8½

Eight and a half films into his career, Fellini decided it was time to turn the camera inward. 8½ is a portrait of a creatively blocked filmmaker (Mastroianni) reaching crisis point, beset by memories and fantasies as he searches for the right path.

The path Fellini eventually chose proved to be colour – 8½ was his last black and white film and marks a clear divide in his career – but the images captured here by the great Gianni Di Venanzo are some of the most memorable in cinema. From the opening dream sequence, Fellini dazzles and confounds the viewer with one extraordinary scene after another, finding endless beauty and mystery in the women from Guido's past, including Claudia Cardinale, Sandra Milo and Anouk Aimée.

This singular film is playful, bitter, enigmatic and undeniably self-indulgent, but it’s also one of cinema's most extraordinary acts of creative expression, and grows more stimulating and ambiguous with each viewing. [Philip Concannon]