For many, Marcello Mastroianni defined Italian masculinity, or at least the debonair version of it, and in this Fellini masterpiece he gives perhaps his most dashing performance, at once intellectualized and sexualized. A traffic-jam nightmare, a literal flight of fancy, nuns and whores and more: 8 1/2 follows the dreams and visions of a jaded director (Mastroianni) as he bemusedly attempts his next great film, which may or may not take precedence over his own sexual desires. Mastroianni told a journalist in 1965, “I did those two Fellini films (La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2) not as an actor but as a man . . . to realize myself through them. They are the best mirror of my real self. It's not that I play myself, actually, but rather more that I am looking for myself in the roles.”