Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4827 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-09-27
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Black & White, PAL
• Original language: English, French, German, Italian
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 174 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
At three brief hours, Fellini's cynical, engrossing social commentary, La Dolce Vita, stands as his timeless masterpiece. A rich, detailed panorama of Rome's modern decadence and sophisticated immorality, the film is episodic in structure but held tightly in focus by the wandering protagonist through whom we witness the sordid action. Marcello Rubini is a tabloid reporter trapped in a shallow high-society existence, as extraordinarily played by Marcello Mastroianni, a man of paradoxical, emotional juxtapositions: cool but tortured, sexy but impotent. He dreams about writing something important but remains seduced by the money and prestige that accompany his shallow position. He romanticises about finding true love but acts unfazed upon finding that his girlfriend has taken an overdose of sleeping pills. Instead, he engages in a ménage à trois, then frolics in a fountain with a giggling American starlet (bombshell Anita Ekberg), and in the film's unforgettably inspired finale, attends a wild orgy that ends, symbolically with its participants finding a rotting sea animal while wandering the beach at dawn.

Fellini saw his film as life affirming (thus its title, "The Sweet Life"), but it's impossible to take him seriously. While Mastroianni drifts from one worldly pleasure to another, be it sex, drink, glamorous parties or rich foods, they are presented, through his detached eyes, as merely momentary distractions. His existence, an endless series of wild evenings and lonely mornings, is ultimately soulless and facile. Because he lacks the courage to change, Mastroianni is left with no alternative but to wearily accept and enjoy this "sweet" life. --Dave McCoy, Amazon.com

Synopsis
In Federico Fellini's popular film LA DOLCE VITA, a three-hour masterpiece that shows one man's descent into 'the sweet life' of debauchery, Marcello Mastroianni stars as eccentric journalist Marcello Rubini. On assignment to chronicle the lives of the rich and famous Italian aristocracy in a gossip column for a Roman newspaper, Marcello floats from one fabulous party to the next, meeting all varieties of beautiful, extravagant people. While he would never protest this seemingly ideal job, it makes him feel lonely and empty, and he stays up drinking and dancing night after night only to wake up each morning unbalanced and unfocused. The film follows Marcello's ups and downs in an episodic pattern in which each evening is a new story, a new adventure, a new dare, a new woman with whom to fall helplessly in love--but only for that night. Each morning the slate is wiped clean, and Fellini resets Marcello's score to zero. Sprinkled with religious images and gestures at salvation, LA DOLCE VITA is supreme in the beauty of its all-encompassing symbolism that is expressed through lavish sets, an alluring script, overemphasized physical movements, roller-coaster jazz music, and helpless emotions.

Customer Reviews

Classic piece of Italian cinema
Fellini's opening scene puts the stamp on this one: a helicopter flies over Roman ruins, a statue of Christ suspended beneath. A second helicopter stalks it, a journalist and photographer onboard. They fly on over new blocks of flats - ugly, functional buildings, dallying to wave to bathing beauties, men and women failing to communicate above the noise of the aircraft. An atmosphere of cynicism is established: Rome is a crumbling ruin, decadent, its peoples unable to talk to one another.

Set in 1950's Rome, La Dolce Vita follows the life of a journalist (Marcello Mastroianni), a man who can write great prose but whose work is devoted to the trivia of society gossip, the sensational, and celebrity hype: his life is empty and meaningless, filled only by sex, boredom, and flight from commitment. His girlfriend wants to marry him, but is driven to attempt suicide because of his philandering. He prefers, instead, to romp with the society figure, Maddalena (Anouk Aimee) on a whore's bed, or to flirt with a visiting Hollywood screen idol (Anita Ekberg).

Modelled on a Rome which had become an outpost of Hollywood, attracting many American actors, La Dolce Vita presents that unreal world which working class Italians could only glimpse through the pages of a new generation of celebrity, illustrated magazines. In Hollywood, the studios protected their stars and managed their publicity: in Rome, they were exposed to the local press - Mastroianni's ever-present photographer, Paparazzo, would give his name to the job. Indeed, two of the film's memorable scenes - Anita Ekberg dancing in the Trevi Fountain, and the striptease towards the end - were modelled on Ekberg's own, well-publicised exploits.

Throughout the film, Italian references are sparse. The real Italians are mere onlookers. Mastroianni drives an English sports car; a pianist delivers Bach's Toccata and Fugue; the characters drink whisky, gin, Coca Cola; Mastroianni's father reminisces about Parisian nightlife; many of the actors speak passages in English. Only the scooters, used by the paparazzi, are Italian. And there is an absence of Italian life: we meet a whore on the streets, a young girl working in a café, but otherwise the city is empty of working life. Only the clubs and bars are in full swing, and then only by night, peopled by the privileged.

