70
After nearly three hours Fellini's relentlessly enigmatic, non-committal approach leaves you wishing for something more than poignant imagery and moody, self-obsessed characters. (Review of Original Release)
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
70
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--Roman orgies and Christian martyrs--with only a fraction of De Mille's showmanship.
100
Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt
A profound film by a legendary director in the greatest period of his career.
100
Los Angeles Times by Kevin Thomas
A brilliantly conceived epic fable.
80
Village Voice by Michael Atkinson
In one movie, at least, the ethical baseline (heisted, you could argue, from "Sweet Smell of Success") gave Fellini's roaming, cluttered mise-en-scène a chilling gravity he could never genuinely locate again.
100
San Francisco Chronicle by Mick LaSalle
In this one masterpiece, Federico Fellini achieved the ideal balance -- between social observation and unconscious imagery, between artistic discipline and freedom, and between the neo-realism of 1950s Italian cinema and the orgiastic flights of his later work.
100
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
The movie is made with boundless energy. Fellini stood here at the dividing point between the neorealism of his earlier films (like "La Strada") and the carnival visuals of his extravagant later ones ("Juliet of the Spirits," "Amarcord'').
100
Freshly viewed, the movie's melancholy seems to fit uncannily well in the moment we find ourselves now. In the film there are mentions of nuclear annihilation and worries that heedless lust and wanton partying could bring Rome a second fall.
This classic was a prescient analysis of what would become our obsession with celebrity, with Fellini coining the term "paparazzi." Along with social criticisms, this film is full of psychoanalytical puzzles and aesthetic beauty. A must-watch for any cinephile.