Fellini Watch: La Dolce Vita (1960)

Watched:  07/17/2024

Format:  Disc from Library

Viewing:  First

Director:  Federico Fellini

Continuing on my "let's watch some famed directors we've missed" kick, I've returned to Fellini.

With La Dolce Vita (1960), we're about as far as one gets from the world of La Strada's post-war desolation - diving headfirst into the mid-century Italian party scene, mixing the wealthy, the famous, the would-be famous and the hangers-on.  It's a film with a certain malaise I now realize has been borrowed by innumerable other movies, usually by kid who finds himself introduced into high society and finds out, gee, things are complicated here, too.  

But our POV character here is not naive, and he's been at this a while.  Instead, we find our protagonist (Marcello Mastroianni - I'll refrain from calling him a hero) at a tipping point.  And the movie follows him as he considers all the ways he can slip and fall from what seems a charmed position.  He's a successful ladies man, bedding upper-class women (Anouk Aimee), but with a fiancee at home, whom he's growing to despise.  He could be a journalist for some time, but he has a desire to write literature.  He seems to be seeking some truth or revelation through the women he falls for, but once he has them, he rejects them.

The film follows him through several sequences, eventually leaping forward in time to see where he lands.  And, look, there is a lot of movie to this movie.  It is the opposite of "many things occur, but nothing happens".  This is more like "there's sequences where things occur, and tied together, a hell of a lot happens".  And I don't know if I am the best person to get into it all.

I did read the "Critical Reception" portion of the wikipedia entry, and, as so often happens, it's Ebert who makes the most sense.  While I was watching the film, as I am now prone to do, I was considering "what if I had seen this as a young man in the 1990s?  What would I have thought?"  Or, in my 30's?  But, now, pushing 50, I'm far closer in my own life as Marcello of the film is at the end of the film.  Ebert describes how he reacted each time he saw the film - and how the film held steady, but he changed, and it changed how he saw it.  

And so it is with my 49-year-old perspective that I watched it, and I found the movie profoundly sad from the start.  Watching Marcello neglect his fiancée, while also understanding his real concerns about what domesticity would mean when he lives for the night life and his parties, is a tough thing to see.  Seeing him doggedly pursue Anita Ekberg as the OG manic pixie dream girl, watching him at the party at Steiner's and the words of caution - and Steiner's own fate...   

I don't think I'm judging the characters - but I can see how people in their 20's would get excited by things like... say.... drinking all night in the right clubs, hook-ups with socialites, Anita Ekberg in principle.   And it wouldn't be the first or last time a movie pivoted to show what's happening in the back end of the movie as the wheels come off is not the "good" or "important" part of the movie, and feel like the point of the story wasn't the part they cared about.  

But, of course, the point is "turns out all this cafe society stuff can be a bit hollow".  Which can feel a bit trite on paper, so it's up to the movie to seduce you with what's so appealing, and take you to the point where maybe being awake at 6:00 AM and drunk has lost it's appeal.  And that it does.  Loneliness is a bitch, and partying so you aren't alone isn't the foolproof solution you'd hope for.

Unshockingly, Fellini and Co. manage fascinating visuals from the first frames, once again telling the story in pictures as much as dialog and direct textual detail.  We're constantly seeing people on different levels, ascending and descending, starting with the helicopters, carrying a statue of Jesus to the Vatican and ending with the thing that came from the sea.  But in between, we have the hooker's flooded basement apartment, Marcello climbing the scaffolding and leaving Emma below to participate in the false miracle, Steiner's organ loft and apartment, etc...  And the labyrinth of the Italian estate, playing at chasing ghosts.

The film isn't that long, but it contains volumes - and it's difficult to unpack here.  Fortunately, I don't have to.  But I am glad I've finally checked it out.