Comparison · 3 shared techniques

8½ vs Lost Highway

8½ (1963) and Lost Highway (1997) share 3 techniques. Here is how each film uses them.

8½ (1963) poster

8½

Federico Fellini · 1963

Lost Highway (1997) poster

Lost Highway

David Lynch · 1997

Shared

Same technique, two films

Circular Structure

Ending the film where it started, or with a scene that echoes the opening. The repeat shows what has changed, or suggests the cycle will keep going.

8½

The film opens with Guido's dream of suffocating. It ends with the director inside the film ordering all his characters to dance together. Coming full circle settles something. Guido starts out paralyzed and ends up at peace with it. The film he couldn't make becomes the film Fellini made about not being able to make it.

Lost Highway

The film opens with Fred hearing 'Dick Laurent is dead' over his intercom, and it closes with Fred saying the same line into the intercom himself. The repeat suggests he is stuck in a loop he can't escape. What you thought was a crime story becomes a trap.

Psychological Doubling

Pairing the main character with a second character who mirrors them. The double shows what the hero wants, fears or secretly is.

8½

Guido's wife Luisa and his mistress Carla are romantic rivals, and they are also 2 sides of his divided self. Luisa is what he respects and can't live up to. Carla is what he desires and can't respect. Neither is complete. Together, they make up the impossible ideal woman Guido keeps trying to make films about.

Lost Highway

Fred's wife Renee has a double in Alice, the mistress of the gangster Mr. Eddy, and Fred has a double in Pete, a young mechanic. Each double acts out what the original can't face. Pete gets the life of confident desire that Fred has lost.

Unreliable Reality

Keeping it unclear what is real and what is imagined in the film's world. You end up as unsure as the main character.

8½

At any moment, what you're seeing could be Guido's memory, his fantasy, his anxiety or what is really happening. Fellini gives you no reliable signal when he moves between them. The film is about a man who can't separate his imagination from reality. It shows you that in the story, and it also makes you feel it through the way it is put together.

Lost Highway

You can't tell whether Fred is really sent to death row, imagining another life or both. Lynch never says. He lets the film leave you as lost as Fred is.

Different

Where they split

Only in Lost Highway