Guido at the Mercy of Detractors

So we've come to the end of our long, verbose journey. Tim Brayton, of the excellent film blog Antagony and Ecstasy and I have been tracking the winding path of Nine to the screen. First we had a discussion based on my viewing of 8 1/2, Federico Fellini's film about his life and artistic struggles (parts one and two) then we talked about Tim's initial listen to the original cast album of Nine, Maury Yeston and Arthur Kopit's musical adaptation of the film (which can be found here). Now we've each seen the film version, directed by Rob Marshall and...well, it's a pretty sad discussion. Tim has already posted our discussion at his blog, but here it is for your reading pleasure.


Tim:
Hi Zev,

Well, here we are at last with Nine, as adapted by Michael Tolkin and the late Anthony Minghella from Maury Yeston and Arthur Kopit's 1982 Broadway musical - or is it? I know we both have quite a few disappointments with this one, for a lot of shared and personal reasons, but I want to put that off for the moment to focus on what seems to me the film's strange and ultimately fatal choice to bring so very much of Federico Fellini's 8½ back into the fold, both visually and narratively. I remember finding to my shock how much the stage musical didn't feel like a travesty of that 1963 classic, simply because it was so damn different: the thematic concerns, the way the narrative was structured. And while I might have still disliked the movie - director Rob Marshall and I do not have a very good history together - a film adaptation of Nine still would have been worth seeing.

But that's not what we saw, is it? Frankly, the film Nine doesn't feel at all like an adaptation of the show: it feels like a remake of 8½ spiced up with some songs from the stage Nine. Which is a crippling, terrible choice. A film of the musical might have been able to avoid the worst comparisons with Fellini's masterpiece, on account of being so very different; but Marshall and the writers not only court comparisons, but practically beg for them. For starters, the structure is much closer to the film than the musical: this is especially apparent in the second half, which is where the previous two versions of the story diverged most, and the film Nine follows 8½ in nearly all specifics, especially the much later arrival of Luisa Contini to the spa where Guido is staying, and the addition of several "filmmaking" scenes - I can't think of any other way to call them - like the sequence where Guido and the producers watch the screen tests, a major climax in Fellini that is wholly absent in the stage version.

The result is a terribly aimless hybrid of two essentially disparate takes on a similar (not identical!) scenario, and the film Nine never figures out what it wants its identity to be. There's simply not enough left of the musical's treatment of a man-child and the woman who have shaped his world to have that stand as the film's primary angle, but Marshall is no Fellini, and he doesn't have remotely the same things to say about creative block, although he certainly appears to suffer from it.

Even worse than it's middling appropriation of motifs from two incompatible sources, there are plenty of points where the movie just makes stuff up, which is nowhere more obvious or more upsetting than the end of the story: unaccountably, Tolkin, Minghella and Marshall decided to do away with the moment where Guido contemplates (or, in some interpretations, commits) suicide, which in both 8½ and the stage Nine seems like the obvious and inevitable point that the story has been building to all along. Instead, there's just some lame flash-forward that has all the feeling of a lazy biopic ending. If I could tell what they were trying to do there, I think I'd be a much happier man.

I'm also confused and heartbroken by the way it treats Guido's fantasies: one of the chief appeals of both the previous movie and the musical was the way that we're rarely clear whether a given moment is Guido's fantasy or the actual reality he is observing; eventually we come to understand that there's not much point in distinguishing them. But, using the same trick that appeared in Marshall's dispiriting adaptation of Chicago, all of the musical numbers are unambiguously Guido's fantasies, and everything that's not a musical number is plainly "reality", no ambiguity or melding of the real and the imagined to be found. For me, that is the whole entire point of 8½, and if it's not quite as central to Nine, it's still a tremendously important component - to do away with that entirely seems to have quite missed the point of both works of art that Marshall et al are copying.

I could and probably will say a lot about the way the film travesties Fellini, but for now, I'm tossing it over to you, to ask a) what you think about its attempt to combine the two sources, and b) your feelings on the things the film does to Yeston's music, and I know that on this second point, at least, you have some very definite, very strong opinions.


Zev:

I think you've expressed how the film unsuccessfully blends the Fellini and the original musical very clearly, though the list of shots (e. g. Guido meeting Carla at the train) and scenes (e. g. the conversaton with the Cardinal in the spa) cribbed directly from Fellini could go on and on.

And before I get into the flaws, a promise: I will say what works about the movie at the end of this message, because it's hardly a total waste.

One of Rob Marshall's fundamental ideas about film musicals, and a very unfortunate one, is that an audience simply will not accept characters breaking into song within the story. There has to be some sort of framing device, with the songs being one character's fantasies. I actually thought the device worked rather well in Chicago, where the main character dreamt of a vaudeville career, but it is far less successful here. There's simply no reason for Guido Contini's fantasies to be songs, unless the film establishes the rule that song is a part of the storytelling language.

Another problem with the device, and to my mind the more damaging one, is that it takes agency away from the women. One of the main distinctions between 8½ and Nine is that the stage musical gives the women powere they didn't have in the Fellini. They are singing directly to Guido, confronting him with their feelings, and baring their souls directly to the audience. If everything they are singing is simply what Guido imagines, it saps them of much of their power, and again makes them abstractions whose inner life Guido doesn't understand and the audience can't really access.

Several other major decisions made on the film were similarly wrongheaded: what can we make of the fact that the stage version's major stylistic device, to have the adult and child versions of Guido be the only men in a sea of women, was jettisoned? Suddenly, there are men back in Nine. However, none of them have major roles, so rather than stylistically bold and arresting the film just seems peculiar.

Why drastically reconceive two characters? Lilliane La Fleur, the fearsome Parisian producer, is changed to Judi Dench's Lilli, the kindly costume designer who acts as Guido's confidante. Leaving aside that it makes no sense for Guido to have a trusted friend of any kind, this removes any tension from "Folies Bergere": if it's not performed by a producer demanding that Guido make the musical he promised her to get the contract, what's the point? Similarly, why turned acid-tongued critic Stephanie into a fawning Vogue writer, remove her caustic countermelody from "Folies Bergere," and replace it with the really awful "Cinema Italiano"? (More on that song in a moment.) It's almost perverse to make changes that so obviously harm the story's drama.

