating. It’s a cruel and disgusting and terrifying paradise, an infernal Eden. Because life is Fellini's greatest love and deepest pain.

I feel like the difference between Antonioni and Fellini’s work is like the difference between Milan and Rome in Italy, one is the mind, the other one is heart, reality and dream, reason and sentiment... Fellini’s universe is passional, alluring, it’s almost an aphrodisiac, once you see it you can’t look away, and it is filled with truth but it’s a masked ball where everyone, rich and poor, good and evil, is invited. It’s a punch in the guts, a jump into the void, it’s a balancing game and a reckless bet.

Antonione paints a picture with already existing colours, he's not inventing, he's watching, transcribing, telling a tale he has heard somewhere before.

I cannot say if one is better than the other, but I will say they fit perfectly together.

Both these movies talk about a shared life experience, the end of an era, they look at it differently, both with hope and despair, both with adoration and disgust. Trying to both fly away, go with the flow, follow the current, and yet remaining tied to a past ideal, a time that was more simple, more concrete, more grounded.