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)
La Dolce Vita(La dolce vita)
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Italy, France · 1960
2h 56m
Director Federico Fellini
Starring Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg, Anouk Aimée, Yvonne Furneaux
Genre Comedy, Drama
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An episodic journey of love and hedonism, La Dolce Vita follows Marcello Rubini, a sleazy paparazzo, on his search for romance and happiness. Stumbling through life with a penchant for booze and sex, the writer embarks on a journey which leads him to question whether the "sweet life" is really sweet after all.
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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.
Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt
A profound film by a legendary director in the greatest period of his career.
Los Angeles Times by Kevin Thomas
A brilliantly conceived epic fable.
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.
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.
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'').
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.
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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.