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103 out of 122 people found the following comment useful :-
No Salvation within Four Walls, 13 September 2004

Author: mackjay from Out there in the dark

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

LA DOLCE VITA is an episodic film, but that is a feature of much of Fellini. In several of his films, Fellini builds meaning in this way: not with a single continuing plot, but with a series of smaller stories that add up to a total collection of interconnected ideas.

Maybe the secret (if there is one) of LA DOLCE VITA's appeal is that it's so darned interesting all the time. This especially applies to the plot concerning Steiner. Steiner is the key figure in the film, apart from Marcello himself, who is Fellini's and the viewer's counterpart. What Steiner represents to Marcello is of prime importance. The young reporter sees the older man as a perfected, idealized version of himself. He longs to emulate Steiner and is convinced this man knows how to live life fully. There is irony aplenty in the entire Steiner narrative. When Marcello brings his wife to the Steiner party, they meet a few interesting, but mostly insufferable pretentious 'intellectual' types. (the famous Fellini 'careless' post-dubbing of dialogue in this scene particularly amusing: it seems to add to these characters' disconnection from a true self, as though they don't even realize what they are actually saying). Steiner himself associates with these people, yet does not truly seem to be one of them. He feels trapped by his own pretentious circle of intellectuals. When Marcello tell him how much he envies and admires him, Steiner replies:

"Don't be like me. Salvation doesn't lie within four walls. I'm too serious to be a dilettante and too much a dabbler to be a professional. Even the most miserable life is better than a sheltered existence in an organized society where everything is calculated and perfected."

This gives Marcello much to contemplate for the rest of the film. And Steiner's subsequent suicide confirms the deep suspicion growing within the protagonist that all of existence, as he himself has known it thus far, is fundamentally absurd and meaningless. For this reason the film is existential in its outlook. Marcello is the modern, urban human, trapped in an absurd universe. But Fellini, seems not fully despairing in his outlook. Consider, for example, the significance of Marcello's interaction with the blonde girl in the cafe--she represents a simpler life away from the city and the over-complications of modern existence. Many viewers have missed the fact that it is this same girl who waves to Marcello on the beach in the film's final scene: she waves and is telling something he is never able to hear, so he waves once, and turns back to the empty, inebriated crowd as they speculate about the unknowability of nature, embodied by a monstrous, bloated fish.

LA DOLCE VITA is a great film for the way it pulls some viewers in and forces them to contemplate the actual content of what they are seeing. The main theme is one it shares with films of Antonioni: modern man has become disconnected from the natural world and he suffers because of it. LA DOLCE VITA's visual style is poetic, some of its characters are more than compelling and hard to forget, and its musical score by Nino Rota is among the most memorable of all time.

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149 out of 241 people found the following comment useful :-
Tolerance of Taste, 15 February 2001

Author: Mark (mhh3f) from Charlottesville, Virginia

To appreciate this film you need to appreciate film. I'm saddened that so many have commented negatively on it and cast dispersions upon those who enjoyed it. It is not Titanic, or Armageddon. It is a long film that attempts to show more than a hackneyed plot about some simple people. It is a beautiful exploration about life that does not preach or try to tell you what to think. I understand why many are frustrated with it. It seems to go nowhere at times, but thats the point. And most importantly the scenery on this trip to nowhere is beautiful.

So, if you are the type that does not like to watch films that are art, do not watch this. Watch Coyote Ugly. It will entertain you. Other films to avoid: Last Year at Marienbad, The Seventh Seal, The 400 Blows, etc. Go see something with a gun on the cover instead.

For those who like a challenge rather than simple escapism, this is a film that engages you.

Different films for different people. People seem very threatened when they don't like a film that is widely regarded as a classic. The reason is simple, it's not your kind of film. But don't assume its a film for no one. Makes sense right?

