Hence 8 ½ is like an opus number: this is film number eight and a half in the Fellini catalog.
By 1963, Federico Fellini had made, by his count, seven and a half films. If the mark of modernism in art is self-reference, 8 ½ surely goes beyond any predecessor in having itself as its subject. 8½: a bizarre and puzzling title, but one precisely appropriate for this film, which announces in its first frame that modernism has reached the cinema.
