5 out of 5 stars

Life has become an endless party. Dawn, day, and night seamlessly coalesce, each becoming difficult to define clearly. As an entire 24 hours is spent pursuing leisure and pleasure, one hour of the day trickles into the next. Cafés in the afternoon, bars in the evening, mansions at night, and a foreign bedroom in the early morning. Welcome to la dolce vita, the so-called good life, and the crushing boredom and infinite apathy that comes with it.

Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) has been living la dolce vita (‘the sweet life’, or ‘the good life’) for quite some time. He’s a tabloid journalist who now finds himself at a crossroads: due to his sensationalist newspaper, high society has opened up to him, yet it has harmed his ambition to become a serious writer. Flitting about from one social event to the next, Marcello has all anyone could want, but he still feels that something is missing. Though everything sparkles at these decadent parties, all that glitters is not gold, and Marcello is keenly aware of what he’ll find should he ever scrutinise what lies underneath the surface of the good life he leads: nothing.

This is partly because people are less than themselves in the Italian upper crust—they are little more than stories, images, and gossip. The omnipresent paparazzi in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita reveal a world obsessed with status and celebrity, with presentation and affectation. So scathing was Fellini’s critique of the vulturous photographers and pseudo-journalists which plague consumerist society, that the word paparazzi derives from one of the characters in the film: Paparazzo.

Both an onomatopoeic word suggesting an irritating pest, in addition to being Italian slang for a mosquito, the paparazzi in La Dolce Vita become emblematic of a culture that’s turned anything and everything into a dollar sign. Violence, death, grief, the appearance of the Virgin Mary herself, it’s irrelevant—all that truly matters is the quality of the shot. Such a preoccupation with superficial concerns practically guarantees alienation, which makes the pursuit of empty objects all the more desperate. We’re struck by how Marcello is trapped within a self-perpetuating system of frivolity and social climbing. It’s an industry in which he’s made his fortune, but a machine that’s fed on his happiness.

Now, contentment is nothing but a memory to him, and he can’t even recall why he’s in this business in the first place. It’s this confusion that results in him chasing pointless infatuations and vacuous social functions; it’s a pleasant distraction, one that allows him to ignore the undeniable bareness of his own existence. He’s responsible for nothing and answers to no one, and it’s led to a demonstrable lack of meaningful relationships in his life. Even his pain can’t be experienced authentically. When he’s assaulted by a movie director, paparazzi instruct him as he’s doubled over in pain, trying to ensure the best shot: “Marcello! Lift your head up!”

This cultural obsession with gaudy pageantry, in addition to a society that creates and fosters the spectacle of celebrity, finds its greatest expression in Sylvia Rank (Anita Ekberg), the gorgeous movie star who’s touring Italy. At a press junket, Rank is asked what she likes most in the world, to which she responds: “I like lots of things, but there are three things I like most: love, love, and love.” Much like the world that she inhabits, there’s nothing of genuine value in her statement, but her superficial charm and aesthetic appeal ensure no one bothers to look beneath the surface: her meretricious response is met with laughter, applause, and the frenzied explosions of flashbulbs.

When dancing with Sylvia, Marcello proclaims his complete and unrestrained admiration of her: “You are everything… everything! You are the first woman on the first day of creation.” Yet, rather tellingly, the pair can barely communicate with one another; he’s simply mesmerised by an image. Even more tellingly, he never sees Sylvia again, nor does he mention her, or even appear to think about her once. But much like a child standing in front of a shop window, the object of his fascination was the most important thing in his entire world as long as it was in front of him. After that? Forgotten.

And even for such a devoutly religious country, the enlightened become nothing but a commodity, too. Miracles are reduced to get-rich-quick schemes, a hoax to gain fame, riches, prestige, or all of the above. With Jesus being the biggest celebrity of all (as evidenced in the opening segment, when a large statue of the Messiah is transported across the skyline via helicopter, causing the public to gape in awe), opportunists attach themselves to his tunic-tails, desperate to achieve something akin to success. However, anyone savvy to the material world around them sees right through the act. Much like in Ordet (1955), faith in the divine has been marred by human activities; it’s difficult to believe in miracles when you can’t believe in people.

Such a culture has left Marcello distracted and aimless. There are so many things he has to do with his life. He has all the time in the world to do them. And yet, somehow or other, they continually slip away, and he discovers he’s too indifferent to chase them. Similarly, he doesn’t resolve the relationship issues with his fiancée, Emma (Yvonne Furneaux), because it’s difficult, and he has grown a reluctance for any activity requiring effort. He’s a writer who doesn’t write and a critic who spends more time indulging in the society he purports to despise than he spends criticising it. In short, he’s a hypocrite. What’s more, he knows this all too well.

