Perhaps many spectators will squirm at the three-hour length of the film or of some of its sequences (though director Federico Fellini cut some 30 minutes from his final print), yet others will never notice they've sat that long.
La Dolce Vita (1960)
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Reviews Counted:14
Fresh:13
Rotten:1
Average Rating:8.4/10
Runtime: 3 hrs
Genre: Foreign Films
Synopsis: In Federico Fellini's seminal film LA DOLCE VITA, a three-hour masterpiece that shows one man's descent into "the sweet life" of debauchery, Marcello Mastroianni stars as eccentric journalist... In Federico Fellini's seminal film LA DOLCE VITA, a three-hour masterpiece that shows one man's descent into "the sweet life" of debauchery, Marcello Mastroianni stars as eccentric journalist Marcello Rubini. On assignment to chronicle the lives of the rich and famous Italian aristocracy in a gossip column for a Roman newspaper, Marcello floats from one fabulous party to the next, meeting all varieties of beautiful, extravagant people. While he would never protest this seemingly ideal job, it makes him feel lonely and empty, and he stays up drinking and dancing night after night only to wake up each morning unbalanced and unfocused. The film follows Marcello's ups and downs in an episodic pattern in which each evening is a new story, a new adventure, a new dare, a new woman with whom to fall helplessly in love--but only for that night. Each morning the slate is wiped clean, and Fellini resets Marcello's score to zero. Sprinkled with religious images and gestures at salvation, LA DOLCE VITA is supreme in the beauty of its all-encompassing symbolism that is expressed through lavish sets, an alluring script, overemphasized physical movements, roller-coaster jazz music, and helpless emotions. [More]
Starring: Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimée, Anita Ekberg, Yvonne Furneaux
Starring: Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimée, Anita Ekberg, Yvonne Furneaux, Magali Noel, Nico, Alain Cuny, Riccardo Garrone, Laura Betti, Jacques Sernas, Nadia Gray
Director: Federico Fellini
Director: Federico Fellini
Screenwriter: Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, Brunello Rondi
Producer: Giuseppe Amato, Angelo Rizzoli
Composer: Nino Rota
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Reviews for La Dolce Vita
The film was hugely successful and widely praised in its time, though it's really nothing more than the old C.B. De Mille formula of titillation and moralizing.
Marcello's journey is a string of remarkable vignettes that delivers fashion and sociology in equal measure.
It comes from a period in which the filmmaker was perched between neorealism and all-out fantasia. As such, it represents the best of two worlds, even as Marcello can't find contentment in either one.
The circus that became the '60s was ushered in cinematically by La Dolce Vita, Federico Fellini's masterwork about the so-called 'sweet life' on Rome's teeming Via Veneto.
As much as La Strada, 8 1/2 or Amarcord, La Dolce Vita still marks a summit of Fellini and of post-war Italian moviemaking.
[Fellini's] poetic sensibilities are in full effect. There's also a tremendous soulfulness that roots the movie's depiction of sin in the soil of introspection.
It received universal acclaim upon its release in 1960, and in retrospect it's the work that best represents its director.
In sum, it is an awesome picture, licentious in content but moral and vastly sophisticated in its attitude and what it says.
The movie is made with boundless energy. Fellini stood here at the dividing point between the neorealism of his earlier films ... and the carnival visuals of his extravagant later ones.
Latest News for La Dolce Vita
September 17, 2009:
Five Favorite Films with A.O. Scott
A.O. Scott of the New York Times -- and now, At the Movies -- is one of America's best-known and most trusted film critics. Scott's tenure with the Times began in 2000; prior to... More...
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