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71 out of 90 people found the following comment useful :-
my favorite fellini -, 23 April 2004
Author: shoolaroon from usa

I first saw this movie probably over 25 years ago when I was quite a bit younger. At that point I enjoyed it for its party scenes, sense of joy and life and vitality and....Marcello Mastroianni. Now that I'm older myself and have just recently seen the movie again, I find that I have a much deeper understanding of it. Maybe it takes some age to find some meaning. In a nutshell, Marcello is at a crossroads in his life, he's unable to settle down or move foreward into any direction - he's a diletante with aspirations but no real goals. He's wrapped up in himself and in projecting rather dreamy ideals onto other people. But as he keeps projecting on to others he comes to find in each situation that he doesn't really know the person and they are a mystery and probably a disappointment to him. certainly steiner is the biggest disappointment and disillusions him to a degree that he is apparently lost to a life of corruption and decadence as a result. but it's not that these people are difficult to understand to someone other than marcello - i think we can see that anita ekberg's character really is just a big good-natured blond and not the mysterious goddess marcello makes her out to be; his father is again - the typical traveling salesman and perhaps not the paternal figure that marcello would like him to be. his amour maddelena lives up to her name even as marcello starts believing himself in love with her - he's literally seduced by nothing more than an image he creates in his own mind. his friend steiner seems to have it all to marcello and to be the renaissance man that he would like to be - but, of course, he is dissatisfied and disturbed and we see what the end is. the only one whom marcello forms a somewhat realistic connection with is his girlfriend whom he treats badly and neglects despite her obvious love for him. he refuses to actually work on the one relationship that he could actually succeed at - he would rather dream about possibilities than actualize something.

marcello cannot communicate with others because he cannot see them as the people they really are - he just sees them as projections of his own needs, aspirations, desires and goals. when he finds out what they're really like, he either turns away or falls apart. this is an outstanding movie - 10 out of 10 and beautifully photographed. if you don't get it now, try again in 10 years - it will wait for you to catch up.

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62 out of 81 people found the following comment useful :-
life imitates art? art imitates life? a bit of both?, 30 November 2004
Author: Robert Hirschfeld (boberich@aol.com) from Dobbs Ferry, NY

I just saw a new print of this wonderful film after not having seen it for maybe 20 years and it is still spellbinding. Fellini sums up an era and an attitude here, and succeeds in doing something that ought to be impossible: he makes a full and meaningful film about empty and meaningless lives. Mastroianni seems to have been to Fellini what DeNiro has been to Scorsese--a perfect embodiment of a personal vision. What a wonderful actor he was--brilliant in his youth and in his age. Many other performers are hardly less fine here, and the cinematography and composition are stunning throughout. There are so many indelible images from this film, images that have become iconic over the decades: Ekberg in the Fontana di Trevi, the statue of Christ flying over Rome, the astonishing, candlelit procession at the castle, to name a few. It seems plot less and yet it isn't plot less at all; Marcello's ultimately fruitless search for meaning, a search that he abandons in the end, as he stares across a slight and yet unbridgable abyss on the beach at a lovely young girl who seems to possess the knowledge and understanding that is denied to him. I'm astonished at the number of people who don't get this movie, who seem to think that Fellini expects us to admire the bizarre characters who people the film, or who think that a movie about worthless individuals must be a worthless movie, or who don't seem to understand that movies that are full of what become clichés usually do so because they capture an important vision. Fellini made several exceptional films: 81/2, La Strada, Amarcord, and The Nights of Cabiria come to mind, but La Dolce Vita may be, when all is said and done, his masterwork.

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35 out of 48 people found the following comment useful :-
Bitterness Of The Sweet Life, 9 May 2005

Author: gftbiloxi (gftbiloxi@yahoo.com) from Biloxi, Mississippi

LA DOLCE VITA presents a series of incidents in the life of Roman tabloid reporter Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni)--and although each incident is very different in content they create a portrait of an intelligent but superficial man who is gradually consumed by "the sweet life" of wealth, celebrity, and self-indulgence he reports on and which he has come to crave.

