La dolce vita

Plot synopsis:
Based on the most common interpretation of the storyline, the film can be divided into a prologue, seven major episodes interrupted by an intermezzo, and an epilogue (see also Structure, below). If the evenings of each episode were joined with the morning of the respective preceding episode together as a day, they would form seven consecutive days, which may not necessarily be the case.
=== Prologue ===
1st Day Sequence: A helicopter transports a statue of Christ over an ancient Roman aqueduct outside Rome while a second, Marcello Rubini's news helicopter, follows it into the city. The news helicopter is momentarily sidetracked by a group of bikini-clad women sunbathing on the rooftop of a high-rise apartment building. Hovering above, Marcello uses gestures to elicit phone numbers from them but fails in his attempt then shrugs and continues on following the statue into Saint Peter's Square.
=== Episode 1 ===
1st Night Sequence: Marcello meets Maddalena by chance in an exclusive nightclub. A beautiful and wealthy heiress, Maddalena is tired of Rome and constantly in search of new sensations while Marcello finds Rome suits him as a jungle he can hide in. They make love in the bedroom of a prostitute to whom they had given a ride home in Maddalena’s Cadillac.
1st Dawn Sequence: Marcello returns to his apartment at dawn to find that his fiancée, Emma, has overdosed. On the way to the hospital, he declares his everlasting love to her and again as she lies in a semiconscious state in the emergency room. While waiting frantically for her recovery, however, he tries to make a phone call to Maddalena.
=== Episode 2 ===
2nd Day Sequence: That day, he goes on assignment for the arrival of Sylvia, a famous Swedish-American actress, at Ciampino airport where she is met by a horde of news reporters.
During Sylvia's press conference, Marcello calls home to ensure Emma has taken her medication while reassuring her that he is not alone with Sylvia. After the film star confidently replies to the barrage of journalists' questions, her boyfriend Robert (Lex Barker) enters the room late and drunk. To Sylvia's producer, Marcello casually recommends that Sylvia be taken on a tour of St Peter's.
Inside St Peter's dome, a news reporter complains that Sylvia is "an elevator" because none of them can match her energetic climb up the numerous flights of stairs. Inspired, Marcello maneuvers forward to be alone with her when they finally reach the balcony overlooking the Vatican.
2nd Night Sequence: That evening, the infatuated Marcello dances with Sylvia in the Baths of Caracalla. Sylvia's natural sensuality triggers raucous partying while Robert, her bored fiancé, draws caricatures and reads a newspaper. His humiliating remark to her causes Sylvia to leave the group, eagerly followed by Marcello and his paparazzi colleagues. Finding themselves alone, Marcello and Sylvia spend the rest of the evening in the alleys of Rome where they wade into the Trevi Fountain.
2nd Dawn Sequence: Like a magic spell that has suddenly been broken, dawn arrives at the very moment Sylvia playfully "anoints" Marcello's head with fountain water. They drive back to Sylvia's hotel to find an enraged Robert waiting for her in his car. Robert slaps Sylvia, orders her to go to bed, and then assaults Marcello who takes it in stride.
=== Episode 3a ===
3rd Day Sequence: Marcello meets Steiner, his distinguished intellectual friend, inside a church playing Bach on the organ. Steiner shows off his book of Sanskrit grammar.
=== Episode 4 ===
4th Day Sequence: Late afternoon, Marcello, his photographer friend Paparazzo, and Emma drive to the outskirts of Rome to cover the story of the purported sighting of the Madonna by two children. Although the Catholic Church is officially skeptical, a huge crowd of devotees and reporters gathers at the site.
3rd Night Sequence: That night, the event is broadcast over Italian radio and television. Blindly following the two children from corner to corner in a downpour, the crowd tears a small tree apart for its branches and leaves said to have sheltered the Madonna. Meanwhile, Emma prays to the Virgin Mary to be given sole possession of Marcello's heart.
3rd Dawn Sequence: The gathering ends at dawn with the crowd mourning a sick child, a pilgrim brought by his mother to be healed, but trampled to death in the melee.
=== Episode 3b ===
4th Night Sequence: One evening, Marcello and Emma attend a gathering at Steiner’s luxurious home where they are introduced to a group of intellectuals who recite poetry, strum the guitar, offer philosophical ideas, and listen to sounds of nature recorded on tape. An American woman, whose poetry Marcello has read and admired, recommends that Marcello avoid the "prisons" of commitment: "Stay free, available, like me. Never get married. Never choose. Even in love, it's better to be chosen." Emma appears enchanted with Steiner's home and children, telling Marcello that one day he will have a home like Steiner's.
