30 DoC: 8 1/2 and Mel Brooks

A while ago, I wrote about how you can connect RAGING BULL in one step to SPACE JAM (seriously). In that same entry, I also suggested that RAGING BULL might be the best-looking black-and-white film ever made.

I might have to eat crow on that one, because 8 1/2 is ridiculously gorgeous.


I'm not the world's biggest Fellini fan, but GODDAMN:




And all of these images take place within the first five minutes of the film!

8 1/2 is justifiably praised for its lush cinematography, its brilliant post-modern analysis of the filmmaker and the film, and for all of the things that make film profs feel tingly inside. Those are all valid reasons, and I love them too, but for me, it's the humour in 8 1/2 that truly sets it apart.

The cliche of older foreign films being sombre, highbrow examinations on death and misery gets shown the lie here: 8 1/2 is steeped in sex, jealousy, and lust, and it's often riotously funny while it does it. The "harem" dream scene is a mini-masterpiece within a masterpiece, lampooning male desire in a scene that wouldn't be too out of place in a Mel Brooks film.

Of course, comparing Brooks to Fellini is a little facetious of me, but not as much as it may seem. Brooks gets a dismissive shake from the the elitists as "the fart guy", and I'm sure there are those who would argue he is more closely linked to say, the Wayans, then Fellini, but his films are brilliant skewerings of racism, scientific rationality, and politics. I mean, he even shot a black-and-white film!

So Criterion, where's the Blu-ray of YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN?

Kidding. Kind of. That'd be totally awesome, though.