As we have continued along this project, we’ve begun to notice that there aren’t any international films taking home the ‘Best Picture’ trophy. While we’re reviewing the main winners then, we’ve decided to recognise some of the most famous non-English speaking pieces every three weeks, continuing with Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita
Plot Intro
A journalist in Rome, Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni), embarks on a series of adventures whilst both trying to get some scandalous tabloid stories and trying to live “la dolce vita”, a life of comfort, decadence and carefreeness.
Doug says...
The word ‘masterpiece’ is thrown around a lot these days. I think I’ve even heard McDonalds use it to describe one of their new chicken nugget snacks. Hyperbole is everywhere and so we must strive to not overuse it. In cinema ‘masterpieces’ aren’t necessarily easy-going films, and they might not be films one chooses to watch repeatedly. But what they do do, to some respect, is break some ground, tell a story in a fresh way, and on some level access deeper meaning, or provide something that will inevitably stick in your brain.
We watched Notting Hill last night, and while that was infinitely more enjoyable than La Dolce Vita, it is the latter film - 1960’s Italian piece on journalism, excess and love - that rightfully carries the title of ‘masterpiece’. It is an extraordinary film, unlike any that I have seen before, and (considering my previous rants about film length) carries its nearly three-hour length with ease.
I think what this film is mainly about - although I could be wrong considering its murky plotting - is the new world of the ‘60s entering and changing the Italian landscape. It’s also about journalism - and how disturbing the papparazzi can be (at one point a new widow is surrounded by them, flashing cameras in her face while she is told the news that her husband is dead). We see countless scenes of revellers, bored wealthy people desperate to enjoy their lives with cabaret shows, attempted orgies and a seizing of anything that’s new - even if what’s new is just a giant fish washed up on the beach.
There’s a tonne of symbolism to back me up here - the film opens with a statue of Jesus being flown over Rome by helicopter, swiftly followed by a bunch of reporters in their own helicopter - who hang out the doors and try to ask women out as they fly past. Religion is literally being shifted away by sex - and the pursuit of it.
It’s also an incredibly sexual piece (hello 1960s Italy…), especially with the second ‘episode’, where Anita Ekberg as a rich film star dances in the streets. It’s an eroticism that American Hollywood shies away from, and it’s a credit to the film that we see no nudity, and yet the seedy, sexual nature of Marcello and Rome’s wider social circle still feels vibrantly put across and almost shocking in nature.
But the real triumph of this film is how well it’s shot. Clearly Fellini knows what he’s doing, because every moment is captured beautifully on screen - no more than the penultimate scene when Marcello drunkenly rips feathers from a cushion and scatters them on top of party-goers. The light catches the feathers as they fall and covers the drunken, mewling partygoers with an essence of glamour that is ultimately as fragile as feathers themselves.
It’s not a film where I felt I got many of the points - but unlike other pieces where the feeling of missing pertinent points is irritating, here it felt a simple evocation of how layered a piece it is. While it’s one for the film student, it also holds enough accessible detail that a casual viewer will still become entranced by the strange, dream-like events. At one point a rich American reveller pauses drunkenly in a door frame and mutters ‘for every biological test says octopi are oversexed.’ Bizarre but somehow enthralling - much like La Dolce Vita itself.
Highlight
The moment when Anita Ekberg dances in the streets before plunging into the Trevi Fountain is called iconic. For once, it’s a title well-deserved. She brings fire, energy and sensuality to just a fragment of the film, and yet is among its most memorable elements.
Lowlight
Not a lowlight as such, but I did have to keep checking up on Wikipedia to find out what was really happening. However I can’t help but feel the murky uncertainty was something Fellini was deliberately trying to create.
Mark
10/10
Paul says...
This film must have been a bit of an atom bomb in 1960 - and it was. The Best Picture winners of the '60s is fraught with ostensibly chaste musicals, with realism and modern society only coming in during the latter half of the decade. La Dolce Vita, this epic, multi-layered, daring film from the lethargic heat of Italy, provided a sensual, sexually-charged, immoral and sometimes voyeuristic alternative to, for example, The Sound of Music.
It’s essentially a film about burnt-out youths, who believed that post-war, post-Fascism Italy was to become a new land of hope and opportunity, with mass consumerism, travel, glamour, art and moral freedom finally making its way into this end of the Mediterranean. These youths, however, are now pushing 30 and 40, and have found that such a hedonistic lifestyle has led to conflict, exhaustion and a suicidal sense of nihilism.
It is told through seven “episodes”, or so the critics claim. The critics have sometimes linked these episodes together to form seven consecutive nights within the film’s plot, and have also linked the seven episodes to other symbolic “sevens”, such as the seven sins and the seven sacraments. Whether this is the case or not would require a lot more critical research and analysis than a 500-word blog post can supply. However, it does ensure that various aspects of late-50s/early-60s Italian society are illustrated and explored in great depth. Religion, sex, celebrity, family, intellectualism, age vs youth, all the themes an English Literature student lives for are analysed here through these various sequences.
As Doug points out, and I agree with this, it is beautifully shot with some captivating sequences. Anita Ekberg, who steals the movie even though she is only in the second episode, revels in music, dance and frolicking in a fountain in a very expensive-looking gown. I can see why the producers of Friends chose such an image for their opening titles. A circus-esque club/party that Marcello attends with his father; a stampede of panicking, superstitious Catholics; a group of friends listening to recorded sounds of nature rather than entering nature itself; all of these contribute to the sense that life in this supposedly “new” Italy is artificial, false and full of people having various breakdowns whilst being photographed by bouncing, over-excited paparazzi. As a journalist, Marcello represents the rest of society in that he has no desire to help those in need, he simply wants to watch and comment on them whilst he lives the “sweet life”, La Dolce Vita. Lana Del Ray probably loves this film.
It’s a fascinating movie, yes. But I’m not as enamoured of it as Doug for the fundamental reason that it’s probably an hour too long. By the time the sixth episode begins and we are in a very strange party in a castle where people chase each other sexually through various labyrinths, I felt like the point of the film had already been made. By the time the seventh episode comes around, the famous “orgy” scene, in which Marcello pretty much forces his friends to let go of all morals and go full on Bacchanal, I was done. This scene is so lengthy and overdone and I knew that, like all of the previous sequences, there would be no real conclusion, because the movie wants us to know that these characters’ situations are perpetual. It could have ended either an hour ago, or the pace could have been much quicker to whip through these set pieces.
Call me a philistine if you wish, but there’s only so much anti-hedonistic, inconclusive moaning that I can take. It’s a bit like listening to someone make a political point, but then go on to make the same point but in different ways over and over and over again.
Highlight
Anita Ekberg’s sequence is worth watching as a stand-alone film. She’s fab.
Lowlight
The final “orgy” sequence that felt repetitive and drawn-out.
Mark
5/10
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