The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

8½
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lated that it’ll be too rarified for the audience. You hope that they can take
a bigger understanding of a narrow subject. And I think that’s what Fellini
does so brilliantly. I don’t think you have to know anything about filmmaking
to be totally entranced with that movie.
Can you talk about how 8½ has informed your body of work?
Jaglom: It taught me that it was OK to do the very thing that I’m criticized
for, which is to use my own life as the subject, such as my emotions or those
of the people very close to me. It’s something that nobody questions in the
other arts, but since movies are the so-called popular medium, people do
question whether that is too narcissistic. I talk about this subject a lot in
my character in Venice/Venice. People try to tell you that it’s wrong because
movies are a popular medium, and therefore you should find a popular
common denominator. If you have the temerity to think of movies as art,
then I don’t think that should apply.
You were already a Mastroianni fan going into 8½, but did the film
itself open you up to other genres?
Jaglom: It was a whole new understanding of what filmmaking could be.
Are there any specific homages you pay to 8½ in any of your films?
Jaglom: Well, the star of my film Festival in Cannes was Anouk Aimée. To
me, she’s the ultimate. I feel one degree of separation from Fellini, which is
enormously gratifying. I tried very hard to use the mythology of her characters,
not just in 8½ but in the movies.
I don’t believe in homage very much. I make comments on other movies
that I’ve seen, certainly, and steal things without realizing that they have
influenced me. Anouk was also in A Man and a Woman, and I did a whole
circular camera thing at the end of this last movie because of that.
I was set on that path by Fellini. Film can be either autobiographical or
emotionally autobiographical, if not literally autobiographical. Orson Welles
said to me that my films were not cinema verité, but cinema of emotional
verité. For me, 8½ is the great film of emotional verité. It’s not the truth. It’s
not a documentary, certainly, and it’s not really what Fellini’s life was really
like, but it’s what his feelings were really like.