3,306 words

Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (The Sweet Life, 1960) is one of the most hailed and fêted films of all time. It was both a commercial and a critical success. It had an immediate and enduring influence on film, fashion, and popular culture in general. It won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1960. It was nominated for four Oscars and won Best Costume Design. Nino Rota’s music is also iconic. To this day, La Dolce Vita is regularly included in lists of the greatest films of all time.

This is all the more remarkable, given that La Dolce Vita lacks a plot. It has interesting episodes and recurring characters, but you are forced to put them together yourself, i.e., you have to do the screenwriter’s and director’s jobs for them, which is inconsistent with being fully engaged with the film.

La Dolce Vita is filled with beautiful and striking images. Almost every frame can be frozen and endlessly enjoyed. But beautiful images become boring without a story that gives them meaning.

La Dolce Vita also lacks a pulse. The film runs nearly three hours but feels longer because of Fellini’s snail-like pacing. Almost every scene outwears its welcome. It is like listening to an interesting story being told by a self-indulgent windbag.

I have sat through La Dolce Vita three times, and each time it ended, I felt relieved. I also felt cheated. I felt that my time had been wasted. I vowed that I needed to do something with whatever life remained to me. In that sense, at least, the film is therapeutic.

So is the towering reputation of La Dolce Vita just another example of pompous critics selling fraudulent “modern art” to the public? That’s surely part of it. But it is not the whole story. If it were, I would not have rewatched it. Nor would I be reviewing it. There’s actually beauty and depth here, but if you are to take my analysis seriously, I need to be candid about the film’s enormous and obvious flaws.

The main character of La Dolce Vita is Marcello Rubini, played by Marcello Mastroianni. Marcello is a well-known tabloid journalist who both writes about and lives la dolce vita, covering the diversions and dissipations of celebrities, aristocrats, oligarchs, and other beautiful people in Rome.

But Marcello is conflicted. He is drawn away from la dolce vita by two forces. First is his fiancée Emma (Yvonne Furneaux), who wants him to marry and settle down. (They currently live together in an almost unfurnished apartment.) Second is his friend Steiner (Alain Cuny), who presides over an intellectual salon in his spectacular apartment. Marcello is working on a novel, although his journalism and partying ensure that progress is slow. Steiner encourages Marcello to devote his talents to more serious, intellectual pursuits. The ambitions of Emma and Steiner are in alliance, for Steiner combines the life of an intellectual with marriage, a family, and bourgeois-bohemian grandeur.

There is another counter-force to la dolce vita, which surrounds Marcello on all sides at all times but never seems to reach him: the Catholic church. As the movie wears on, Emma and Steiner drop out of the picture, and Marcello descends deeper into decadence. Only the church remains as a path to salvation. There’s a message here, obviously–a deeply Catholic and reactionary one–but Marcello remains unable to hear it. As the movie ends, his prospects seem bleak.

La Dolce Vita opens on a surreal and hilarious note. It is daytime. A helicopter carries a statue of Jesus past ruined Roman aqueducts and new post-war apartment blocs toward Vatican City. A second helicopter follows with Marcello and his photographer, Paparazzo, covering the event. However, when they see some bikini-clad sunbathers on a rooftop, they stop following Jesus and hover so Marcello can try to get their phone numbers.

Next, it is night. Marcello is in a nightclub, stalking a story, drinks, and women. He meets Maddalena (Anouk Aimée), a beautiful and dissolute heiress with whom he is infatuated. They drive around Rome in Maddalena’s magnificent Cadillac convertible. Then they go to the flooded basement apartment of a middle-aged prostitute and make love in her bed while the prostitute drinks coffee in the kitchen.

At dawn, Marcello returns to his apartment to find that Emma has overdosed. He rushes her to the hospital. Emma survives. Marcello pledges his love. But he also slinks away to call Maddalena. Obviously, this will not end well.

Throughout La Dolce Vita, we have a pattern of nights, which are times of delusion and irresponsibility, followed by dawns, which reveal both truth and consequences.