Outside on the terrace, Marcello confesses to Steiner his admiration for all he stands for, but Steiner admits he is torn between the security that a materialistic life affords and his longing for a more spiritual albeit insecure way of life. Steiner philosophizes about the need for love in the world and fears what his children may grow up to face one day.
=== Intermezzo ===
5th Day Sequence: Marcello spends the afternoon working on his novel at a seaside restaurant where he meets Paola, a young waitress from Perugia playing Perez Prado's cha-cha Patricia on the jukebox and then humming its tune. He asks her if she has a boyfriend, then describes her as an angel in Umbrian paintings.
=== Episode 5 ===
5th Night Sequence: Marcello meets his father (Annibale Ninchi) visiting Rome on the Via Veneto. With Paparazzo, they go to the Cha-Cha-Cha Club where Marcello introduces his father to Fanny, a beautiful dancer and one of his past one-night stands (he had promised to get her picture in the paper, but failed to do it). Fanny takes a liking to his father. Marcello tells Paparazzo that as a child he had never seen much of his father, who would spend weeks away from home. Fanny invites Marcello’s father back to her flat, and two other dancers invite the two younger men to go with them. Marcello leaves the others when they get to the dancers' neighborhood. Fanny comes out of her house, upset that Marcello's father has become ill.
4th Dawn Sequence: Marcello's father has suffered what seems to be a mild heart attack. Marcello wants him to stay with him in Rome so they can get to know each other, but his father, weakened, wants to go home and gets in a taxi to catch the first train home. He leaves Marcello forlorn, on the street, watching the taxi leave.
=== Episode 6 ===
6th Night Sequence: Marcello, Nico, and other friends met on the Via Veneto are driven to a castle owned by aristocrats at Bassano di Sutri outside Rome. There is already a party long in progress, and the party-goers are bleary-eyed and intoxicated. By chance, Marcello meets Maddalena again. The two of them explore a suite of ruins annexed to the castle. Maddalena seats Marcello in a vast room and then closets herself in another room connected by an echo chamber. As a disembodied voice, Maddalena asks him to marry her; Marcello professes his love for her, avoiding answering her proposal. Another man kisses and embraces Maddalena, who loses interest in Marcello. He rejoins the group, and eventually spends the night with Jane, an American artist and heiress.
5th Dawn Sequence: Burnt out and bleary-eyed, the group returns at dawn to the main section of the castle, to be met by the matriarch of the castle, who is on her way to mass, accompanied by priests in a procession.
=== Episode 3c ===
7th Night Sequence: Marcello and Emma are alone in his sports car on an isolated road. Emma starts an argument by professing her love, and tries to get out of the car; Marcello pleads with her not to get out. Emma says that Marcello will never find another woman who loves him the way she does. Marcello becomes enraged, telling her that he cannot live with her smothering, maternal love. He now wants her to get out of the car, but she refuses. With some violence (a bite from her and a slap from him), he throws her out of the car and drives off, leaving her alone on a deserted road at night. Hours later, Emma hears his car approaching as she picks flowers by the roadside. She gets into the car with neither of them saying a word.
6th Dawn Sequence: Marcello and Emma are asleep in bed, tenderly intertwined; Marcello receives a phone call. He rushes to the Steiners' apartment and learns that Steiner has killed his two children and himself.
6th Day Sequence: After waiting with the police for Steiner’s wife to return home, he meets her outside to break the terrible news while paparazzi swarm around her snapping pictures.
=== Episode 7 ===
6th Night Sequence: An unspecified amount of time later, an older Marcello—now with gray in his hair—and a group of partygoers break into a Fregene beach house owned by Riccardo, a friend of Marcello's. To celebrate her recent divorce from Riccardo, Nadia performs a striptease to Perez Prado's cha-cha Patricia. The drunken Marcello attempts to provoke the other partygoers into an orgy. Due to their inebriated states, however, the party descends into mayhem with Marcello throwing pillow feathers around the room as he rides a young woman crawling on her hands and knees. Riccardo shows up at the house and angrily tells the partiers to leave.
