La dolce vita

Long, episodic film by Federico Fellini about the conceits and facades of life: fame, intellect, sex, friendship, despair, innocence, etc.

Marcello Mastroianni is perfect as the shallow tabloid reporter who joyfully follows around Rome a blonde movie star from Sweden (Anita Ekberg) as she prowls around the city's bars and bistros. He is also having an affair with a woman (Anouk Aimee) while his girl friend (Yvonne Furnaux) seems to be going nuts.

But as Marcello moves through the city following the movie star, the miracle of the virgin, a few parties, etc. we see that his life is very empty because the things he reports on are meaningless drivel. We see that fame and fortune and the trappings of success are meaningless.

Marcello starts to realize that the movie star is a vapid airhead, the miracles are a sham, and his friend's (who seemed quite happily married) ghastly murder and suicide show the futility of life itself.

The Fellini themes are common to many of his films, but what makes La Dolce Vita so memorable are the cynical tone, the Nina Rota music, and the string of terrific visual images.

The opening scene is of a helicopter hauling a gilded plaster statue through the air across Rome. The flying saint is a bizarre image but serves to set up the movies which is all about images and events that are never what they seem to be.

Notable are the scenes of statuesque Ekberg in that terrific strapless black dress with the voluminous skirts as she swishes around dancing and eventually wading through a city fountain. The party scenes are also notable. The first because of the intolerable intellectuals who sits around and talk and talk but never do anything. The last party has the indelible image of Mastroianni "riding" a drunken blonde woman as though she were a horse. The final image of the giant dead fish is quite unsettling as it symbolizes their bloated lives.

Fellini is brilliant in filling scenes with odd people as extras, usually hideously dressed or wearing ugly glasses. The "gallery" of people who inhabit the city is one of grotesques, vapid fashion slaves, the rich, hangers on, etc.

A long film, but highly recommended and very memorable.

This is one of those films where I just don't want it to end as I enjoyed it so much. So many memorable and humorous scenes - Fellini successfully captured the atmosphere of picturesque Rome lifestyle. All of the characters are interesting, complex and I especially loved Anita Ekberg's performance! Amazing!

There really isnt a plot. This is about a tabloid photographer and some scenarios he gets into. All the characters seem vain, selfish and wanting more from life without actually knowing what they want. The Rome nightlife is brought to life here and there are many scenes at lavish parties where all the characters dont appear to have any emotional connection to one another. There are also disconnected Catholic themes throughout the movie. It leaves you questioning your own life and emptiness.

In many ways, this has to be regarded as the defining film of its era. It presaged a new style of cinema. It had a fluid, dreamy, symbolic visual and narrative form, and its resonance stems from its visual set pieces and overall ambience. It is also a fascinating exploration of the lifestyles and attitudes of an incipient, flash, indulgent and directionless generation.

The film is mainly remembered for the iconic scene of Anita Ekberg ebulliently splashing her way into the centre of the Trevi Fountain, followed by an adoring Marcello Mastroianni. The scene is emblematic of the film in the sense that it represents characters who wish to break free from the constraints of previous generations but their efforts, while perhaps on the surface appearing daring and romantic, often lead to nowhere. There's a sense of searching but not finding: breaking free of one set of constraints only in order to meet another. Marcello, the film's protagonist and perhaps a representation of the director himself, wants to be free of his wife and he doesn't want to sell himself to the capitalist system, but what else is there to provide meaning to his life? He is failing as an artist and his romantic conquests seem empty and unfulfilling. He yearns for a time when life was more clearly defined and yet he loathes the responsibility and entrapment that that definition would impose. And so he drifts from party to party, a little less energetic, a little more cynical on each occasion.

La Dolce Vita shows us the new hedonism and society's burgeoning obsession with celebrity. It is responsible for the word "paparazzi", which came from the name of one of the supporting characters, and it features a very young Nico, who would go on to achieve fame with one of the defining bands of the '60s. The film is a bold and brilliant exploration of life as it was lived by the upper-classes and the emerging chattering classes of the time. It's an enthralling experience which is both sweet and sombre.

I just saw a new print of this wonderful film after not having seen it for maybe 20 years and it is still spellbinding. Fellini sums up an era and an attitude here, and succeeds in doing something that ought to be impossible: he makes a full and meaningful film about empty and meaningless lives. Mastroianni seems to have been to Fellini what DeNiro has been to Scorsese--a perfect embodiment of a personal vision. What a wonderful actor he was--brilliant in his youth and in his age. Many other performers are hardly less fine here, and the cinematography and composition are stunning throughout. There are so many indelible images from this film, images that have become iconic over the decades: Ekberg in the Fontana di Trevi, the statue of Christ flying over Rome, the astonishing, candlelit procession at the castle, to name a few. It seems plot less and yet it isn't plot less at all; Marcello's ultimately fruitless search for meaning, a search that he abandons in the end, as he stares across a slight and yet unbridgable abyss on the beach at a lovely young girl who seems to possess the knowledge and understanding that is denied to him. I'm astonished at the number of people who don't get this movie, who seem to think that Fellini expects us to admire the bizarre characters who people the film, or who think that a movie about worthless individuals must be a worthless movie, or who don't seem to understand that movies that are full of what become clichés usually do so because they capture an important vision. Fellini made several exceptional films: 81/2, La Strada, Amarcord, and The Nights of Cabiria come to mind, but La Dolce Vita may be, when all is said and done, his masterwork.