You've already mentioned the dispiriting way the movie puts reality, memory, and fantasy into rigidly separate worlds and the weird ending, My ire is reserved for two major elements: the choreography and the music.

Rob Marshall got his start as a Broadway choreographer, but he seems to have lost something along the way. With a few exceptions, his choreography gives the impression of nothing more than crotches and breasts being thrust at the camera. Apparently this is supposed to be erotic, but only one of the characters in Nine is a prostitute. To take "A Call From the Vatican," a teasing seduction, and turn it into an exotic dancer's routine that makes Penelope Cruz look downright cheap, is really distressing. He even adds it at the least appropriate possible times--when the female chorus comes in at the end of "Guido's Song," singing a classical-sounding melody, why are they shimmying like strippers? When he avoids that trap, he ends up with choreography that is just plain dumb--why is Guido running around the set like a jungle gym and doing chin-ups during "Guido's Song"? Why does the choreography in "Cinema Italiano" consist of the chorus doing runway struts and posing, then jumping up and down while shaking their heads back and forth? (It's even more ridiculous looking than it sounds, I promise.)

But it's what happens to Yeston's score that's really heartbreaking. First off is the fact that something like half of it is missing. I didn't much miss the title song or "Getting Tall" (though I do wish they'd done something more with young Guido), but they also cut "The Bells of St. Sebastian's" (the best song in the show, and one of the great first-act closers in musical theatre), "Be On Your Own," "Simple," the entire "Grand Canal" sequence (along with the plot point that his eventual movie is a biopic of Casanova which mirrors his own life), "Not Since Chaplin," "Only With You," half of "Folies Bergere"...I understand movies have to make cuts, but this is ridiculous.

And the lyric changes? While I'm the first to admit that the musical has some clinkers, shouldn't the point of replacing them be to improve them? While I appreciate that "Be Italian,/ You rapscallion" was replaced by "Be Italian,/ Be Italian," the other changes just replaced eh lyrics with other eh lyrics, and in a few cases made decent lyrics worse. I still miss "When he was working on the film on Ancient Rome/ He made the slave girls take the gladiators home," which speaks more to the mad way Guido's life is affected by his art than "Like Michelangelo, he paints his private dome,/ But can't distinguish what's his work and what's his home," which is painfully on the nose.

As for the newly written songs...I am going to assume that Rob Marshall ordered very specific things, rather than that Maury Yeston has lost his touch, because none are particularly worthwhile. "Guarda La Luna," for Guido's mother (Sophia Loren) is a blah set of lyrics and minimal dramatic content wedded the beautiful waltz melody from the show, but otherwise passes almost unnoticed. "Take It All" is passable, but it seems more like an excuse to get Marion Cotillard to remove her clothes than anything else, and deprives us of "Be On Your Own," an absolutely scorching song. And "Cinema Italiano" is really just awful. It has the wrong sound for the period, idiotic lyrics, and an annoying melody, plus is sung by a pointless character and lacks dramatic impact. Amazingly, it was only three minutes long, but it felt much longer.

And now for an episode of musical theatre nerdiness: the orchestrations. For those who are unfamiliar, the orchestrator takes a piano-vocal score from the composer and decides how many instruments are in the orchestra, which they are, and who plays what. Sounds simple, but a good orchestration can add immensely to the musical and storytelling power of the score. Jonathan Tunick, who orchestrated the original production, gets my personal vote as greatest living Broadway orchestrator (he also worked on the original productions of nearly all of Stephen Sondheim's shows since Company). The original orchestrations are gorgeous, and help the score leap out in all of its musical and dramatic richness.

The movie's new orchestrations by Doug Besterman? Not so much. I understood after seeing the movie why so many reviews have called the score bland: the orchestrations are unforgivably dull. Besterman took an original score and made it sound like every other film musical--lots of instruments, very little thought. Sometimes, he actively made the songs worse: the underscoring of the "Overture Delle Donne" drove me up the wall. It's a terrible shame, because the people who see Nine without knowing the score will have very little reason to check it out.

And now, as promised, the things that worked: Daniel Day Lewis is a rather good singer, even if he is 10 years too old for the part. Judi Dench, though playing an unnecessary character, sells her number like a pro, and has delicious line readings. Penelope Cruz manages to wrest a few moments of genuine seductiveness and vulnerability from Marshall's vulgarity. And Marion Cotillard...she's a wonder. When she was on screen, I couldn't take my eyes from her, and I felt deeply for her. She handily made "My Husband Makes Movies" the highlight of the film, managed to make "Take It All" sound better than it has any right to, and had me misted up in the screening room scene. I can't believe I haven't seen La Vie En Rose yet.

To change the subject completely: this movie, while not that great, hardly enters the pantheon of bad movies--and is nowhere near the worst film adaptation of a stage musical. But I think it may end up doing serious damage to the show. Despite a run of nearly two years, five Tonys, a national tour, and a well-received revival, Nine has never really entered the musical theatre repertoire. I don't know if it's too artsy and European, people can't get past the concept, or what, but it isn't produced nearly as often as shows of a similar caliber. Until the movie was made, it wasn't well known to non theatre people. And now, the people who know the show will know it as a mediocrity or worse. The name recognition might help it get produced, but the terrible reviews and word of mouth, not to mention the anemic grosses, are more likely to discourage companies. And that's a damn shame.

So, what say you? Any more thoughts?


Tim:
I agree wholeheartedly with damn near every word you've said. You're right on with Marshall's essential mistrust of the musical format, and I can't fathom why he keeps making the damn things if this is how he feels about them. While I must respectfully disagree that the fantasy angle worked better in Chicago than in Nine - minimally, I think there's precedent in Fellini for making this story take place mostly inside Guido's head - I still think Chicago is better on the whole because at least there are some good dance numbers. The choreography in Nine is just plain lousy. You mention the three worst offenders, and I have nothing to add to that, really; but good Lord, it's just embarrassing that he is an alleged professional. I could have designed better numbers than that.