Daylight again. Marcello and a horde of other reporters and photographers descend on Ciampino Airport to cover the arrival of Sylvia Rank (Anita Ekberg), a Swedish-American actress, who—aside from a flash of steely imperiousness—is all smiles and charm. Later, at Sylvia’s press conference, Marcello calls home to make sure Emma is okay and endures a jealous tirade. Later, Sylvia’s boyfriend, Robert (Lex Barker) stumbles in drunk. Next, Sylvia tours St. Peter’s, racing up the stairs inside the dome pursued breathlessly by Marcello and photographers. On a balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square, Marcello and Sylvia almost kiss, but she loses her hat. Sylvia is a goddess, and Marcello is clearly captivated, a slave to her every whim.

That evening, Marcello, Sylvia, Robert, and some hangers on end up at a nightclub in the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla. A “divine actor” named Frankie Stout shows up. Frankie looks like a satyr. In fact, he looks like a statue of a satyr, dressed for a night on the town. He’s grotesque and ridiculous. When Frankie takes the stage, the party turns into a Bacchanale and a Dithyramb. But Sylvia, not Dionysus, is the focus of the celebration.

Insulted by her bored and drunken boyfriend, Robert, Sylvia flees the baths with Marcello in tow. They wander through the streets of Rome, following Sylvia’s every whim. At one point, Marcello is sent to find milk for a kitten Sylvia has decided to adopt. When he returns, he finds the kitten abandoned and Sylvia bathing in the Trevi Fountain. Marcello joins her.

When dawn breaks, Sylvia appears to anoint Marcello with the water of the now still and silent fountain. It is a pagan baptism, further underscoring Marcello’s alienation from the church. When Marcello brings Slyvia to her hotel, Robert slaps her and orders her to bed, then beats up Marcello while his “friends” photograph it for the tabloids.

The next episode is set in the afternoon. Marcello is on assignment with a photographer, a model, and a horse. When Marcello sees his friend Steiner enter a modernistic looking church, he follows. Steiner is not there to pray or confess. He’s friends with the priest and is picking up an antique grammar. No, it is not Latin, Greek, or Hebrew. It is Sanskrit. Steiner also plays a bit of jazz on the organ before launching into Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Bach was a Protestant, so it too is out of place. Steiner claims that the church is like a second home to him, but he also claims that this is only because the priests are not afraid of the devil. Steiner is a modern intellectual, and he brings his world with him, even when he enters a church.

The church is in the background of the episode that follows, while Catholicism is very much in the foreground. It is daytime. Marcello, Emma, and Paparazzo are driving to a place in the countryside where two siblings, a boy and a girl, claim to have seen the Madonna. The church is skeptical, but lay Catholics are not. Pilgrims and sick people gather, hoping for a miracle. The media are just there to cover the story, and Fellini puts them very much in the foreground.

After nightfall, the children are released from questioning and return to the field where they reported the apparition. (Does the church have the power to detain and interrogate people about religious visions?) A storm forces the media to shut down their lights. At a certain point, the little girl points to where the Madonna is supposedly appearing and begins running toward her. Mayhem breaks out. The crowd follows the children—who are clearly enjoying the attention—back and forth across the muddy field, while some of the pilgrims shred a small tree said to have given shade to the Madonna, turning every leaf and branch into a relic.

When dawn breaks, we discover that a sick child brought to be healed by the Madonna has been trampled to death by the mob. Marcello is unmoved throughout.

It is during this episode that most viewers start peeking at their watches, wondering where this is all going and how long it will take to get there. The whole sequence could have been cut without loss.

The following episode begins at night. Marcello and Emma have been invited to a salon at Steiner’s apartment. Steiner’s friends are artists, writers, and academics. An old man discourses on the superiority of the women of the Orient to those of the Occident, because the Orient is closer to nature. A female poet discourses about the importance of never choosing between two options, which is the last thing that Marcello needs to hear, given that he is torn between journalism and literature and between Emma and every other woman in the world.

They then listen to recordings of natural sounds, but only Emma is ingenuous enough to respond to them. She is also enthusiastic about Steiner’s two young children, a boy and a girl. Clearly, she would like to have children of her own and envisions Marcello and her living a Steiner-like life. When she speaks of this, Marcello turns away from her. He’s clearly ambivalent.

