LA DOLCE VITA (1960) A Film Review by Ted Prigge Copyright 1998 Ted Prigge
Director: Federico Fellini Writers: Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, and Brunello Rondi Starring: Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg, Anouk Aimée, Yvonne Furneaux, Alain Cuny, Annibale Ninichi, Magali Noël, Walter Santesso, Alain Dijon, Lex Barker, Nadia Gray, Polidor, Riccardo Garrone, Valeria Ciangottini, Nico Otzak
I've heard "La Dolce Vita" analyzed every way I think possible by now. As a deep religious metaphor. As an acidic satire on the media. As a portrait of '60s Roman aristocratic nightlife. And it's pretty much all of these things, and not just one of them. It's episodic structure easily makes it seem like it can have many meanings, and any one of these would pretty much work, but while it is episodic in structure, it's held together by one character, and told through his eyes. And it's through his eyes that we get the real reason to watch this film, and the real reason why I consider it to be one of the greatest films of all time.
His name is Marcello Rubini, and he's played by the great Marcello Mastroianni as an extremely cool young man living in Rome and working as an infamous gossip journalist. He drives a convertible, wears black sunglasses, is almost always wearing a suit, and knows everyone in town, in either a good or bad light. When we first see him, he's riding in a helicopter around Rome, following another helicopter that's carrying a statue of Christ to the Pope. But instead of following it more, he and the guys he's with stop for a second to hover around a high-rise building where a couple of women are sunbathing in an attempt to hit on them and maybe get their phone numbers.
This is how "La Dolce Vita" starts, a film directed by Federico Fellini at his own personal directing peak. Following years of simple but totally involving neo-realistic films like "La Strada" and "Nights of Cabiria," he decided to culminate all those old great melodramas into this film, utilizing all his old themes (like that of the ocean and that of the dawn after the night), but really to make his first film that was truly complex. Though his previous films had been ambiguous to a point, "La Dolce Vita" is so open that numerous interpretations (many already mentioned) are possible in the explanation of why this movie was made. He's also been able to extend his filmmaking abitlites to make a film that is at turns hilarious, sad, wild, cathartic, and awe-inspiring, all without ever destroying the depth of the film.
But Fellini was too good a director to limit his films to mere exercises in themes and satire, and all his films, even his more surreal ones, are rooted in emotionally involving protagonists. Marcello, the protagonist in this film, is a little too old to be at the crossroads of his life, but he has nevertheless reached a point in his life where he's still idealistic and is about to make a change that will affect the rest of his life. In the first scene, we see him between heaven and earth, deciding between following the Christ statue or the girls sunbathing, and throughout the film, Fellini uses similar imagery, of climbing and rising, of shallowness and being fulfilled, to dramatize Marcello's deeply personal connundrum.
The film introduces us to "the sweet life" (to what the title translates) that being the shallow inhabitants of Roman society, especially after dark. The streets are teeming with aristocrats, models, showgirls, second-rate movie stars, homosexuals, nymphomaniacs, and others, all shown in a light that's neither positive nor negative. Fellini's approach wisely never judges them for who or what they are, and the result is they are a seductive group of people. He paints the nightlife as the most alluring entitiy in the entire world, worth giving everything up for just to have a night along with them. This is why it's so seductive to Marcello, who throughout most of the movie plays as a somtimes observer, sometimes partaker.
"La Dolce Vita" unfolds brilliantly. As we get a portrait of "the sweet life" of Rome as a group of people who are forever partying, and perhaps leaving the world doomed to always be in a state of shallow fun, he makes it also deeply personal. Marcello's life slowly unfolds before us, so we learn everything about him. He's not the greatest person in the world: he annoys celebrities with gossip stories (one of the photographers who follows him around is named Paparazzo, the name that coined the infamous term Paparazzi), he's easily seduced by a social beauty named Maddalena (Anouk Aimée) and joins her in the basement of a prostitute's house for some un-seen and assumed sex, and then we discover that he has a fiance at home (Yvonne Furneaux) who's so hung up over Marcello and so tired of his actions that she's suicidal.
The film's sequences (about seven of them, with another 7 shorter sequences between them) build a portrait not only of the world of Rome, but also of Marcello. Each sequence opens his life up more to us, and we see his relationships with people, the way he conducts his job, and his desires which he somtimes wears on his sleeve. In the film's best sequence, a hot American movie star named Sylvia (the tres buxom Anita Ekberg) arrives in town for a movie shoot and interviews, and Marcello makes it his duty to meet her and potentially sweep her off his feet. He makes her aquaintance, dances with her, and proclaims that she's the supreme female of the species. He then follows her as she runs away from her crowd of followers and film personelle, chases her through the streets of Rome as she walks around with a cat on her head, and eventually follows her into the middle of the famous giant fountain that stands in Rome. But as close to her as he gets, he never gets close enough.