You're also right about what happens to the music. One of the things I noted when we discussed Nine was that I felt the songs worked better as part of a musical continuum, whereas I was a bit lukewarm to a lot of them just taken as individual bits of singing. Lo and behold, the movie breaks that continuum and makes the songs sound a bit flimsy in the process - and of course the awful orchestrations don't help with that (I'll see you the overture and raise you the flat and not at all sexy reworking of "A Call from the Vatican"). Nor, for that matter, does the singing; I think I have much less generous feelings towards pretty much everyone than you do. The huge exception is Cotillard, who wrests every drop she can from "My Husband Makes Movies" and turns it into probably the strongest moment of the film, although that song was a lot better when it came at the start of the show, and not in the middle; but that's what the writers get for following 8½ too closely.

I did mention that I would have more to say about that, didn't I? Then I should probably get on with it. The biggest problem with Nine as a remake of 8½ is quite simply that Rob Marshall is not undergoing a crisis of his art, such as it is. Fellini's movie was about his process, telling a story that commented upon its own creation in an Ouroboros-like cycle of self-reflection and naval-gazing. Marshall isn't doing anything remotely like that. His film's treatment of Fellini's scenario is based on the most shallow understanding of the matter of 8½ that I could imagine: a director is wasting time and money. Both 8½ and the stage Nine make it clear that Guido is trying to represent himself as cinema, but by taking out any hint that Guido's movie is autobiographical, the film denies us even that bit of meaning. There just don't seem to be any dramatic stakes involved: he'll either finish the movie or not, whatever. In 8½, finishing the movie was a matter of life and death.

The movie's Guido is little more than a parody of Fellini himself; even in 8½ there weren't so many direct references to the director's previous films. All this does it to make the film even less urgent and certainly a great deal less personal. In place of creative block, marital angst, mortal dread, or any of the other things that made the first film and the musical interesting and thematically rich, Nine the movie seems to largely operate in that terrible space occupied by the lesser biopics, in which pointing out that Federico Fellini existed and did things takes the place of actual introspection. It also leads to that dreadful "Cinema Italiano", about which not enough terrible things can be said; may Heaven save me from ever again hearing "neo-realism" rhymed with prism. The whole pointless song, sung by a pointless character (and if there's one change relative to 8½ that is a complete and unmitigated fuck-up, it's turning the caustic, arrogant critic into a vapid gossip-mage reporter) says one thing: "In the 1960s, Americans liked stylish European movies!" And that's probably the closest Nine the movie has to a theme itself. At any rate, it has nothing whatsoever to say about the creative process, and very little to say about one man's relationship to women, which as you have astutely noted, was a thematic thread that lost all validity the instant that the women were stripped of their personal agency.

I'm going to do the intolerably lazy thing and just refer back to my review of the film for the rest of my problems; they are not few, and a lot of them overlap with what you've said. But since you're playing nice to end your thoughts, I guess I can do the same thing: as mentioned, Cotillard is great, and I think that Dion Beebe's cinematography is quite extraordinary, even making the hellish "Cinema Italiano" interesting to look at. Even when Marshall has him doing terrible things - such as copying the Seraghina sequence from the movie exactly - he does them with a good deal of talent and grace. And um... the sets never fell down? This is hard.


Zev:
In looking at our comments, I've come to a rather dispiriting conclusion: this film version of Nine lacks a compelling reason to exist. The engine of 8½ was Fellini's own artistic block and psychological stress. The stage version of Nine made use of a full, complex score, a stronger focus on the women, and a very different but still compelling take on the central story. The movie combines their approaches with some new material into...well, something. There's good work being done by the actors, particularly Cotillard, and apparently the cinematography is quite excellent (I'm not anything like a connoisseur ). But there doesn't seem to be any animating passion to it. Why does this director tell this story with these performers? Well, a musical with lots of stylish clothes and an insane number of Oscar winning actors must have seemed like like a sure bet to win some Oscars of its own. This is hardly an uncommon reason to make a movie, though the poor reviews and terrible grosses make it unlikely it will succeed at even that debased goal. It's just depressing to see the Oscarbait treatment given to a musical I so dearly love. It's especially sad because I think there is a good movie to be made of Nine. Unfortunately, it hasn't been made, and it's unlikely ever to happen now.

*********

So that's the end of our part of the story: we've talked enough. But what about you? Anyone have thoughts about any incarnation of the story? Have any of you seen the movie? Please comment, either here or over at Tim's post, and be part of the conversation!

Be A Singer, Be A Lover

Welcome to the next phase of the conversation between Tim Brayton of Antagony and Ecstasy and myself about the various phases of Federico Fellini's 8 1/2. Last week I posted parts one and two of our conversation about Fellini's original film. Now he has posted our conversation about Nine, the Maury Yeston/Arthur Kopit musical based on the film. The film version of that musical is currently playing in New York and Los Angeles, and will open in Chicago on Friday. Our review of that should be up some time next week.

Anyhow, I think it's a really interesting conversation, and we've both learned a lot from it and had plenty of fun so far. You should check it out and contribute to the conversation at his post, but for those who don't feel like leaving this site, the text is below. Enjoy, and please let me know what you think in the comment section!

Perhaps you recall last week, when Zev Valancy of On Chicago Theatre and I discussed Federico Fellini's neo-surrealist film masterpiece 8½, and perhaps you do not, in which case, Shame! but no harm, no foul, because you can still catch up with our two-part conversation here and here.

Anyway, the next phase of our discussion is up and running: in which we took a peek at the Maury Yeston musical Nine, adapted from Fellini's movie with quite a few thematic and narrative changes along the way. Zev had the courtesy to divide his half of the project into bite-size chunks; I am going to do no such thing, for if there's one thing I can assume that Antagony & Ecstasy regulars are good at by now, it's reading multi-thousand word posts without a break. But I will hide the whole thing below the fold, as we used to say back in the newspaper biz.

TIM:
Hi Zev,

Well, I certainly understand now where you were coming from when we were talking about 8½ - the musical Nine is a very different thing entirely, considering that it has the same concept and most of the same character names. Just for all the reader's benefits: Guido Anselmi has been renamed Guido Contini, but he is still a major filmmaker with creative block, haunted by the ghosts of all the women in his life.