Steiner too is brooding. He is a wealthy dilettante, not a serious intellectual. He too is paralyzed in the face of the choices necessary to follow an intellectual calling. He also fears nuclear war. He does not know what kind of hell his children will inherit. He is hopeless in the face of reality.

This sequence is not followed by a dawn, so we don’t know the truth or consequences of what we have seen in Steiner’s world—at least not yet.

But the next, brief segment is set during the day. Marcello is on the phone arguing with Emma. He is at a seaside resort. It is summer. He is trying to get away from Rome and write something important. But he is blocked and irritable, not only with Emma but also with Paola, a young blonde waitress from Umbria whom he likens to an angel in an Umbrian church. After a while, Marcello’s anger dissipates, and he calls Emma back.

The next episode is set in Rome. It is night. Marcello arrives at one of his hangouts on the Via Veneto, and Paparazzo tells Marcello that his father (Annibale Ninchi) is there eating dinner. Marcello invites his father to a night club and introduces her to Fanny (Magali Noël), a French dancer. After a great deal of alcohol, Fanny takes the father back to her apartment, followed by Marcello and Paparazzo in another car. The apple, it seems, did not fall far from the tree.

Marcello confesses to Paparazzo that when he was growing up, he never really knew his father. He was always gone. Now we have a sense of what he was doing: living la dolce vita.

Marcello and Paparazzo take the long way to Fanny’s apartment. When they arrive thirty minutes later, Fanny is frantic, because Marcello’s father is sick. Marcello is deeply affected. When the episode passes, Marcello’s father wishes to return home on the earliest possible train, while Marcello tries to persuade him to stay a while longer. Clearly, Marcello is confronting death. He senses that his father won’t be around forever and wants to get to know him better.

But when dawn breaks, the father gets in a cab to leave for the station. This is the truth about the father. He fundamentally does not care about his son. But it is also a vision of Marcello’s future, if he does not change the path he is on.

The next sequence begins at the same place on the Via Veneto. Marcello meets Nico, played by Nico herself. She’s on her way to a party at her fiancé’s castle outside of Rome. She invites Marcello to tag along. It is a wonderfully droll sequence with some stunningly attractive actors.

Marcello meets Maddalena again, who takes him to a room in the castle where he can hear her speaking to him from a distant room. Then she confesses her love to him and asks him to marry her. Marcello is clearly interested. She faces the same choice as him: to whore around or to settle down. She doesn’t want to choose, though, and is resigned to being a whore. Marcello tries to talk her out of this, but at a certain point Maddalena goes silent because she begins making out with a handsome partygoer. I guess the wedding is off.

Marcello searches for Maddalena but cannot find her. He tags along when the partygoers decide to relocate to a ruined villa on the estate where they have a séance. Maddalena forgotten, Marcello hits on an aristocrat, who rejects him, then hooks up with a vulgar American artist who later introduces Marcello to her grown son, who is also at the party. It may be a new low for him, but he takes it in stride.

When dawn comes, the partygoers stumble back to the castle, where they meet the prince’s mother, a tiny but intense old woman who is headed to mass in the castle chapel. Like ducklings, her son the prince and his three sons fall in line behind her. This is a moment of truth. No matter how dissipated the aristocracy becomes, they will always be able to fall back on their lineages, their manners, and the church. Marcello, however, hangs back with the other guests. These forces have no power over him. Fellini’s message here is deeply Catholic and deeply reactionary.

The next episode begins at night. Marcello and Emma are having a shouting match in his car on a road somewhere outside of Rome. A huge industrial light rig stands in the distance, illuminating them. Are they backstage or on stage? Fellini is not even trying to hide the artifice.

Emma wants Marcello to settle down and start a family. She thinks that love is all he needs, and her love should be enough. He disagrees. He’s restless. He wants other women, yes, but what he really wants is a life beyond mere domesticity. He wants to make a mark on history. After a lot of “I hate you, don’t leave me,” Marcello leaves Emma by the roadside. But when dawn breaks he returns to pick her up. The truth revealed here may simply be that both of them have borderline personalities.