=== Epilogue ===
7th Dawn Sequence: The party proceeds to the beach at dawn where they find a modern-day leviathan, a bloated, stingray-like creature, caught in the fishermen's nets. In his stupor, Marcello comments on how its eyes stare even in death.
7th Day Sequence: Paola, the adolescent waitress from the seaside restaurant in Fregene, calls to Marcello from across an estuary but the words they exchange are lost on the wind, drowned out by the crash of the waves. He signals his inability to understand what she is saying or interpret her gestures. He shrugs and returns to the partygoers; one of the women joins him and they hold hands as they walk away from the beach. In a long final close-up, Paola waves to Marcello then stands watching him with an enigmatic smile.

Tags: murder, cult, psychedelic, philosophical, satire

Review:
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.
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..
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.
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.
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 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.
"La dolce vita" is the first film that uses the concept of "paparazzi", which implies the importance of "image", separate from substance.Throughout the various episodes Marcello sees these "images" of happiness, of contentment, but the images are deceptive, elusive, unreliable.
He is a man trapped in his life of superficiality.Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita is a very aesthetically beautiful film.
We are introduced to an array of beautiful but shallow character's; from Marcello Mastroianni's gossip journalist, via Anita Ekberg's international film star or Nico's fashion model, everyone is beautiful on the surface but somewhat dead underneath.
This justifiably famous sequence is the most purely cinematic moment in La Dolce Vita and, in my opinion, the film could have benefited from more scenes of such striking power punctuated through its three hour running time.Overall, although I do admire this film, I find it too tiring and drawn out to love.
A triumph of style over substance.One can't overcome the feeling while watching "La Dolce Vita" that Federico Fellini thinks he's being terribly intellectual and profound, but there's precious little going on in this film's head.
It's telling that on a second viewing, when I thought I would discover nuance and detail I missed the first time around, I was instead bored and found myself counting down the minutes until the film was over.Fellini seems to be criticizing a decadent, empty modern society in which ideas have died.
Fellini beautifully caught the utter absurdity of people trying to convince themselves that what they want to believe is true, and the sadness that this need is necessary in the first place.In the film's final sequence, Marcello Mastroianni's character tells the people he's partying with that they're the most boring people alive.
Marcello tries to write a book and end a relationship with Emma Federico Fellini is a tremendously talented director, but in my opinion more successful in his first film-making phase of realistic, simple films with heart ( shining La Strada" and La Notti Di Cabiria" ) than in his second from Da Dolce Vita" ( 1960 ), in which he went on producing weird, surreal and heavily pretentious satires and farces.
But although Vita" won the Golden Palm in Cannes and was nominated for an Oscar for best director, set design and script, it feels rather shallow and empty itself.------------------Many sequences are great - for example, the opening shot in which a helicopter is shown carrying a statue of Jesus Christ, or the one where a man is protecting" his face from the photographers by placing a newspaper in front of himself  as are some details  but Fellini decided to put too much of his ideas in the story, causing it to go out of control.
And that is leaving out of course, acting, writing directing!Briefly, the film follows seven aimless days and nights in the life of Marcello Rubini, a world weary Roman "reporter" who writes for gossip magazines.
(We forgive him for those tiny imperfections!)  Likewise, all the players - from leads to bit roles are brilliant.A film then, not in this world, or really even of it, but an oblique reflection of the coming decade (the movie was shot in 1959) the details of which, Fellini already seemed to know!
When I finished watching this film the main thing I felt was frustration - I think my conclusion is that there are lots of good elements but they aren't well combined.The opening is promising - the premise is interesting and the striking images and soundtrack impress a character.
But then, nothing, the film's stillborn, this frustrating episodic structure means that the initial impetus has dissipated well before the 3 hours are up.There are lots of things I like about each of the episodes individually - more than just decadence I think there's a tangible menace in the party scenes.
What's the big deal?There are some interesting scenes going nowhere: two children who lie about having a vision of La Madonna (no, not HER, the other one) which results in a lot of havoc where a mob tears apart the little tree under which the vision didn't happen, and an old man dies in the rain; there's a bit with a really charming dancer (who later played the beauty in "Amarcord") who seems to be having a lot of fun amid these jades.But "La Dolce Vita" is really just one of those passe things where rich people have money up to their ears and nothing to do but act bored.
