Fellini’s “City of Women”

Throughout "8 1/2," Federico Fellini's famously self-referential 1963 film, a director is hounded by journalists asking questions: "Are you for or against eroticism? Are you afraid of the nuclear bomb? Do you believe in God?" The movie's interrogating is more than just professional nuisance, however: it's also about the director's work and character, which seem interchangeable. Appraising the script for the director's current project, an intellectual declares, "What monstrous presumption to thin...