“What You’re Seeing Here Is A Masterpiece”: Legendary 1960s Dream Sequence Gets Perfect Accuracy Score

Summary Fellini's film 8 ½ expertly captures the feeling and intensity of nightmares, earning a perfect score from a dream expert.

The dream sequence in 8 ½ creates a sense of claustrophobia, uncertainty, and fear, accurately depicting how nightmares affect us.

Filmmakers like David Lynch and Martin Scorsese have been inspired by Fellini's ability to capture the dream-like quality of cinema.

A dream sequence from a legendary 1960s art film gets a perfect accuracy score from an expert. Famed Italian director Federico Fellini was suffering from a severe case of creative block after a run of acclaimed films, including the classics Nights of Cabiria, La Strada and La Dolce Vita. In a stroke of genius, Fellini decided to make a movie all about the block he was experiencing, and the result was one of his greatest masterpieces, a film that went on to be nominated for five Oscars, winning two.

A phantasmagoric comedy-drama starring Marcello Mastroianni as a fictionalized Fellini, 8 ½ features one of cinema’s most renowned dream sequences, and according to at least one expert, the famous scene deserves all the acclaim it's received over the years. Dream expert and neurosurgeon Rahul Jandial recently broke down Fellini’s sequence, praising the director for accurately depicting how nightmares work, and the feelings they evoke in the dreamer, giving the movie a perfect 10-out-of-10. Check out his remarks below (via Penguin Books UK):

Immediately they start off with a feeling of claustrophobia. The subtle use of sound and then the passenger in the car in front looks back with a gaze that's hard to discern what the intentions are. ... This is a nightmare. Look at this man's gaze. The fact that it's not clear is something that adds to the fright in nightmares. Sometimes we lose the capacity to read other people's minds. We can feel the intentions are evil, even, but our ability to discern that is lost. That's called theory of mind. That is dampened in nightmares. It's hard to tell what people intend to do to us. Nightmares, when they're described, there are moments when you feel like you're getting away, that maybe the worst is behind you. But the nightmare has not finished with him. ... He falls to his demise and then is woken up and that's the last part of a nightmare, is that it must wake you up . ... Nightmares are defined by the fact they wake you up and singe that experience into your waking memory. On a score of 0 to 10, if 10 is an accurate depiction of dreaming, what you're seeing here is a masterpiece. I give it a 10.

Fellini’s 8 ½ Inspired Lynch And Scorsese

Given the dream-like feel of 8 ½, its no surprise that the film stands as one of David Lynch’s all-time favorites, as the Blue Velvet director once explained in an interview with Far Out Magazine. Lynch loves the movie “for the way Federico Fellini manages to accomplish with film what mostly abstract painters do – without ever explaining anything, just by a sort of sheer magic.” Lynch would, of course, create his own inscrutable dream-films, including the acclaimed Eraserhead, Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive, all movies that show a clear Fellini influence.

8 ½ is available to watch on Max.

Killers of the Flower Moon auteur Martin Scorsese is another director who has spoken of his love for Fellini. In a MasterClass discussion, Scorsese talked about 8 ½ and its mysterious dream-world, saying, “He was able to play with the image in such a plastic way, kept stretching the images and stretching the cutting of the film so that it exists in some subconscious level.” Filmmakers have long been inspired by Fellini and his ability to capture the feel of dreams, and it seems the 8 ½ director indeed had a firm grasp of how the subconscious works, at least according to one expert.

Source: Penguin Books UK