Framing

(Encuadre / Cadrage)

This is the selection of the visual elements that form part of the shot. The perimeter determined by the chosen filming format, which is a rectangle of varying height and width depending on the fashion of each era, and the perspective used that generates the scale, from close up to long shot, establish the boundaries and nature of the framing.

The task of framing, or visually organising, brings cinematography closer to the compositional work of the art of painting, with the difference being that in the audio-visual world the framing can vary over time and incorporate sound. The framing method forms part of the style of each filmmaker. So, in the material filmed in 1931 for the unfinished project ¡Que viva México!, from which came the films Thunder over Mexico (1933) and Time in the Sun (1940), and years later ¡Que viva México! (1979), the version edited by Grigori Alexandrov who added a soundtrack, we can recognise its original author, Sergei Eisenstein, due to the framing style of this Soviet director.

The framing method forms part of the style of each filmmaker

Other feature films in which one of the most notable features is a pictorial framing are The Marquise of O (Die Marquise von O, 1976) by Eric Rohmer, which draws from the romantic style painting of the nineteenth-century and painters such as Henry Fuseli, and The Cook, the Thief, his Wife & her Lover (1989) by Peter Greenaway, in which a painting by Franz Hals, The Banquet of the Officers of the St George Militia Company in 1616, hangs in the restaurant serving as a backdrop and framing some scenes. The film Mommy (2014) by Xavier Dolan stands out in another sense because of its vertical framing format, in contrast to the rectangle which has prevailed throughout the history of cinema.

Fellini 8½ (Otto e mezzo)

8½ / Huit et demi | Federico Fellini, 1963, Italy/France

Called 8 1/2 (Otto e Mezzo) because it was Fellini's eighth and a half film (the "half" corresponds to the sum of Marriage Agency (Agenzia Matrimoniale) and The Temptation of Dr. Antonio (Le Tentazioni del Dottor Antonio), segments belonging respectively to the episodic Love in the city (L'amore in città) [1953] and Boccaccio 70 [1962]), the film, deceptively autobiographical but entirely confessional, accounts in a dreamlike metacinema key the problems faced by Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni), a renowned film director, a copy of Fellini himself, who is going through a deep creative crisis thinking about a project that he does not quite know how to deal with. The pressure placed on him by all those around (colleagues, family and friends) does not exactly help him to find a way out of the self-absorption into which he has sunk, so he travels to a quiet spa to spend time there in search of his lost inspiration. Relocated to this idyllic spot, Guido goes over the most important events in his life, focusing especially on the hallucinatory memory of all the women he has loved.

Portrait of Federico Fellini
Talking about dreams is like talking about movies as the cinema uses the language of dreams: years can pass n seconds and it is possible to jump from one place to another

Federico Fellini

(1920-1993)

Undisputed genius of contemporary cinema, Fellini spent most of his childhood in Rimini, his often evoked hometown. His first great interests, before discovering his passion for film, were drawing and caricature. In 1939 he moved to Rome with his mother and sister with the intention of studying law and jurisprudence at the University of Rome, a course that he never finished. There he gained some notoriety thanks to the cartoons and serials published in the magazine Marc’Aurelio, notoriety that led him to work with the comedian Aldo Fabrizi writing gags for his variety shows.

In 1940, after a brief stint in radio, he made his first foray into the film world by participating, as a screenwriter, in the film The Pirate's Dream (Il Pirata Sono Io), directed by Mario Mattoli. In 1944 he met the neorealist Roberto Rossellini who became his tutor and with whom he would work as a screenwriter on, among others, the mythical Rome, Open City (Roma città aperta, 1945). In 1950 he debuted as a director, first co-directing Variety Lights (Luci del varietà) with Alberto Lattuada and then going solo with The White Sheik (Lo Sceicco Bianco, 1951), based on an idea by Michelangelo Antonioni.

While filming this he would meet Nino Rota, the great musician with whom he would be linked for life. The following year he won a Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival for I Vitelloni. In 1954 he won his second Silver Lion as well as an Oscar for The Road (La Strada), his first internationally acclaimed film and the real turning point in his career, moving toward a filmography progressively further from neorealism and increasingly focused on his particular personal universe. His later films won many international awards, including the Palme d'Or at Cannes for La Dolce Vita (1960), with which he had major commercial success and even more critical acclaim.

81/2 (Otto E Mezzo, 1963) was the beginning of the now established second stage of his career, all marked by its exuberant fantasy, baroque style and humour tending towards the surreal. This era includes unforgettable Fellini gems such as Juliet of the Spirits (Giulietta Degli Spirit, 1965), Rome (Roma) (1972), Amarcord (1973) and The Ship Sails On (E La Nave Va, 1983). Although his mature period was marked by his gradual decline in critical acclaim and his increasingly less commercial success, in 1993, shortly before his death, Federico Fellini received his fifth Oscar for his entire career.