Suite (Otto e mezzo)

Rota's score for Fellini's Otto e mezzo, released in 1963, follows a film director who cannot make his film, and the music circles in the same way: marches, waltzes and a circus finale return in slightly altered form, with quotations from Rossini, Wagner and Tchaikovsky worked into Rota's own material. Much of it was written before shooting, and Fellini played it on set to give the actors a tempo. The closing parade, in which the whole cast joins hands to a small band on screen, has become the emblem of the two men's collaboration.