Marcello and Emma return home and fall into bed. Later in the day, Marcello is awakened by the telephone. He is called to Steiner’s apartment, where a scene of horror awaits. Steiner has killed his two children and himself. This is the daylight truth of Steiner’s nighttime brooding: he had no faith in the future, whether religious faith or its secular avatar, progress. He was terrified of nuclear war, terrified that his children would inherit only hell on earth. He gave in to despair, killed his children, and killed himself.

This is devastating for Marcello, for Steiner was one of the main forces pulling against Marcello dissipating his talents into journalism. Now we see that Steiner’s life was just another form of nihilism, not a path to salvation.

The final sequence of the film appears to be set some time later. There is more gray in Marcello’s hair. He has resolved the tension between journalism and literature by abandoning both. He is a publicist now, an even more superficial job than journalism. There is no sign of Emma. Marcello leads a company of revellers, including his friend Nadia, to the beach house that Nadia shared with her ex-husband Riccardo. Their marriage has just been annulled, and they are going to her ex-husband’s house to celebrate “the nullification of her marriage, the nullification of her husband, the nullification of everything.” In short, this is a celebration of nihilism. The gate is closed, so they ram it with a car. The house is locked, so Marcello smashes a window to get in.

This is a different crowd than Marcello’s old friends. For one thing, there are a lot more homosexuals. They lack the wit of Steiner’s crowd. They lack the manners and fashion-sense of the aristocrats. Aside from drinking and music, the entertainment includes vandalizing Riccardo’s possessions, a drag show, and a strip tease by the newly nullified Nadia. It isn’t just seedy, it’s extremely boring.

Eventually Riccardo shows up. He doesn’t seem particularly angry or surprised, though, just weary. He’s probably seen these kinds of parties before. He orders everyone out. He’s pulling an all-nighter too, leaving for Nice at 6:00 am.

But Marcello doesn’t want to go. They are all friends. He wants to keep them there. He wants to keep them entertained. The party must never stop. So he closes the curtains on the world and tries to get his own Decameron going. But instead of telling stories, he tries to liven things up by pairing off people to start an orgy. (Can’t he get it up himself?) The orgy, however, goes nowhere. So Marcello ends up riding on the back of a drunken woman, throwing feathers from a torn pillow in the air. It is a sad, degrading parody of joy.

When dawn breaks, the revelers depart. But instead of climbing in their cars, they begin wandering through the woods to the beach. “Ah, nature . . . ,” one of them says. They’ve heard of nature. This should be an interesting experience.

When they get to the beach, fishermen are dragging up a dead manta ray from the sea. Is it a symbol? Is it a metaphor? Maybe. But it is also a dead manta ray. It is an encounter with nature and with death: two things that la dolce vita must screen out if the party is to continue. But nothing seems to break through. After a few banal remarks, the partygoers begin to drift away.

Marcello has sunk down on the sand. Before he departs, he hears a voice. Just down the beach, across some water, is Paola, the Umbrian angel. She is speaking and gesturing to Marcello, but he can’t hear her over the sound of the waves. He doesn’t care enough, though, to move closer to her. Eventually, as the last revelers depart, he shrugs, waves goodbye, and follows. Paola watches him leave with a beatific but sad smile. The end.

In Flannery O’Connor’s short stories and novels, there are “moments of grace,” in which God communicates to mortals, often changing the course of their lives. I read this enigmatic ending as such a moment of grace. Marcello himself likened Paola to an Umbrian angel. That’s exactly what she is. She’s giving Marcello a choice: listen to her message, which is the message of the Church, or return to the party. He chooses to shrug and walk away.

La Dolce Vita is a self-indulgent film about self-indulgence, an aimless movie about aimlessness, a decadent film about decadence. I wish that the message had not corrupted the medium quite so much, because if Fellini had been more disciplined, La Dolce Vita really would have been one of the greatest films of all time. As it is, it is still a great film, but a flawed one, with a surprisingly reactionary and pro-Catholic message.