Your film-watching isn't complete until you've caught this one. You may love it, you may hate it. You will certainly be puzzled by it - but you're unlikely to forget it in a hurry. Director Federico Fellini has made a film about a director (Marcello Mastroianni) making a film based on incidents from his own life, his memories, his visions, his dreams. The work has been described as partly autobiographical, but it is surrealistically so, to say the least. Its dominating theme is the director's relationship with women, from his lean-and-hungry wife (Anouk Aimée), to his mistress (Sandra Milo) and the girl of his dreams (Claudia Cardinale), who represents to him purity in a world of corruption. Others he knows include the brooding Barbara Steele and the chilly-eyed Rossella Falk. Quite a harem. And it is indeed as the master of the harem that the director sees himself in one dream scene. In some ways, the film is reminiscent of Citizen Kane, in that the central character is searching, always searching for something in himself that will suddenly bring his whole life into perspective. It's impeccably acted by Mastroianni and a cast of weird characters, some of whom haunt the memory long after the film, which itself has a dreamlike quality, is over. Best Foreign Film Oscar-winner.

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