La Dolce Vita | Federico Fellini, 1960
Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita is to my knowledge the most important film Rome – even Italy – has ever produced. Undoubtedly a work of artistic depth and influence it also found relative success commercially, questioning the usual expectations that those in the industry held for so-called “art” films. The movie signalled a rebirth for Fellini as a director, just as the Italian film industry was itself experiencing new worlds of popularity. Fellini’s growth as an artist had taken place in the very heart of the Neorealist movement, so as such every film he’d been involved with so far boasted Neorealist roots. Even with his earlier title Le Notti di Cabiria (Nights of Cabiria) there are certain and obvious Neorealistic traits on show. La Dolce Vita is more concerned with imagery, dreams and surrealism as opposed to grounded realism or any forced political angling. Thus, many believe that the film symbolises Fellini’s split from Neorealism and entrance into a new and exciting world of filmmaking. La Dolce Vita was also a crowning moment for 36-year-old Marcello Mastroianni, who plays the film’s protagonist. His character Marcello Rubini is a talented journalist living in the fast lane, one who is obsessed with the decadence of sixties Rome and so spends his time hanging out with the local Paparazzi as opposed to shaping a career for himself. To the beat of Nino Rota’s exquisite drum we follow Marcello around a Rome of crumbling values and cultural confusion, as he searches for life’s meanings in the faces and bodies of the women he meets. He finds solace in a good friend named Steiner who shows Marcello that one must be detached from life and its ills in order to succeed. However Steiner is soon found dead in his apartment after committing suicide and murdering his children, a quite bold and conclusive statement that illustrates the emptiness of this life and its loss of values.
Federico Fellini has always seen life as a sideshow of sorts, and with La Dolce Vita he allows this to influence our own perspectives. Marcello’s ’sweet life’ is all façade and masquerade. It is a parade, a spectacle, a life revolving around public relations, sordid love affairs, drunken games and meaningless intellectual discussion. Rome is of course used to great effect here as the centrepiece for this life of disparity; a metaphor for Western culture and its ideologies to be viewed from both sides of the fence. Visually La Dolce Vita is a language all on its own, for there is such intricate and constant symbolism at work beneath every single bit of wonderful imagery. It is difficult to take everything in all at once. The film opens with one of the most talked about shots in all of cinema; a statue of Christ, suspended from a helicopter and flying over the city. Such an image should bring forth deep religious meaning but instead just helps aid the feeling of cultural confusion and the deterioration of Christianity in this new age. To me the most important aspect of La Dolce Vita is its women; the women that Marcello courts and his failure to connect to each of them. The iconic blonde figure of Anita Ekberg as Sylvia represents vanity and vitality, a character to which Marcello is drawn instantly. He convinces himself to follow her lead and slink into the Trevi Fountain in that particularly famous scene, but at once the water ceases to cascade which ruins the moment and signifies his own spiritual impotence. Emma and Maddalena stand for love and sex respectively, but of course Marcello confesses his desire to the wrong one after becoming suffocated by the other. Finally there is Paola who represents the innocence of youth, and whom Marcello cannot hear across the water towards the end of the film, blinded by the life he has chosen. La Dolce Vita is an engaging and deeply symbolic study of the high life through one man’s eyes. A film that only an auteur like Fellini could have crafted, it remains just as important today as it was back then.
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