Now, I have to admit that I wasn't able to find an actual copy of the book of the musical, but I think between the cast recording and various online sources, I think I was able to figure out most of the specifics of the plot and dialogue, but I hope that if I say anything that's just flat-out wrong, you'll be so good as to set me straight. To begin with the most obvious narrative departures from the Fellini movie, it seems to me that Guido in this piece is still thrashing about looking for an idea; in the movie he's already spent a huge sum of money on a giant, half-constructed set, although he doesn't really know what the plot is yet. Also, the way I've always read the film is that Guido already knows at the start that he's trying to make an autobiographical movie, whereas in the musical he doesn't make that decision until the beginning of the second act - although he has been thinking about his history with women for most of the musical before that point.

I think the big difference that this makes is that 8½ is much more "about" creative block, while Nine is "about" Guido's history of regrets in regard to all the women of his life. And I think it rather has to be that way: 8½ derives so much of its meaning from the fact that Federico Fellini is making a movie about Guido Anselmi failing to make a movie about himself, and that kind of meta-narrative layering just isn't possible in a theatrical production about making a movie (that is, Ninecannot be the project Guido is trying to make in the way that 8½ is). You warned me before we started this project that they're not the same story, but I don't think I really appreciated the degree to which that is the case until I was finished with Nine: and certainly my inclination isn't terribly much to judge it by how much it is or isn't the movie. Though I still think the comparison is instructive.

At any rate, I think the most substantive difference between the two versions, and the thing that makes Nine the most interesting on its own, completely independently of the movie's existence or non-existence, is the musical's treatment of women. Am I right in thinking that the only men that ever appear onstage are Guido, and the nine-year-old version of himself? Which is a fascinating gimmick, if gimmick is the word.

The women of Nine are so much more present than the women in 8½; especially poor, stepped-on Luisa. I really have the sense that I understand them as characters in a way that I absolutely do not with the Fellini, even the prostitute Seraghina, who in the movie is presented more as animal than as human woman. I don't know if I'd go so far as to call it a feminist text - they are still all defined mostly in terms of how they function in relationship to Guido - but certainly, they are all rich and interesting and represent different forms of vitality and being in the world, and that makes Guido seem that much more washed-out as both a man and an artist. I understand what he wants, but I never get the sense that even he knows who he is, and as I understand it, Nine is mostly about how he decides to confront this gaping personality deficit as a result of confronting both physically and mentally all the woman-shaped demons of his past.

But that's a lot of rambling, and I have to admit that the musical was so far from what I was anticipating that I'm going to shut up, regroup my thoughts, and let you take a smack at it. So tell me: what makes Ninetick?


ZEV:
Hey Tim,

I think you're exactly right that my response to 8 1/2 was colored by my experience of Nine. While it can be argued that the story of a man facing the demons of his life (many of them in the form of his relationships with women), and possibly learning to grow up is a major element in the Fellini, the musical definitely foregrounds that story. I think this makes sense for a piece of theatre, particularly a mainstream Broadway musical. A man fighting his demons and learning to grow up (which is pretty explicitly the story of the musical) is much clearer and stronger as a dramatic spine and emotional throughline than a man struggling with creative block, particularly as the film's ending is so oblique and surreal. This isn't a value judgment--Fellini would have made a very different film if the emotional throughline were clear and resolved at the end--but it's necessary for a mainstream musical. While the musical's plot is, by the standards of the form, non-linear, the emotional story has to be accessible or the whole play collapses.

To briefly address a few of the major formal changes. Aside from Guido as an adult, Guido as a nine year old, and a few of Guido's young friends (who are cut from many revivals--the only place you hear them on the original cast album is during "Be Italian," Saraghina's song) everyone on the stage is a woman. The reasons for this seem to be both thematic and formal. First off, it very clearly focuses the audience on the idea of Guido as a man defined by relationships with the women in his life. It's pretty impossible to miss, really. The other main reason, I'd imagine, is that it's striking and pretty damn cool. More on that later.

(Interestingly, this wasn't Maury Yeston's idea from the start--early drafts refer to a subplot of a star-crossed romance between an Italian girl working at the spa and a German boy visiting. That plot disappeared entirely, with the only remnant being the song "The Germans at the Spa," which is cut from most contemporary productions as it sets up a plot point that goes nowhere.)

As for the title change: 8 1/2 refers to the film's place in Fellini's canon.Nine refers to the mental age at which Guido is stuck. ("My body's clearing forty as my mind is nearing ten," as he tells us in his first song.)

Guido's film is a completely different beast. In the musical he has no idea what movie he is making for the entire first act. This leads to two of the most fun numbers in the act. The first is a little bit of music that makes me incredibly happy, called "Movie Themes," as Guido wildly casts around for a film idea, while the chorus sings music from the films he's imagining (culminating in a surprisingly good fake African chant when he imagines making a documentary). The second, longer piece is "Folies Bergere," in which his French producer orders him to make the musical that he promised her, reminiscing about the Folies she attended as a child, while the critic she's hired to help him work on his script savages all of his previous films ("a mixture of Catholicism, pasta, and pornography"). Only a side comment from Claudia comparing him to Casanova spurs him to make that the subject of his film--with himself as star and his biography as plot, of course. The "Grand Canal" sequence, showing the movie being filmed, is a major section of the second act.

As for the name change from Anselmi to Contini: first off, it sounds better sung (the phrase "Guido Contini, Luisa Contini" is set to a really haunting piece of music), and second, it rhymes with Fellini. (Get it?)

As for what makes it tick: I think we've pretty well discussed the emotional throughline, which is pretty constant even as the plot follows its somewhat winding path. But what keeps it bring produced? I think a lot of it comes down to how gorgeous the music is, the sheer thrill of a large ensemble of women singing their hearts out, and the possibility for beautiful stage pictures. The original production was set in a white tiled spa with each woman getting her own pedestal, and all of the costumes in black until the "Grand Canal" sequence. It was, apparently, orgasmically gorgeous. The Broadway revival had Carla flying on in a giant bedsheet, dozens of chic 60s costumes, and lots of water.