The Snows of Kilimanjaro is one of my favourite Ernest Hemingway short stories, particularly because of how the infamous author injects autobiographical elements into the text. When he discusses having wasted his talent with ceaseless socialising, and having dulled his ambition in his excessive drinking, he unveils the regret of a man who’s lived an indulgent life instead of a meaningful one: “He had destroyed his talent himself. Why should he blame this woman because she kept him well? He had destroyed his talent by not using it, by betrayals of himself and what he believed in, by drinking so much that he blunted the edge of his perceptions, by laziness, by sloth, and by snobbery, by pride and by prejudice, by hook and by crook.”

Much like Harry dying of gangrene, Marcello seeks to blame everyone but himself for the ennui that besets him. He attacks Emma: “You only talk of cooking and bed. A man who lives like that is done for!” However, he’s so aggressive in his condemnation of his fiancée because he’s aware there’s no one but himself to blame. In moments of honest, dispassionate self-reflection, he comes to a more realistic conclusion: “I’m wasting time. I won’t manage anything anymore. Once I had ambitions, but maybe I’m losing everything… I forgot everything.”

It should be difficult to sympathise with Marcello’s predicament. He has everything that one could want, and he treats these things frivolously, abuses and discards them. He cheats on his girlfriend, enjoys extravagant soirées, and languishes at opulent parties, where he flirts with beautiful women. Fine suits adorn his handsome frame. Premium alcohol—premium everything—can be found at these gatherings. And money is everywhere, ubiquitous to the point of disgust.

Still, we do find ourselves sympathising with Marcello, because he’s a character that sees no way out. Much like his friend Steiner (Alain Cuny), he foresees a tawdry future, one that shows no signs of abating, and all he can do is look away. So Marcello wanders back to the party, that same party which seems like it will never, could never, end, and we witness a man succumbing to the weight of his own lethargy.

It’s easy for him to continue in his vacant meandering through life. Or, perhaps it’s not that it’s easy—he’s clearly in pain, after all, dulling this existential agony with alcohol and cigarettes as his palliative of choice. Maybe it’s simply that it’s harder for him to dedicate himself to something meaningful when he has no idea where to start looking, impossible to throw himself into a cause when none present themselves.

He’s the embodiment of the stagnated artist, who’s allowed his disillusionment to metastasise throughout his body until it’s resulted in total creative impotence. As a late-20th-century writer who’s overcome by weariness, Marcello’s reminiscent of Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock: he’s measured out his life with coffee spoons, and he looks none the happier for it.

Towards the end of this odyssey of depressing epicureanism, Marcello’s grey-flecked hair reveals that much time has passed since the tragedy at Steiner’s—but how much? We cannot say. We get the impression that if you were to ask Marcello himself, he wouldn’t be able to tell you either; he’s completely given up on his aspirations for loftier goals at this point. Time means even less to him than it once did, which is saying a lot.

The party he attends towards the end of this story reflects his spiritual degradation. He’s at his most depraved now because his contempt for those around him has never been more potent, fuelled by a repressed understanding that he isn’t much better, that he’s become the object of his own scorn. He drinks excessively to avoid this reality. Still, he seems to cling to the belief that he’s different from these voluptuaries, that he is somehow removed, even if he can’t quite put his finger on how.

At least he’s a has-been. But no, that isn’t true either, because he never quite was anything of note. Ah, but he could have been something great, and though he may have squandered his potential, at least he had a spark to begin with; a claim no one else at these gatherings can make. If the embers of his talent were well and truly quenched by the society that surrounds him, then the blame cannot rest squarely on his shoulders. It is not entirely his fault that he has become no better than everyone else.

And so, with this built-in excuse for his behaviour, it’s always easy for him to slink back to the party. Though he stands at a crossroads and has done so for an indeterminate number of years now, Marcello never truly makes a choice, and this is the defining characteristic of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita: the inertia that results from decadence, the spiritual torpor that comes from endless luxury, and the confused, frustrated inquiry into why one was ever in pursuit of such a meaningless existence in the first place.

People come in and out of Marcello’s life. Once encountered, we rarely meet them again, and we wonder if he does either. Near the end of the film, Marcello sits drunk on a beach. Then Paola (Valeria Ciangottini), a young girl he encountered when we last saw him working on his novel, shouts to him over the roar of the surf. Why does she call to him from across the sand? What is she saying to him?

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter—he doesn’t recognise her, can’t hear her. They are now worlds apart, and the gulf is too large to be breached. It will never be crossed. Before he even tries to understand who she might be and decipher what she’s attempting to communicate, he’s called back to join the party, and he returns willingly. He is, as ever, resigned: back to the good life that awaits him, shoulders slumped, and head bowed.

ITALY • FRANCE | 1960 | 174 MINUTES | 2.35:1 | BLACK & WHITE | ITALIAN • ENGLISH • FRENCH • GERMAN

frame rated divider retrospective

Cast & Crew

director: Federico Fellini.
writers: Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, Brunello Rondi & Pier Pablo Pasolini (uncredited) (story by Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano & Tullio Pinelli).
starring: Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg, Anouk Aimée, Yvonne Furneaux, Alain Cuny, Annibale Ninchi, Magali Noël, Lex Barker, Jacques Sernaas & Nadia Gray.