I wanted so badly to like this movie, knowing it is an all-time favorite of Steven Spielberg and that so many modern directors take influence from Fellini, but the story just didn't work for me.
I appreciate that the movie is the story of the life of an Italian journalist, and maybe it is a metaphor stating that no matter how interesting your title is (like Marcello) you really are boring.La Dolce Vita is a beautiful movie, the costumes are beautiful, well deserved Oscar there.
But I think that having your own style is a great thing when doing good cinema (that's why I like Greenaway, Lynch, Hitchcock, Tsukamoto because even if maybe sometimes they don't make perfect movies, always follow their ideals, their atmosphere, their way of intending cinema; they invent or reinvent something).
No, for a true, kick in the guts, life changing movie about the inauthenticity of our socially constructed world, and the struggle of the individual to wake up and break free, you can't go past "American Beauty" or "The Truman Show", or many other wonderful movies out there that I feel are far more deserving of the label "classic" and of the adulation that this film seems to inspire..
This movie almost changed my life.I can still remember how three or four big scenes (I am sure everyone who really liked the film see what I am talking about: the helicopter flight, the Trevi foutain, the unreal argument between Mastroianni and his girl along an isolated road-just mark the surrounding sounds!- and of course the girl's farewell in the end) completely took me aback.
Instead ofconveying a clear message of how shallow and pathetic these really peopleare, Fellini borders on glamorizing them and insulting his audience, as if to say, "look at how cool and happening we are and how dull and uninteresting you are for having any moral and ethical sensibilities." Of course, the great irony of all this is after watching 2 hours of people partying, they quickly become boring and dull.
Only a few half hours of conclusion come to mind to even nearly equal it: Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil, the last fifteen minutes of Naked Spur, the last fifteen of My Darling Clementine; very heady company indeed, though pound for pound the last fifteen of both westerns I think are its equal, but good lord, out of all the movies ever made, La Dolces final moments are as good as a film can get.Anybody looking for any kind of depth to the Mastroianni character will do so in vain.
Perhaps this is the first time the world had seen some of these characters and situations, the dizzy 60s blonde (plus the husky variant), the paparazzi, and swinging - not shown explicitly, but only thinly veiled.Journalist Marcello (Mastroianni) is on a trajectory towards nonchalant decadence, the benchmark being set at the beginning by bored socialite Anouk Aimee, who wants to do it in a prostitute's bed while being watched.
It is also perhaps the finest and most meaningful section, notwithstanding Anita Ekberg in the Trevi fountain (it's a pity Ekberg didn't keep the kitten on her head as it was beautifully symbolic).Each section reads like a portrait of the deadly sins of moral decadence: insincerity (Aimee), superficiality (Ekberg), unreliability (his father), weakness (Steiner), insecurity (his girlfriend), and, least effectively, irrationality (the crowd at the miracle site, a long barely relevant section that the film would have been better without).
One of the Minority Who Doesn't Like It. Character study of Marcello Mastroianni, a struggling writer and social/gossip reporter looking for the meaning of life in decadent postwar Italy.
Fellini is not much of a thinker here, and the movie works best in it's pure emotional moments: Anita Ekberg in the fountain (in a justly famous scene), Marcello with his father, Marcello's encounters with an innocent country girl.
At first anyway.The story of 8 1/2 revolves around a director, Guido played by Marcello Mastroianni, struggling artistically with his newest film project, much like Fellini apparently was at the time, hence deciding to make a movie about a director having no ideas what to make a movie about.
Mastroianni himself is one such person and in the end he pretty much accepts his life the way it is (as is evident in the final scene during the encounter with the girl at the beach) because he fails to see a way out.Fellini has often told his stories with a distinct style and 'La Dolce Vita' is no different in that aspect.
The cast is superb as it includes Fellini's regulars like Marcello Mastroianni, Magali Noël, Anouk Aimee and more.'La Dolce Vita' is like a beautiful poem on canvas.
Fellini at his best, shows a remarkable and unique combination of mastery domain of the film language, a powerful imagery and a fine and subtle apprehension of the emptiness and lack of meaning of the elite's way of life, not only in Rome but around the world.
La Dolce Vita(1960) was the film that turned actor, Marcello Mastroianni into a star.
The director when he did La Dolce Vita(1960) at the beginning of the 1960s was coming off a decade in which he produced some of the great films of the 1950s Italian cinema such as I Vitelloni(1953), La Strada(1954), Il Bidone(1955), and Nights of Cabiria(1957).