In some ways, Nine is my equivalent of the movies you see where the storytelling is just decent but the cinematography is so pretty--I'm willing to forgive the book problems because of the quality of the music and the chance it gives performers to do fantastic work. I got the chance to see it in May of 2008, in Porchlight Theatre's production at Theatre Building Chicago. Seeing the production made clear the flaws in the script and lyrics, and it wasn't a spectacle on the level of a Broadway production, but it was such a visceral thrill hearing all those women raising their voices, separately and together.

So you've said a lot about how the musical compares to the movie, but not a lot about your reaction. So, um, did you like it?


TIM:
Pfeh, details, details. If we start in with "like" and "dislike", we'll be here all night.

Actually, I did in fact like it quite a bit, which I really didn't expect to - the snatches of the show that I'd heard weren't really enough to build my confidence (a few bars of "Guido's Song", the part of "Be Italian" that was in the movie trailer, "My Husband Makes Movies"). Listening to it all in one piece, though, made it clear that it's not really about the tunefulness of any particular moment, but the flow of how the whole thing works together as a unit, with motifs drifting in and out all throughout the thing. I guess I mean to say, I think it works better if you don't try to think of it as a collection of songs, but of segments of music colliding with one another, which is true of a lot of my favorite musicals.

It also definitely helps me, at least, that when I'm thinking about it as a musical whole, I'm less focused on the lyrics. Which you've noted as having flaws, but I get the sense that I might be a bit more down on them on the whole than you are. Certainly, I don't think the whole thing top to bottom has problems - only about 5%, but it's a tremendously distracting 5%. I particularly found the couplet "Be Italian / You rapscallion" to be either so stupid it's brilliant or so stupid that it's incredibly stupid, but I haven't decided which yet.

But why focus on that, because there is some outstandingly lovely music throughout: "The Bells of St. Sebastian", the first-act finale in which Guido recalls his oppressive Catholic childhood, plays right to my tastes, and I agree with you completely on "Movie Themes", the "Guido Contini, Luisa Contini" refrain (it totally escaped me that "Contini" and "Fellini" scan the same, and rhyme); and I thought that "A Call from the Vatican", Carla's phone sex number, was awesomely slinky and I can only imagine how much better it must play onstage. Generally speaking, I much preferred the music in the first act to the second act; maybe it's because the "Grand Canal" medley felt a little too big and dizzy for me, maybe it's just because I think the plot is more interesting before Guido decides to make an autobiographical "Casanova". Although "I Can't Make This Movie" was outstanding, and if I understand correctly that it is the first moment where Guido is alone onstage, it must be quite the coup de théâtre. Obviously, Maury Yeston is no Nino Rota (who is?), but I rather liked the whole thing, and if I'm not quite a Nine partisan, certainly I can see myself trying to snag a ticket the next time a production shows up in town.

(Weirdly, I am totally unmoved by "Be Italian", which seems to be the consensus pick for the big fun showstopper. I think it's because the song stands out so badly - it's the one number that feels like a sop to people who want to walk out of a show with one easily hummable song to guide them).

Not to change rails too dramatically, but I did have one really big issue - I hesitate to call it a "problem" - with the show: it seems really anxious to insist on Guido's Italianness in a way that doesn't feel at all organic or necessary. "Be Italian" is obvious, with its message of "Italian men are natural lovers, and you should follow your native urges to become a great horndog", but there are little bits scattered all over the show; there's a line "I am a mature Italian film director!" that made me wince with its overburdened exposition. Am I reading far too much into it? Or is this as much of an exotic "othering" of Italian masculinity as it strikes me as being?


ZEV:
Well, I am glad you (more or less) like it--after all the nasty comments directed towards the score in the reviews of the film I've read, I appreciate knowing that someone who isn't a musical theatre geek can still get a lot out of the show. Of course Maury Yeston isn't Nino Rota, but Rota also didn't have the burden of telling the story through song--he supported Fellini. It's apples to oranges, but I think both scores fill their functions pretty well.

I think you're absolutely right that the show functions as a score, more than a collection of songs. While Yeston's use of motifs isn't as complex as Stephen Sondheim's (or as robotic and irritating as Andrew Lloyd Webber's), there are several themes woven throughout. (The most prominent are probably the "Guido Contini, Luisa Contini" and "Be Italian" chunks.) I think this is set up quite well from the start: the "Overture Delle Donne," features Guido conducting the women of the cast as they singing many of the show's musical themes to "la la la"s. He tries to control them and convince Luisa that he still cares about their marriage simultaneously. As in the best musical theatre, a piece of music theatricalizes an idea in a way that's startling and fascinating to watch--not to mention that, when done well, it's absolute heaven to hear. (By the way, here's a bootleg of the original production's overture. Carla's the one in the bodysuit arching her back at the end. Slinky indeed.)

I'd say that your formulation of 5% of the lyrics being clinkers is about right. I'd add that another good 20% are just disappointingly prosaic, and it's amazing how the great and eh lyrics can coexist right next to each other--that "Be On Your Own" can include a line as cliche-sounding as "No need to carry out this masquerade/When all that we're about's begun to fade" shortly before one as simple and devastating as "And you'll take with you all you own, from A to Z,/And all of me."

And "Be Italian/You rapscallion" is a stupid lyric, full stop. "Rapscallion" is a word with very specific connotations: for me it belongs to England from about the Elizabethans to the Edwardians. It sounds ridiculous coming from an Italian prostitute in what I'm guessing is the 1930s.

I'm completely in agreement with you on "The Bells of St. Sebastian's": no matter how many times I hear it, I get chills up my spine when it gets to the "Kyrie Eleison"s. Though it's apparently not your favorite, I think "My Husband Makes Movies" is the song I like nearly as much--a beautiful melody, and as emotionally resonant an exploration of the difficulty of loving an artist as any I've encountered. "Unusual Way" is probably the most covered song in the score--it needs the context of the plot less than most, and the melody is hard to forget. I have a real affection for the "Grand Canal" sequence because it is completely insane (even more so onstage, when the women suddenly show up in these gigantic gowns), but I don't know how well it really works. The only songs I could take or leave are the title song, which is so high up in soprano-land that, at least on the original cast album, it's a little hard to listen to, and "Getting Tall," in which 9-year-old Guido tells his adult self exactly the lesson he's supposed to learn. It's just too on the nose--plus, listening to boy sopranos is not my favorite thing.

