not much of a topic for discussion I suppose but i've just counted up and this is Greenaway's ninth feature film, just as Otto e Mezzo was Fellini's ninth. He must have been planning that allusion for years.
shareThe line in the film about not liking to go to the cinema and share one's emotional responses with hundreds of other people is a paraphrase of a quote by Fellini.
Mio rather recalls a similarly passive female character in Fellini's Casanova.
Well, since he writes scripts, he could have planned it. I thought Fellini said 8 1/2 was his 8th and 1/2 movie, I thought he said in some book I read that one of his other films was only 1/2 of a film...can't remember which one. Or maybe 8 1/2 was the 1/2 film?
I haven't seen Fellini's films enough to see if any of the female characters in his films are used for 8 1/2 Women. It would make sense, given the focus of the older man and his son in the beginning of 8 1/2 Women that each women at the house would be inspired partly by a character in a Fellini film, if not entirely. But I haven't seen many Fellini films more than once, so I couldn't tell you.
The clown mask of the woman who loved horses, reminds me a lot of the clowns used in Fellini films. I'm not sure about the woman with the pig. The nun, maid, woman who wanted to get pregnant a lot and the woman the men both fall for...I could see them being in Fellini films.
I am sure there are a lot of Fellini references I didn't catch because I don't watch Fellini films over and over again, except for Roma.