There's something special to movies about movies. The art form's popularity makes it seem glamorous, yet the process is unknown to so many that it carries an air of mystery. The stories made about them can dismiss these elements by showing some of the unseen chaos of creation, while also adding to its mystique by revealing the unbelievable way they're made. There are many great films about movies like Quentin Tarantino's love letter to the Hollywood he grew up with in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood or more recently Damien Chazelle's Babylon which shows the dark hedonistic fun of early movie making.

While these films and many others convey many different aspects of filmmaking, no film captures the pure magic of the movies better than Cinema Maestro Federico Fellini's 8 ½. The film still stands as one of the greatest ever made and has influenced a great number of filmmakers, with Martin Scorsese and David Lynch among the most significant artists inspired by Fellini's masterpiece. Here's why 8 ½ is still the greatest film about filmmaking.

A Circus of Ideas

Eight-and-a-Half-Circus
Cineriz

Art doesn't happen in a vacuum, and that's doubly true for filmmaking. With so many complex means of expression available to filmmakers, it requires a team of varied artists with different specializations to take advantage of everything possible. No matter how talented these artists are, they need someone to carry the vision and guide the team toward the unified goal of creating a singular expression. They need a director, and the process of the director is the primary focus of 8 ½.

The director being the designated visionary is often bombarded with questions, suggestions, and just about every idea anyone involved with their film has. The production designer wants to know what drapes will be best for the protagonist's bedroom. The actor has an idea about how to perform a certain scene. The producer wonders if they can cut an ambitious shot from the schedule to save some money. This is why many great directors define the job as mainly just answering questions all day.

8 ½ captures this overwhelming experience with incredible accuracy, as the film's protagonist is always being approached by someone asking a question about the movie they are about to make. A particularly memorable example of this is the constant questions of a certain actress who has been cast in the film and has no idea what her role will be. She is constantly ambushing the director with questions about what she should expect, and the director doesn't wish to answer because he doesn't know either, so he makes it a game full of lies and embellishments. When she asks how many lines she will have, he says five.

The director is much more patient with the questions of the production team, looking over their sketches and visiting their production office hotel room often. Each encounter captures the way a director works with their team is rarely one-note, conveying the circus-like chaos that they have to deal with regularly in order to make a movie.

Related: 20 Other Movies Every Martin Scorsese Fan Should See

Reflections from a Dream

Marcello floating in 8 1/2 movie from Fellini
Cineriz

The creative process is at its best when it's deeply personal, drawing from the artist's own life however possible. When making a film about the creative process, how do you show that? Fellini knew it had to be through dreams and memories. 8 ½ states this as soon as possible with an iconic dream sequence of the protagonist in a strange scenario that represents his anxiety concerning the making of his next movie. There are many more dream sequences that occur throughout the movie that happen spontaneously without warning, gliding out of reality and into the subconscious. Equally important are the reflective memories of the protagonist as he tries to mine his past for anything that could give direction for his film, which come and go just as the dreams do.

It may sound confusing for those who have yet to see the film, but it works beautifully and feels like magic when you watch it. It all serves Fellini's vision to visually depict the creative process through these intuitive images, all representing the way a director looks into themselves to find that which they wish to express. It's a tactic that has now been adopted by many filmmakers for their own dreamy pursuits, Alejandro G. Iñárritu's Bardo being the most recent example, but it's still at its best in the originator of these methods with Fellini's film. More importantly, it shows an incredible aspect of filmmaking often neglected for the much easier-to-shoot real-world chaos of making a movie, yet another reason 8 ½ is such a special film.

Related: Here Are The 7 Best Movies About Characters Having An Existential Crisis

Fact and Fiction Blurred Together

8 and a Half
Cineriz

What might be the greatest evidence of 8 ½'s claim to being the best movie about making movies is that it actually happened. The dreamy, surreal film about a director trying to find his movie was inspired by Fellini's actual process of discovering the movie. Deep into the production of a new film, Fellini suddenly fell out of love with what he was making and lost the movie in himself. Sets were already being built, the cast secured, and the money was being spent.

This made Fellini feel he couldn't back out, and he tried to see if he could recapture the vision before they started shooting. The typical circus of questions came forward, all asking what should be done for the film with Fellini totally unsure how to answer, but not having the heart to tell them. He eventually found the film when he realized this experience was the film, . The result was this now legendary film that is the greatest depiction of filmmaking ever made that still inspires countless generations of artists today.