In other sequences, he covers a potential sighting of the Virgin Mary by two lying children, goes to a party at the castle of some rich nobilities, and in one of the film's most cathartic sequences, hangs with his father (Annibale Ninichi), taking him to nightclubs and introducing him to a showgirl who's very interested in him, but unfortunately he gets sick before anything can really happen. There are more, but we get into the groove of what the structure of these chief sequences are after awhile: an evening of empty but seductive fun followed by a morning of regrets. However, each sequence is unique and fascinating, and everything rolls into one by the end, not only completing the portrait of Marcello as a tragic figure in cinema as a result of his own deep insecurities and pursuit of happiness in the wrong places.
As this is all going on, the film balances two subplots, one dealing with the aforementioned finace, who obesses over him so much that it's a shame he didn't get rid of her earlier; and the other dealing with a man named Steiner (Alain Cuny), a man whom Marcello idolizes as the man who has everything: a lovely wife, perfect children, a high-rise apartment, lots of friends - everything Marcello, an almost nomad of the night-life scene, doesn't have. But it all turns out to be a web of lies and deceit, perhaps destroying all idealism Marcello will ever have.
"La Dolce Vita" was released in 1960, and when it hit, it was the subject of controversy by almost every major group, not just by those groups concerned with decency in art because of its frank depiction of sexual situations and the luridness of the Roman crowd (there are several "orgies," and they're pretty risqué for back then, but really, Fellini shoots all of them without succumbing to being offensive for offense sake), but also by the Catholic church for its portrait of religious symbols in a negative light (while, ironically, other Catholic priests preached of its goodness - he apparently takes part in all seven of the seven deadly sins, and ends up sad for it, I suppose is the religious take). Nevertheless, "La Dolce Vita" became a huge hit for the year, the fifth biggest of 1960, grossing what would today be about 80 million dollars, creating trends in fashion, including that of Marcello's sunglasses and convertible, and made stars out of Mastroianni and Ekberg, the latter who caused some teenage boys to sneak into the theatres, just to grab some peaks at her massive breasts, which are almost pouring out of her dress from time to time.
But the real reason "La Dolce Vita" works so well is because it's unversal. Fellini didn't limit himself to merely showing Roman culture, and instead showed every kind of culture that acts this way. Without even realizing it, I've easily become sucked into such cultures my entire life: a world of instant, empty highs, only to wake up in the morning, having to deal with what I've taken part of the night before. What I was looking for was happiness, just as Marcello was, and both of us were looking in the wrong places. But "La Dolce Vita" isn't merely a warning film, showing us the consequences of living day-to-day with such a life style; it transcends all that to become a deep human drama, one where we are sucked into the world of the protagonist, and see what we see by where we are in life. I saw one thing in this film; someone else may see something else.
Fellini directs the way he did when he still made his older films - with a visual flair that is simplistic yet hypnotic. His camera movements are incredibly deft, and his handling of sequences, making them each run about 20 minutes long, filled with not much more than lots of conversations and the occasional event (i.e. a striptease populates the middle of the final orgy scene), and if that sounds painful (and to some, it is), you haven't experienced it. Fellini films easily suck viewers into their worlds, and most of the time, we just feel like we're there and are probably have too good a time with these attractive/unattractive people that we don't even mind that as far as plot, very little has happened.
Fellini managed to make everything seem fresh but not cheap. The characters, for example, are always interesting without being totally weird, as they are with some of Fellini's other films, and there are moments that are so cinematic and incredible that it's hard to count them all on one hand. Of who's seen it, who can ever forget: the chase up St. Peter's Dome, the dance scene involving Sylvia and another overbearing actor friend of hers (featuring a rock dance sequence that has got to be one of the most involving scenes ever put on celluloid), the comments by Sylvia's droll and drunk fiance (Lex Barker), the grandfather of the "Madonna children" asking for a drink from the paparazi for a snapshot, the talk with the girl at the cafe, Marcello's distanced talk with his father at dawn, the discussoin scene with Maddalena at the castle party, the third and devastating scene involving Steiner, the most unerotic striptease in film history, and that final scene on the beach which radiates so ambiguously and so beautifully what the final meaning is.
Yet there's something else about this film that really makes it great. I can't even describe it. Maybe it's the free form direction, the characters, the storyline, or even the music by Nino Rota (which switches between poppy, jazzy, or saddening, but always fitting the mood perfectly). Maybe it's the way that the film has a perpetually fresh look, like it hasn't aged a bit and in fact, looks ahead of even this time. Maybe it's the way Fellini makes quick, non-judgmental, and brilliant observations on life that come from experience and told in such a way that they seem just like life. Or maybe it's all of these combined with the way that this film shows us that "The Sweet Life" doesn't really exist, and the pursuit of it will only make us sadder, though curiously rewarded. The world this film depicts is not entirely good for you, and you know it. But you can't help but want to be a part of it.
MY RATING (out of 4): ****
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