Most critics refer to 8 1/2 (1963) as legendary Italian director Federico Fellini’s masterpiece. Upon release it was lauded as a brilliant film and received several prestigious awards, most notably an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. I suppose I’m in the minority when it comes to adoring it. You see, I don’t really do avant garde, and that’s what Fellini’s 8 1/2 is. I much prefer his La Strada (1954) and The Nights of Cabiria (1957) to his later work because I think his earlier films say something about humanity. That’s not to say that I found 8 1/2 to be horrible and lacking a message—there are many things that I liked, but there were a few elements I found, at times, tiresome.
This is Fellini’s most personal work—a self-reflection of his status as a director and as a man. The protagonist (and antagonist—can you be both?) is Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni), an obvious alter-ego of Fellini. Guido has come to an impasse in his directing 
The movie’s look is sleek and stylish. Shot in black and white 35-millimeter film by cinematographer Gianni Di Venanzo, who employed the spherical cinematographic technique, the overall look is unique and visually stunning. In addition
Piero Gherardi won an Oscar for his costume design, but he was also responsible for the set designs—all of which are striking and perfectly Felliniesque. In particular, the scenes at the health spa are
I never know how to judge the acting in older Italian films—especially Fellini’s—because the sound was dubbed in after filming was completed. It’s one of those strange nitpicks I have: how can you emote when you don’t know exactly what you’re saying (Fellini had a habit of writing a lot of dialogue after filming was done)? Still, Mastroianni plays his Guido as a world-weary complex man well. I also enjoyed watching Aimee’s portrayal of a fed up but somewhat apathetic wife. Claudia Cardinale, 
Yet another thing that stands out about the picture is the music. Composer Nino Rota was Fellini’s favorite composer, and he does a wonderful job of choosing and crafting music for every scene. His circus-inspired composition “La Passerella” is a perfect way to start off (and end) a film about a ringmaster (Guido the director) who is constantly juggling his many responsibilities (and women). I also thought using Wagner’s “The Ride of the Valkyries” was an inspired choice-what better music is there about overindulgence and psychological distress? Rossini’s overture to “The Barber of Seville” and Tchaikovsky’s “Danse des Mirlitons” from the “Nutcracker” are also used.
Overall, 8 1/2 is not my favorite Fellini endeavor. I don’t hate it, but I don’t love it, either.
(This article is from guest contributor Rick29 and first appeared at http://classic-film-tv.blogspot.com/. The rating in the title is my own.)
Alfred Hitchcock’s most divisive thriller finds the Master of Suspense in magician mode. On the surface, The Birds is a traditionally-structured horror film, in which the bird attacks build progressively to three of Hitchcock’s most intense sequences. However, this is just Hitchcock performing a little playful sleight of hand with the audience. Our feathered friends play a strictly peripheral part in moving the plot along. In actuality, The Birds is a relationship movie about another memorable Hitchcock mother, her adult son, and the women who threaten to come between the two—a theme explored by Hitchcock earlier in Notorious and Psycho.
In The Birds, the son is the bland, but likable, Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor). Mitch’s mother (wonderfully played by Jessica Tandy) fears losing her son to another woman—not because of jealousy, but because she can’t stand the thought of being abandoned. Young socialite Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) views Mitch as a stable love interest, something she needs as she strives to live a more meaningful life. And Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette) is the spinster schoolteacher, willing to waste her life to be near Mitch after failing to pry him from his mother.
These characters come together when Melanie follows Mitch to his home in Bodega Bay after a flirtatious exchange in a pet store. Melanie’s arrival coincides with the beginning of the bird attacks. It’s almost as if the birds arrive to prevent any potential love between Mitch and Melanie, perhaps an extension of Mitch’s mother’s anger at having to defeat another rival for her son’s love. (Taken to the extreme, there could a parallel between the birds and the creature created by Morbius in Forbidden Planet). However, although the birds initially come between Mitch and Melanie, they eventually have a very different impact. They allow Melanie, who first appears spoiled and shallow, to show her courage and vulnerability. In the end, Mitch’s mother no longer sees Melanie as a threat, but as a woman worthy of her son. Once the friction between those two characters is resolved, the bird attacks stop and the movie ends. Hitchcock’s conclusion—often criticized as ambiguous—is perfectly logical.
Hitchcock goes to great lengths to misdirect his audience by disguising The Birds as a conventional thriller. Always concerned with audience expectations, the Master of Suspense told French director/film critic Francois Truffaut in Hitchcock, a brilliant collection of interviews: “I didn’t want the public to become too impatient about the birds, because that would distract them from the personal story….” For that reason, the first bird attack comes at twenty-five minutes into the film and occurs toward the end of a playful scene in which Melanie races her boat while Mitch drives along the lake road trying to beat her to the dock.