As to your comment on the Italian elements being emphasized oddly--it is strange, though I never really noticed it before. My personal guess is that it's because so little of the show actually feels Italian at all. The audience needs an occasional reminder that they aren't watching Americans.

If I may be permitted one extra bit of nerdy joy--one thing I love in this show are the orchestrations. Orchestration is an element that people outside of musical theatre nerds rarely notice, but the way that Jonathan Tunick (one of the masters of the field) uses the orchestra is just stunning: the flutes in the waltz and the harpsichord (I think) under "My Husband Makes Movies" are two of the best examples, but the orchestral writing is gorgeous throughout.

And amid all the talk of the show's women, I want to say a word for Raul Julia. He's not the most gifted singer (some of the high notes are pretty painful), but even on the recording he's utterly magnetic. He's the prime example that being a great musical theatre performer does not necessarily require being a great singer. Better singers can be found, but I'm not sure anyone will do the part better. It's a shame that only a few of his film roles showed off what was apparently a prodigious talent onstage, and a greater shame that he died so young.

Any more thoughts on the show, especially now that it's had more time to sink in? Any final insights on how it works in and of itself versus how it works in dialogue with the film?


TIM
Ah, yes, "Getting Tall", a song so memorable that it had completely slipped my mind a scant handful of hours after listening to the score. Well, they can't all be hits. Or indeed, even halfway decent.

The more I sit and think, the more that I really take away from Nine is how very little reference it actually needs back to 8½, which at least theoretically invalidates this whole little project of ours, except I know that Rob Marshall brings quite a bit of the Fellini back into the musical - and isn't that going to be a peculiar sight to see? But all in all, it pleases me how little I wanted Nine to be 8½, which is not at all what I expected I fully anticipated a whole long thing where I was going to be disgusted by the liberties taken, and want Yeston's head on a pike - but by the end of "Guido's Song", I was pretty well ready to take the musical as its own entity, that uses the movie as nothing more than a springboard but little more.

And a pretty good musical, at that. I don't think I really have any further thoughts, but this was the first time in ages that I listened to a new (to me) show and liked it pretty much all the way through; compared to most of the dreck out there nowadays, it's a sterling masterpiece. So if nothing else, I'm grateful for that.

Not to mention, now I get to be paranoid to find out how Marshall is going to fuck it all up.

Discussing 8 1/2, Part Two

Welcome to the second part of the conversation between Tim Brayton and myself about 8 1/2, in preparation for our discussions of the cast album of Nine, the musical version of it, and the film version of Nine, being released on the 25th of this month. You can find the first part here. (A reminder, I'm in italics, Tim's response is bold.)

Not being a filmmaker, my perspective on the film was more influenced by its view of Guido the man and his relationships, but your comments obviously get at something central that I didn't really address: it's a movie about making movies. Perhaps this makes it a movie that outsiders can never truly appreciate as much as insiders can (certainly there are plays that people who work in theatre love and civilians don't entirely connect with), though I did get quite a bit from it. (And I had sort of heard that the title relates to Fellini's career, but not exactly know how it worked, so I didn't mention it. I was also confused because the title of Nine means something entirely different, as we shall see.)


However, what that different viewpoint seems to mean is that we have very different opinions on the character of Guido.


You described him as a creative mind, stopped by outside forces from making the movie he wants to make. However, nearly all of the problems in his life are self-inflicted: his producer, actors, and crew are only pushing him because he is unable to give them any answers or a clear idea of where to go, and the women in his life don't seem to have a problem with his filmmaking--it's more that he treats them badly, whether meaning to or not. Nearly all of Guido's problems could be solved if he stepped up and took some responsibility.


Also, the film falls into the trap of portraying fictional artists, which is that it's hard to portray their art. And we never see Guido actually making a movie, or any pieces of his previous film; all we see are screen tests, giant set pieces under construction, and publicity events. All are important in a movie, but none are actually involved in shooting it--and he doesn't do any of them with particular engagement. We also see sections of his extraordinarily cinematic fantasies, but an overactive imagination does not a filmmaker make.


Now you could argue that Guido is Fellini, and 8 1/2 is the movie he was making, but this is still a fiction film, even if autobiographical, and the work of shooting a film is never shown onscreen.


Which leads to the fact that I think I view the story of this film in a fundamentally different way: I don't see it as "the exploration of a creative mind forced to think about any number of distracting things outside of the creative process, and the frustration that it brings," but rather the story of an immature man forced to grow up. This takes nothing from the film--it's an exceptionally well done story of an immature man forced to grow up--but it does illuminate two different perspectives held by filmmakers and outsiders.


As for your comment that Milo (And I can't believe Fellini had the chutzpah to cast his mistress as his mistress. I shudder to imagine the conversation he had with his wife.) and Aimee's performances were incidental to Fellini and Guido's intentions: I think the movie might have gotten away from them. For me at least, Guido is enough of a cipher, and many of his actions thoughtless enough, that I had trouble truly identifying with him. He was fascinating to watch, but I never feel like I truly knew him. As a result the other characters took up a lot of my identification. Again, not a bad thing, but interesting to note.


So am I misreading the movie entirely, or is it elastic enough for multiple interpretations? And is there something else I should be commenting on but am not?

I think it's a dull movie indeed that only admits for one possible reading. And everything you say about Guido is perfectly true, particularly that he seems a bit of a cipher. To me, this fits in quite well with what I was arguing: someone who thinks about everything in cinematic terms would indeed come across as a bit bland and impersonal. Though I don't know that it's really quite the case that we don't get to know him all that well: we get to know the movie he wants to make, which is the most intimate thing there is about him.