Reference is, however, made to the peasants, to the superstition of the country people. Mastroianni reports on a claim that two children have seen the Virgin Mary. The kids are persuaded to re-enact their vision for the cameras. They do so with gusto, leading the crowd on a merry dance which culminates in a stampede. A man is trampled to death. For centuries before the illustrated magazines, the gullible masses could be fed hype and imagery! Now, it appears, the press has ousted the Church in orchestrating the spectacular.

The film is delivered in a series of scenes, often unlinked and disjointed, like the articles in a magazine - you open the pages and the subjects are exposed by the camera. Mastroianni rushes around, hardly ever staying at home, finding time to write only in an empty café, bemoaning the fact that he never saw his father as a child ... and now nearly missing him when the old man visits Rome. Only his successful, intellectual friend, Steiner, appears to offer any hope of stability, encouraging him to write, to use his talent, to abandon the "semi-fascist" scandal magazines for which he writes.

Yet Steiner is consumed with worries and doubts - the threat of the Cold War and imminent nuclear destruction haunts him. Steiner makes the only real reference to the existing political world - this is the 1950's, post-Fascist Italy, an Italy recovering from civil war, German invasion, American invasion, torn now between the collapse of the old order and the struggle for its political soul between Communism, Catholic Church, and Capitalism. It's an intensely political city ... yet one reduced to the trivia of the paparazzi.

Mastroianni, himself, has no values, no ideals, no political, moral or spiritual base. Beset by tragedy, he does not discover any sense of humanity or direction, but, instead, plunges further into decadence and dissipation. The film comes full circle. At its end, Mastroianni and his fellow party-goers discover some fishermen hauling a rotting "sea monster" up onto the shore. Christ, swinging beneath the helicopter, had created fishers of men. Now we have the partygoers carrying off some monstrous spectacle, symbol of the rotting society they inhabit, following it who knows where. Mastroianni turns to wave to the young girl across a stream, unable to hear her above the noise, still unable to communicate with women. He turns his back on her and follows the pack off to their next party, where the paparazzi will be competing to fish for images of men.

The film escaped the censorship which had dominated Italian culture for centuries, setting a new sense of libertarianism and a new, sexy image. Tame by modern standards, it nevertheless scandalised Italy ... while doing much to make Italy fashionable and a fashion leader! An intriguing film, a classic of European cinema, at nearly three hours in length it demands some concentration in following the subtitles and numerous asides.

English only version of a Fellini Masterpiece..
This is the first version of "La Dolce Vita" that appears on DVD, worldwide. As such it deserves a compliment, but technically is rather disappointing, because the video is not anamorphic, and there are no special features worth noting, as such a masterpiece deserves. Another boring "feature" is that the so-called "subtitles" cannot be suppressed, and appear to me as edited. Sometimes long pieces of dialogue have no subtitles at all. Fortunately these sub-titles display on the bottom of the image, leaving the picture unsoiled, but the whole edition was not planned for Region 2, just for the U.K. Price is fair.

Wonderful, Insightful Cinema from Italy's Finest.
The most famous film by celebrated Italian director Federico Fellini, 'La Dolce Vita' caused quite a stir on release for its portrayal of decadence in 1960's Rome. Although not for all tastes, this modern classic is never less than entertaining for all of its three hour duration.

Fellini had abandoned his earlier, celebrated, 'neo-realist' style for a more image centered approach, and 'La Dolce Vita' illustrates this perfectly. From the opening shot of the statue of Christ being lifted by helicopter over Rome to it's most famous scene of Anita Ekberg dancing in the Trevi fountain, the film is full of eye catching moments. Regular Fellini collaborator Nino Rota, provides a wonderful score which is as central to the film as the work of its director.

Marcello Mastroianni plays a gossip columnist who although dissatisfied with what he sees as his worthless life, is unwilling to give up 'the sweet life' among Rome's café society in favour of a more rewarding existence. With a cigarette in his mouth and a jaded look in his eyes, Mastroianni perfectly plays the part of a bored tabloid journalist, constantly socializing with Rome's high society, but always disappointed with himself. Most of the characters in the movie are directionless and without morals, which makes its setting in Rome all the more ironic.

The DVD release of this classic movie contains an excellent transfer from a good quality print, However the subtitles are built into the picture and cannot be turned off, In addition I also feel that the subtitles don't translate all the dialogue from the original script, and finally, the disc is regrettably light on extras. That said, For any broad minded movie lover, 'La Dolce Vita' is a more than worthy addition to their DVD collection.