Although the film seems to be making a negative statement about self-indulgence that leads to self-loathing, Fellini also gives the viewer plenty of room to act as interpreter, and he cleverly plays one theme against its antithesis throughout the film. (The suffocation of monogamy vs. the meaninglessness of promiscuity and sincere religious belief vs. manipulative hypocrisy are but two of the most obvious juxtapositions.) But Fellini's most remarkable effect here is his ability to keep us interested in the largely unsympathetic characters LA DOLCE VITA presents: a few are naive to the point of stupidity; most are vapid; the majority (including the leads) are unspeakably shallow--and yet they still hold our interest over the course of this three hour film.

The cast is superior, with Marcello Mastroianni's personal charm particularly powerful. As usual with Fellini, there is a lot to look at on the screen: although he hasn't dropped into the wild surrealism for which he was sometimes known, there are quite a few surrealistic flourishes and visual ironies aplenty--the latter most often supplied by the hordes of photographers that scuttle after the leading characters much like cockroaches in search of crumbs. For many years available to the home market in pan-and-scan only, the film is now in a letterbox release that makes it all the more effective. Strongly recommended.

Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer

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28 out of 40 people found the following comment useful :-
A sprawling epic satire on what Fellini considered the spiritual malaise of modern society…, 12 August 2005

Author: ironside (robertfrangie@hotmail.com) from Mexico

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Long considered a major filmmaker, Federico Fellini established his reputation through an insistence on the interest-value of his own fantastic and idiosyncratic vision of the world… In so doing, however, he repeatedly lays himself open to charges of egomania, self-indulgence and superficiality; certainly much of his work, if visually extraordinary, is hyperbolic, naïve and incoherent…

This film about the hedonistic, amoral life of Rome's "beautiful people" is really a series of startling episodes held together by a character played by Marcello Mastroianni, a gossip columnist who is himself caught up in the aimless, scandalous "sweet life."

Filled, like all Fellini films, with stunning, bizarre images and faces and marked by the director's wild comic imagination, the film was widely condemned as "vulgar, witless, and intellectually bankrupt" and lavishly praised as "a cultural and social document, as well as an exciting entertainment."

"La Dolce Vita" moves from one shocking sequence to another… It is a sprawling epic satire on what Fellini considered the spiritual malaise of modern society… It followed a journalist employed by a scandal magazine around a Rome obsessed with orgiastic parties, voluptuous film stars and the commercial marketing of religion… While its images are flamboyant—a statue of Christ flying above Rome suspended from a helicopter, Anita Ekberg dancing in the Trevi fountain, a kitten on her head—the film's despairing tone often rings meaningless, even though Mastroanni's compulsive womanizer, never glamorized, fails to achieve redemption…

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32 out of 48 people found the following comment useful :-
Soberty of monday morning..., 26 November 2000
Author: guimo from brasil (giras@ig.com.br)

(first of all, sorry my poor english) Who, in this entire world, drunk as a horse in the middle of the night, never discovered the meaning of life, that it can be so easy and joyfull that hurts. This happens with a certain frequency. The big problem is, after all that, to face all the thoughts and conclusions in a sober monday morning, when everything is just real, concious and above all that sincere. This is the the big question and problem of Marcello Rubini, a reporter of a gossip magazines who has to deal with the fact that he tastes the same poison he spreads by leaving in a group of people which he sucks his living.

In a moment he is directing his papparazzi and, in the next, he is running away from them. He flows between all kinds of social circles and the only impression he gives is that it doesnt matter what kind of craziness you are getting into everything is a big cliché. From the mainstream world of a gorgeous actress who feels able to express opinions about everything (and we buy it), passing throught the religious world of the faith, and also an intellectual circle that gives a fake impression of freedom, everything turns out to be an escape. That blonde girl appears as a stroke of pureness and sincereness, something we should really look for, but we just dont. In the case of Marcello's life, writing is the solutions he always substitute for vain experiences. Something he likes and that he needs a young girl to tell him that. That litlle cute girl is a person Marcello would like to be, someone who faces the soberty of a monday morning with hopeness and happiness.

A masterpiece.

