In 8 ½, Guido, a film director who seems to represent Fellini himself, has undertaken a large-scale production but runs out of creative energy in the process. This blockage plunges him (and us) into a subconscious dream world of nightmares, fantasies, and flashbacks that interpenetrate his perceptions of the present and jumble narrative logic. (pg. 533) " Everything that the main character, Guido, says about the film he is making, turns out to be true. Fellini is able to point out how some camera movements create an ambiguity between Guido, the director in the film, and Fellini, and the director "of " the film, thus taking self-reference one step beyond the work to its maker. This film is both autobiographical and brilliant. Its surface flow of images dazzles the viewer with sharp contrasts of black and white, startling eruptions from off screen, unexpected changes of scene, and a virtuoso display of all the possibilities and effects of camera movement. All of these components signify freedom as a filmmaker and exemplifies his establishment as an auteur in the progression of the Second Italian Film Renaissance.
Like Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni began his career as a neorealist. Though he worked throughout the forties on short documentaries like N.U./Nettezza urbana about street cleaners in Rome, it wasn't until the fifties where he began to form his style and focus on middle class malaise. .
"Antonioni's first features broke away from the neorealist conventions to examine the middle-class milieu with which he was most familiar. Cronaca di un amore (Story of a Love Affair, 1950) depicts the consequences of an affair between a wealthy housewife and a car salesman. I vinti (The Vanquished, 1952) is an episodic film that examines violence among the restless youth of postwar Europe. La signora senza camelie (Camille without Camellias, 1953) concerns the rise and fall of a young movie star.