The big disconnect between ourselves is, undoubtedly, that Guido's mind makes so much sense to me, as a nascent filmmaker. You correctly point out that the physical act of filmmaking never appears in 8½; only Guido thinking about the movie that he can't quite put into practice. At a certain level, this is exactly the point: it's a story about creative impotence. But I must disagree with you, that having an active imagination doesn't make him a filmmaker - visualisation is a very key part of the filmmaking process. Alfred Hitchcock is said to have hated being on set, because by the time his films entered production, he already knew exactly what they looked and sounded like, having executed the whole thing in his mind already, and he was already bored with the project by the time the cameras rolled.


Guido's problem is cowardice and indecision: he knows what he wants to make, but he also knows that it will reveal more of himself than he wants to reveal, and as we see throughout, he has a fundamental inability to share himself with others. It's never stated or even strongly implied, but I've always believed that he was terrified that if the film didn't work or was castigated by the critics, that would be proof that he, himself, has no merit as a person. You're probably right that most of his procrastination is self-inflicted, and looking back, I overstated what I meant by that: what I would rather have said is that, the constant pressure from everyone around him is making him defensive, which in turn makes it harder for him to find the necessary self-confidence to put his demons out for all the world to see. I certainly don't admire him and I don't want to indicate otherwise; but I understand his terror and reluctance. (I think your word "immature" is an appropriate one; but on the other hand, isn't immaturity a necessary part of being an artist? A mature person wouldn't have the need for other people's validation. And I say this as a wannabe filmmaker to a theater guy).


It's one big admission of guilt, I think: Fellini acknowledging all the sins he has committed in the name of pursuing filmmaking. Guido is arguably even worse: he commits all the same sins and doesn't even have anything to show for it, although it's at least possible that at the end of the film he has realised that he doesn't need to use cinema as a means of dealing with life, and on that argument, we could suppose that he stops being a film director after the end of the movie (that could certainly be what the last scene, with the dancers, symbolises). And in that respect, he'd actually be a better man than his creator, who did in fact keep making movies to work out his personal demons: his very next film, Juliet of the Spirits, was supposedly considered by no less an authority than his wife Giulietta Masina to be the director's way of dealing with his repressed homosexuality, just to name one example.


There's so much else to talk about, though: you touched on a bit of what made the music so outstanding in your first post, and I'd add that it lends a certain flair of the carnivalesque to the movie. I'm also a great fan of Gianni Di Venanzo's camerawork, with all of its gliding through and around sets; I sometimes feel like the camera is positioned as a predator animal, hunting around in search of its subject. And notwithstanding the conventions of Italian film sound, I think that you're right to point out the heightened effect of the sound; the most overt dream sequences most obviously, but there are a lot of strange and unexpected sound cues scattered about.


What about you? Any lingering observations on Guido's psychology, or other matters?

I think we've pretty well anatomized Guido's neuroses, and of course his identity as a filmmaker and as a man are inextricable. It's the desire to turn the people and world around him into the perfect aesthetic object that makes it so hard for them to relate to people honestly.


(To clarify one thing--I should have said that an overactive imagination is not enough to make a filmmaker. Plenty of people have vivid things in their head that never get into practice, and it doesn't make them great artists. Of course, the gap between intention an practice is a dramatic thing in many contexts, and one more thing applicable both to Guido as filmmaker and Guido as man.)


The cinematography is indeed gorgeous, though I’d leave it to you, the cinematography addict to explain why--I just don't have the technical background.


And as for the carnivalesque atmosphere of the music...well, we'll just use that as a segue to a different version of the story, told with more music, and a whole lot more focus on the women.

Discussing 8 1/2, Part One

Dear Readers,

Welcome to the first part of a collaboration between this blog and Antagony and Ecstasy, an excellent film blog written by the awesome Tim Brayton. In preparation for the upcoming release of the film version of the musical Nine, which is a movie based on Maury Yeston's 1982 musical which is based on Federico Fellini's 1963 film 8 1/2, we will be discussing movie, musical, and movie musical.

As for the film, it's a carnivalesque, dreamlike look inside the mind of Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni), an Italian film director (based on Fellini himself), whose life is falling apart as he struggles to make a movie without knowing what movie he wants to make. Adding in his relationships with his wife Luisa (Anouk Aimée), mistress Carla (Sandra Milo), and favorite star Claudia (Claudia Cardinale) makes for plenty of complication, especially when the film drifts into fantasy whenever things get too difficult.

Here we have the first part of our conversation about Fellini's film. (Tim and I are both rather long-winded writers, so I didn't want to dump our entire conversation in one post.) I am in italic, he's in bold.

So I finished 8 1/2 this evening. It's going to be a challenge to discuss it as itself, rather than comparing it to the musical, but I'll try. (There's lots to compare--as you'll see, Maury Yeston adapted the hell out of it.)


I had seen this film in college--maybe even freshman year?--but in the intervening time, I'd forgotten nearly all of it. And it remains the only Fellini film I've seen, though the next time I have 2 free hours at home I will watch that copy of La Strada you so graciously lent me.


I suppose a good place to start was how it compared to my expectations of "Fellini." The image I always had was of garish surrealism: clowns, painted women, general freakiness. While this film was certainly very far from realism, it was of a subtler variety. Sometimes it was simply "real" scenes filmed in such a way that they seemed surreal: a shot of a long line of people, all moving forward in step, to "The Ride of the Valkyries" is revealed to be a line of people at a spa in line for the healing waters, while a band plays Wagner. (That was one of many "wow" moments in the film.) Of course there are also dream sequences--the initial traffic jam is quite creepy, and the dream near the end of the house of women is amazing--but it's not the kind of aggression that I expected.


In fact, to me, the least realistic, and most striking formal element of the film was the use of sound. First off there is Nino Rota's score, which I know you've discussed quite admiringly. It walked the line all film scores have to walk very successfully--setting the mood without telling us exactly what we're supposed to feel at every moment. The fact that it's really quite beautiful and catchy on its own merits is just gravy.