This does not mean that La Dolce Vita is a bad film or is one of Fellini's worst.
Marcello's eyes only continue to darken as Fellini's cynicism grips ahold.La Dolce Vita seems to celebrate the women who change the world and deplore the men who stand and watch.
The film itself seems to be adrift as we see the world through the eyes of Marcello, a tabloid writer who again and again experiences the night life in Rome among fading aristocrats and B movie- stars.
Federico Fellini's panoramic odyssey into 'the good life' may have lost its shock value, but the film is no less exhilarating or provocative, from the justifiably famous opening shot of Christ flying by helicopter over the eternal city to the final scene (three hours later) showing a party of bored to distraction sophisticates marveling over a beached sea creature.
Probably not  Fellini doesn't even really tell a story but there's so much great theatre in each of the set pieces: the pursuit of the buxom movie star, ending in the waters of the fountain; the children's vision of the Madonna and the madness that ensues; the journey to Rome's poor outskirts and the flooded apartment; the Jesus statue and the helicopter; the night out with Marcello's father; the little girl at the café; the weird fish; the striptease; the echoing room and Marcello's pathetic attempt to express love; the fight with the girlfriend; and so much more, that you're dazzled by this great artist at the height of his powers..
Fellini's La Dolce Vita is one of those post-modern European films from the 1950s and '60s that made an incredible impact on contemporary filmmakers, and the reason I saw it was because I wanted to see what left such a deep influence on so many directors, writers, and critics.
In this foreign film, Marcello Rubini (who played by Mastroianni gets as much credit from me as to fellini) plays a journalist who gets slipped into a world where he sees bad things happen, but are just today's taboo.
La Dolce Vita is an amazing movie that chronicles Italian hipster life in the 60s, and Fellini is a master of projecting this reality on the screen..
It captures the country in a way that has yet to be seen in any other film to this level of craftsmanship.La Dolce Vita is a sobering and dark take on a man simply drifting through life full of emptiness.
With this we have in the proposal made by Fellini, the registration and the use of a (privileged) form, which confuses and generates moments that makes his speech unfeasible.Having only this caveat, "La Dolce Vita" is a timeless film, of pertinent considerations to contemporary life and a flawless style narrative, which are true legacies for the history of world cinema, and that will be for generations, like forgetting the Famous scene in which Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg bathe in the Fontana di Trevi or the children who parody and criticize the history of the children of Fatima, fed by the search of adults for a way out, a solution to the harshness of life.
The opening with the Jesus statue attached to a helicopter, the fountain sequence with Anita Ekberg (which is perhaps the most famous), and the ending scene on the beach come to mind as highlights, but they certainly aren't the only memorable scenes in this extraordinary film.Throughout "La dolce vita", Fellini satirizes the paparazzi's obsessive nature, taking photographs at everything they see, and the world's overall obsession with gossip and celebrities.
Mastroianni lived the role of Marcello and he is one of the two reasons (the other being Fellini) why you could instantly identify with so disheartening a character.Original screenplays like this require a profound vision of life as one sees it.
Federico Fellini's "La Dolce Vita" is routinely touted as a masterpiece, one of the greatest films of world cinema.
It may indeed be that for all I know but the fact is that I couldn't discern what on earth Fellini was trying to accomplish.The plot (what little of it there is) follows journalist Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni) as he lives the sweet life among the top tier of Rome's social strata.
After the vision I think the title should be "The bitter-sweet life"; it's because the director shows us a protagonist (Marcello)living in a Rome full of V.I.P in parties, beautiful women, smart clothes but it's a fake world, a world where he can't taste a simple but essential feeling like real love, real friendship.
Well, while most films that "scope" cover years and years, Fellini manages to create so many situations, introduce so many people, and address so many issues in the one week of La Dolce Vita that one would have to agree that it does indeed scope the life of this reporter.
Federico Fellini's ironically named masterpiece - "La dolce vita" means "the sweet life" - is a kaleidoscopic look at unfulfilled gossip writer Marcello Rubini's (Marcello Mastroianni) search for meaning in the high society world.
LA DOLCE VITA is an important film, indeed; a movie of high class.
" The main character of Fellini's La Dolce Vita says this to a movie star he has become infatuated with.