From that point on, the birds become progressively more menacing and their appearances more frequent: Mitch sees them on the power lines after Melanie visits for dinner; a bird crashes into Annie’s front door and dies; birds swoop down to break up a children’s birthday party; they fly through the open flue into Mitch’s house; and Mitch’s mother find the first human victim in a farmhouse. (I love how Hitchcock uses broken teacups in this scene to foreshadow the impending horror. Earlier, he shows Mitch’s mom picking up broken teacups after the birds-in-the-flue incident. Then, when she visits the apparently empty farmhouse, she sees broken teacups hanging on their hooks—just before discovering the bloody, eyeless body.)
The remainder of the film consists of the three major set pieces: the bird attack outside the school-house; the attack after the gas station blows up; and Melanie’s struggle with the birds in the attic. Again, following the classic horror film structure, Hitchcock separates each sequence with a transition scene that allows the audience to relax and catch its breath. The scene in the restaurant with the ornithologist is one of Hitch’s rare missteps in The Birds; as Truffaut points out, it goes on too long without contributing to the narrative structure. I won’t dissect the birds’ attack on the school children—it’s an iconic sequence—but I strongly recommend that Hitchcock fans seek out Dan Auiler’s Hitchcock’s Notebooks, which include the director’s hand-drawn storyboard and notes. Though less famous, the burning gas station sequence is no less impressive. In the midst of the terrifying chaos, Hitchcock shows Melanie protected—and trapped—inside a phone booth. This “glass cage” is a marvelous metaphor for her previously sheltered life (also symbolized by the lovebirds in the birdcage) from which she is rescued by Mitch (literally…when he pulls her from the phone booth).
The three years between Psycho and The Birds (1963) comprised the longest gap between Hitchcock films up to that point. Much of that time was spent dealing with the technical difficulties in bringing Daphne du Maurier’s short story to the screen. In Truffaut’s book, Hitchcock admits that he discovered narrative weakness in The Birds as he was shooting it. A compulsive pre-planner, who storyboarded every shot in every film, Hitchcock began to improvise during the shooting of The Birds: “The emotional siege I went through served to bring out an additional creative sense in me.”
That creative genius is captured for all to see in The Birds. From its use of bird sounds in lieu of music to its disturbing closing shot, The Birds is an atypical Hitchcock film which finds the director in a mischievous mood. He gives us a classic chiller, but then reveals that it’s all wrapping paper and that’s what inside is a relationship drama. It’s an unexpected gift and, hey, Hitchcock even includes a birthday party for us—although it’s disrupted by those darn birds!
Yes, yes, Ms. Caron.
Popular, beloved actress Natalie Wood received her third and last Oscar nomination for playing Angie Rossini, a pregnant Italian-American girl, who has to deal with responsibility and the father of her unborn child (Steve McQueen) in the dramedy movie Love with the Proper Stranger. I am quite sure (just like in the case of Shirley MacLaine) that Wood received many votes from the Academy as she was Oscarless and a huge star (and was expected to win for Splendor in the Grass). It did not turn out to be enough for her to win the Oscar, which people do not complain much about, except for maybe her biggest fans.
British actress Rachel Roberts received her only Academy Award nomination for playing Mrs. Margaret Hammond, a widow having a stormy and tragic relationship with the aggressive and violant rugby player, Frank in This Sporting Life a movie directed by Lindsay Anderson. It's an interesting fact that her husband, Rex Harrison was also among the 1963 nominees in the Best Actor category. And they both went home empty handed, but I don't think that it was much of a shock as when performances like this won, it was always a huge upset (=Simone Signoret in Room at the Top).This time I can't give you a link unfortunately. But let's discuss in case you've seen this movie. I'm also waiting for some predictions. Tomorrow, I'll do Natalie Wood in the morning and the final conclusion in the evening or the following day. Patricia Neal received her first nomination and only Oscar before and after a series of unfortunate events in her life for playing Alma, the independent and down-to-earth housekeeper in Martin Ritt's classic movie, Hud. That year she was clearly the critics' favorite, but I'm not that sure if she was the front-runner for the Oscar win. Nevertheless, she got the award despite the fact that many people consider this a supporting performance (she was nominated for BSA at the Golden Globe) . In addition, her role is not the most baity ever, so it's really surprising that they went with her.Charming French actress Leslie Caron received her second Best Actress nomination exactly 10 years after her first one for playing a lonely, pregnant young French woman in Bryan Forbes' black and white kitchen sink drama, The L-Shaped Room. She also received the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama (over a LOT of other nominees check it out). Although she received the prestigeous award, I don't think that she was a big contender for the Oscar (or was she, someone should tell me who's the front-runner that year) as the race was probably among the three American nominees.
Shirley MacLaine received her third Best Actress nomination for playing Irma, a prostitute from Paris in Billy Wilder's amusing comedy Irma La Douce. MacLaine famously (IMO undeservedly) lost to Liz Taylor when she said some not very nice things about why she did not win. In Irma la Douce she reunited with her co-star in The Apartment, Jack Lemmon. The success was sure and MacLaine received her nomination for her rather leightweight work and I think received many consolation votes from some Academy memebers.
