La Dolce Vita

Monday 4th January, start time 8:15   Reel Cinema, Andover 

Release: 1960 (Cert 15)

Directors: Federico Fellini

Cast: Anita Ekberg, Anouk Aimee, Marcello Mastroianni

Review: Here 

Precis to follow soon. 

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Review submitted by Hans van Well:

LA DOLCE VITA, Federico Fellini, 1960

POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERT!!

La Dolce Vita regularly crops up in reviewers’ lists of the top ten film of all time. I assume that these reviewers know more about films (and know more films) than I do. I wouldn’t be on my list, but even I can see its importance – and its appeal. The importance comes from its pivotal position at the junction of the Italian Neorealism and New Wave periods. It’s shot like Bicycle Thieves, yet tells a story of decadence in a more daring way, heralding the cinema of the future. And the appeal comes from a masterly expressed view of a culture on the decline. There’s an obsession with celebrity that presages where we are today and is instantly recognisable as such.

The film takes place in Rome over seven days and nights. This allows Fellini to use an episodic structure, the episodes being linked by one major character, Marcello, a gossip columnist played with insouciance by Marcello Mastroianni. As each day turns to night, Marcello goes to work, mixing with the morally bankrupt rich, starlets and braying aristocrats. La Dolce Vita is usually translated as The Sweet Life. Sweet as the hedonistic life may appear to be, it’s ultimately empty and bitter.

Fellini uses each episode in turn to home in various aspects of Rome in decay. Religion, in the form of a statue of Jesus hanging from a helicopter, floats above old ruins and new construction sites alike. Marcello and a wealthy woman, beautifully played by Anouk Aimée, get their kicks by picking up a low-rent hooker and using her flooded bedroom for their own purposes. Meanwhile, Marcello’s live-in girlfriend, Emma, is contemplating suicide. Emma is at least as good looking as the heiress, but she is less attractive to Marcello. He cannot abide her clinging, conventional love and she can’t live with his philandering and dismissive manner.

Marcello is one of many reporters to meet a Hollywood actress at the airport. He gets lucky and manages to get close enough to her to fall for her ample charms. Played by Anita Ekberg as a scatty blonde, the actress wants nothing more than a good time. She flirts outrageously with Marcello, only to disappoint him when the water is shut off as they cavort in the Trevi Fountain. This is often considered the film’s defining scene. I found it much less interesting than the story of the frantic pilgrims swamped in a storm while following two children touted as having been visited by the Madonna.
In other scenes we see arty-farty intellectuals spouting emptiness, we see aristocrats playing silly games, and when his father comes to visit, we get a glimpse of Marcello’s own future as an ageing roué. The man Marcello most wants to be like turns out to have problems of his own, and the innocent young girl who could have been his saviour cannot be heard through the breeze and a hangover in the final scene. Marcello thinks there’s a novel in him; we’re not so sure. 
Fellini’s masterstroke is perhaps in making us want to like Marcello however much he turns out to be short of likeable. Mastroianni plays him well, and is well supported by the rest of the cast. The score’s good, too, written by Nino Rota, a regular Fellini collaborator.
But the whole thing’s too long, even for the period. I tried to think of it as several small films stitched together, but there were still plenty of times when I found myself thinking that Fellini was labouring a point. I got round this by looking at the screen as a series of wonderful black and white photographs, or by ignoring the subtitles to see if I could make sense of the Italian. That wouldn’t have happened in a Top Ten film. Top Fifty perhaps, with a bit more editing.

Hans van Well

[Reviewer’s opinions are not necessarily those of the Film Club]