Trivia / 8½

• Billing Displacement: Despite being top credited, Claudia Cardinale has barely some eight minutes of screen time in the whole movie.
• Creator Breakdown: Federico Fellini's life at this point was at a low point, having a creative block while working on a movie, becoming disillusioned by directing in general, and going through a crisis in his marriage. All this is mirrored by the main character in the movie, also a director, who eventually has an Imagine Spot suicide before quitting his work on the movie he was directing and trashing the props, which had already cost a fortune to make. In the end, however, he finally feels a sense of relief for the first time in ages.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Federico Fellini often cited this as his favourite of all his works.
• The Danza: Claudia is played by Claudia Cardinale.
• Fake Nationality: Guido's wife Luisa is played by French actress Anouk Aimée, and La Saraghina is played by Eddra Gale, an opera singer from Chicago.
• Looping Lines: The film was shot, like almost all Italian movies at the time, completely without sound recording on set. All dialogue was dubbed during post production. Federico Fellini was known for shouting direction at his actors during shooting, and for rewriting dialogue afterwards, making a lot of the dialogue in the movie appear out-of-sync.
• What Could Have Been: At one point, Federico Fellini wanted to cast Laurence Olivier in the lead role.
• Working Title: La Bella Confusione, i.e. The Beautiful Confusion.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: Federico Fellini was well-known for working without a stable, finished screenplay. At one point during pre-production, he had completely forgot what his next work would have been about, his original idea had completely gone. While he was set to communicate to the movie producer Angelo Rizzoli his intention of abandoning the project, Fellini was invited to the birthday party of a head camera-operator of Cinecittà. All of a sudden, during the celebration, he got a new idea: his film would have told about a film-director who was going to direct a film, but he forgot what it was about.

---