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26 out of 39 people found the following comment useful :-
the one film to take with you on a deserted island, 28 April 2003

Author: damien-16 from Lao People's Democratic Republic

I've seen this film regularly since 1971. In theatres, on TV, on video, on DVD. It doesn't age. If anybody ever needed proof that Fellini was a genius, this is it. La dolce vita remains the most touching statement about the human condition I ever saw on film. Everybody remembers the magic-realistic image of Anita Ekberg in the Trevi fountain, and a truly amazing image it is. But the film is much more than a slightly surrealistic sketchbook of emotionally empty jet setters. It is more existentialist than any book by Sartre or Camus. The final sequence is simply devastating. We are all Marcello. Since over 30 years this is my number-one film.

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16 out of 22 people found the following comment useful :-
Stunning Fellini and Mastroianni, 15 April 2007

Author: drednm

Long, episodic film by Federico Fellini about the conceits and facades of life: fame, intellect, sex, friendship, despair, innocence, etc.

Marcello Mastroianni is perfect as the shallow tabloid reporter who joyfully follows around Rome a blonde movie star from Sweden (Anita Ekberg) as she prowls around the city's bars and bistros. He is also having an affair with a woman (Anouk Aimee) while his girl friend (Yvonne Furnaux) seems to be going nuts.

But as Marcello moves through the city following the movie star, the miracle of the virgin, a few parties, etc. we see that his life is very empty because the things he reports on are meaningless drivel. We see that fame and fortune and the trappings of success are meaningless.

Marcello starts to realize that the movie star is a vapid airhead, the miracles are a sham, and his friend's (who seemed quite happily married) ghastly murder and suicide show the futility of life itself.

The Fellini themes are common to many of his films, but what makes La Dolce Vita so memorable are the cynical tone, the Nina Rota music, and the string of terrific visual images.

The opening scene is of a helicopter hauling a gilded plaster statue through the air across Rome. The flying saint is a bizarre image but serves to set up the movies which is all about images and events that are never what they seem to be.

Notable are the scenes of statuesque Ekberg in that terrific strapless black dress with the voluminous skirts as she swishes around dancing and eventually wading through a city fountain. The party scenes are also notable. The first because of the intolerable intellectuals who sits around and talk and talk but never do anything. The last party has the indelible image of Mastroianni "riding" a drunken blonde woman as though she were a horse. The final image of the giant dead fish is quite unsettling as it symbolizes their bloated lives.

Fellini is brilliant in filling scenes with odd people as extras, usually hideously dressed or wearing ugly glasses. The "gallery" of people who inhabit the city is one of grotesques, vapid fashion slaves, the rich, hangers on, etc.

A long film, but highly recommended and very memorable.

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12 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
syllogistic harmony, 8 January 2002
Author: larry tululah

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

SPOILER (I'm going to muse about the last scene, so be forewarned.)

After viewing La Dolce Vita for the second time, I found, like so many before me, not only that the last scene of the film was one of the greatest ever, but that it reinforced that Marcello was fated from the beginning to suffer a tragic downward spiral into a banal existence. Marcello is the perfect modern tragic hero in this era of television and tabloid saturation. After all, if a resurrected Jesus can do no more than arouse self-infatuated waves and flashbulb greetings as he descends upon Rome and a crowd of frenzied onlookers devours a tree under which two innocent children claimed to have seen Christ/Mary, surely artistic purity cannot survive.

We all know that when Marcello meets the young girl in the cafe that she cannot possibly possess enough innocence and inspiration to fuel Marcello's endeavor at writing a novel and help him stave off the perils of decadent Rome and a career as a host to the leeches who inhabit it. Just like the dying manta ray desperate to stay alive on the beach in the last scene, only to be subjected to inane comments from Marcello's vapid "friends" like "why is it staring at us," Marcello, too, is dying inside, and we know that any attempt on his part to communicate his suffering to those same people would be met with the same disdain and obliviousness.

Notwithstanding the great sense of triumph and joy I would have enjoyed had Marcello left his party of idiots on the beach and joined his savior who was the keeper of his artistic soul, in order for the movie to be great, it must end with Marcello's figurative death and resound the ultimate despair of innocence lost.

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