But even more striking is how often the sound heightens the mood of unreality. Often the mix will put forward just one element of the sound--the traffic jam dream is silent but for Guido's breathing for instance--or the music from one scene will come in several seconds before the scene itself. Frequently in a conversation, the focus will be on the person not speaking--a fight between Guido and his wife Luisa, focused largely on their backs, comes to mind. At a few points, sound all but disappears. (Another element that worked with this is the fact that the dialogue frequently seemed out of sync with the mouth movement, but apparently that was a convention of Italian film in general that Tim can explain far better than I.) It's this manipulation of an element we take for granted that for me is the most fascinating way the film plays with the boundaries of reality.


As for the acting, four performers stand out. The first is Sandra Milo, as Guido's mistress, Carla. She's vulgar and shallow, yes, but genuinely touching by the end--a real, good woman, who deserves better. Claudia Cardinale, as movie star Claudia, could just sit there being beautiful and do just fine--she's a stunning woman. But she also brings a reserved intelligence and grace that make the character a fascinating foil to Guido's abstraction. And Anouk Aimée as Luisa is magnetic--her slow-burning fury at Guido's constant lies and betrayal is very moving, and she's one of the few able to break through his determinedly cool exterior.


Marcello Mastroianni, as Guido, has of course the largest and most difficult role: this is a man who doesn't know what or who he wants, genuinely cares for the women in his life even as he hurts them, and never really lets anyone see what's inside him. Mastroianni does a masterful job of holding back what's inside, only showing us flashes of what's boiling underneath. Making such a passive and indecisive character so interesting to watch, without ever making him particularly likable, is quite an achievement. Also, though he has a reputation as a sex symbol, I was quite impressed by how unglamorous the role was--Mastroianni seemed more harried and stressed than anything else.


The themes? Well that's rather larger than I really care to tackle, or even feel equipped to. The inability of men to grow and make up their minds is certainly central, lest you think that Judd Apatow invented it. The influence of the Catholic Church is also central. I'm not sure what the giant scaffolding and spaceship were meant to represent, aside from the huge cost of Guido's fecklessness. And as for what actually happens at the end...I'm not foolish enough to claim to know. It's utterly fascinating to watch, though. And am I off base to see an echo of the end of The Seventh Seal (one of the few other mid-century foreign classics I've actually seen) in the dancers all holding hands?


Those are a few thoughts, and I'm sure I'll have more as I think about it. Any reactions to them?

Thanks for having me, Zev. And thanks to your readers for being patient while we take a look at some cinema, and not Chicago theatre.


Beginning with one of the last things you brought up, which is the theme of the movie: one of the key elements about the film and the reason that so many movie people like it (everyone I've ever known who completely adores the movie is or was or wishes to be in film production), is that 8½ is a movie about filmmaking as a mental process, like virtually nothing else in history. You didn't mention, so perhaps you don't know, but the title refers explicitly to the film's place in Fellini's career: he had directed six features, co-directed a feature and contributed two shorts to anthology films, so counting these latter three projects as one-half each, this was his eighth-and-a-half movie as director.


The story of the movie is exactly the story of how it was produced: Fellini was trying to put together a big-budget epic without having the slightest idea what he story he wanted to tell, and he was getting increasingly lost at sea; so to work out his problems, he wrote the story of a film director who had a costly epic and no idea what plot he was spending so much money on. It is often noted that the movie Guido can't make is the movie that Fellini makes for him: all the events that Guido merely thinks about, Fellini successfully dramatizes.


I like to think of this as the exploration of a creative mind forced to think about any number of distracting things outside of the creative process, and the frustration that it brings. All Guido wants to do is to make a movie, but the producers, his woman troubles, the pressure of the church, any number of things keep jockeying for his attention, and he's only able to fantasize about the kind of movie he wants to make - and thus the surrealism you point out. The reason that the film keeps drifting from pretty straightforward realism to more archly stylised moments is because the only thing that Guido can do to keep himself from going completely mad is to imagine how this or that particular moment in his real life might be turned into a cinematic moment. Most of the movie, I think, takes place inside his head; at any rate, there is literally not a single shot that isn't ultimately from his perspective. I think you're correct to note that Milo (Fellini's real-life mistress!) and Aimée give sensitive performances that flesh out their characters, but I don't think that Guido or Fellini especially cares that they do; to the director (either one), they are just objects in the grand cinematic project of one man's life. The great understanding that Guido comes to at the end is when he realises that his wife is actually a human being who can contribute something of value to his life, and not just an obstacle to his moviemaking.


And yet, the way I read the final scene is that Guido/Fellini, having realised that his life is full of people and not characters, still can't give up the essential need to direct every aspect of his life and every person he knows (and as a sometime film director, I can vouch that one of the most irritating things is that you can't yell "cut!" and have everyone around you do just what you want in reality). He is, after all, directing every single person we see him interact with over the course of the movie in one grand spectacle, completely under his command. Still, at the very end, he steps into that ring of people, perhaps finally acknowledging that he's just one of them. It's both an arrogant and a humble moment, and probably the part of the movie that speaks the most to me as a filmmaker. Does it echo The Seventh Seal? Maybe: both films use dance as a metaphor for life, and they do it in a similar visual way. But I doubt that Fellini was consciously pinching from Bergman.


A quick historical note: you are correct that 8½ lacks the grotesques that Fellini is famous for; this was actually his transitional film from the neo-realism that he was trained in, to the most fantastic, imaginative tableaux of Juliet of the Spirits, Satyricon, and Amarcord. He'd already begun that process with his previous feature, La Dolce Vita, but it was only here, in a film about the creative mind's desire to break free of realistic constraints, that he began to indulge himself. Whether that's a good thing or not, is hard to say - for every moment in Satyricon that works, two don't.


As for the peculiar use of non-synced sound, that's just a convention of Italian cinema: the famous Cinecittà studio where nearly everyone in the Italian industry learned their trade used to be right next to an airbase, so it became the standard practice to record visuals and then overdub the audio later, even years after it was no longer a practical necessity. Some filmmakers, and Fellini was a notable example, didn't even have a script written: he just had the actors move their mouths, and then wrote lines for them to read later on. Obviously there are a lot of ways that this has an impact on the finished product, but it doesn't do to read too much into it; it's the same in just about every single Italian movie made into the mid-1980s.


Check back later today for the rest of the discussion, and some time next week for thoughts on Yeston's musical!