"The Best Film Ever Made About Filmmaking"

Roger Ebert proclaims Federico Fellini's 8 1/2, which will be screened tonight at 7:30PM at Page Hall (free and open to the public) the best film ever made about filmmaking.

Read the full Chicago Sun-Times reappraisal from May 28, 2000, here.

"8 1/2 is the best film ever made about filmmaking..... The critic Alan Stone, writing in the Boston Review, deplores Fellini’s 'stylistic tendency to emphasize images over ideas.' I celebrate it. A filmmaker who prefers ideas to images will never advance above the second rank because he is fighting the nature of his art. The printed word is ideal for ideas; film is made for images, and images are best when they are free to evoke many associations and are not linked to narrowly defined purposes. Here is Stone on the complexity of 8 1/2: 'Almost no one knew for sure what they had seen after one viewing.' True enough, but true of all great films— while you know for sure what you’ve seen after one viewing of a shallow one.." More.