At the age of thirty-nine, with all of the honors and accomplishments of his first seven films under his belt, Fellini makes the riskiest move of his career. He decides to leave behind the stories of a country just emerged from war and to shift his perspective to the new world – which was experiencing a boom and going through a period of profound transformation. And he does this in a way that causes a great commotion, which is to say that he does it with an inimitable film – of an unusually long length compared to other Italian films of the period – in which he employs the use of a Cinemascope for the very first time, selects a cast of actors entirely new to him, and shreds every last rule of narrative to pieces. ‘We must make a sculpture à la Picasso, shatter it, and then reconstruct it according to our whim,’ he would say, systematically, to Tullio Pinelli and Ennio Flaiano, his screenwriters.

It was such an imposing, innovative, and risky undertaking that it was taken on, and then abandoned, by one producer after another, two of whom were top-notch producers who had already worked with him – De Laurentiis and Lombardo. In the end, it would be Giuseppe Amato, a skilled and seasoned producer, who would brave the task, backed by the nancial strength of Angelo Rizzoli.

The clapperboard snaps for the first time on March 16th, 1959, and for the last in August – after five unrepeatable months. Fellini is so skilled that he transforms the shoot into a media event. La Dolce Vita is the first Italian film to become an event long before it turns into a film. The set is visited by all of Rome, who stand in line to get a glimpse of how it will all be portrayed.
This is an Italy on the brink of ringing in a new age with the Rome Olympics. (…) The film tells the story of this atmosphere, with a stellar cast and one of the great protagonists of Roman night life, Anita Ekberg, Miss Sweden 1950 and the cover girl queen of illustrated magazines in half the world.

Fellini sets out to make an x-ray image of the dawn of a new era – to narrate life as it is portrayed in the new media. In constructing his narrative, for many segments he appropriates photojournalists’ scoops for his own use. The segment with Anita in the fountain is photographed by Pierluigi Praturlon in 1958, while Tazio Secchiaroli, the king of via Veneto photojournalists had, also in 1958, photographed Aiché Nanà’s striptease in a trendy night club that was well-attended by the conservative upper-crust of Roman society. Even the segments of the street fight on via Veneto and the one with the two children who claim to have seen the Virgin Mary are appropriated from famous photo reports.

La Dolce Vita is, systematically, a precise reading of the mediatization of Italy – very nearly a scholarly thesis on the manipulation of information and images. (…)

It is a journey focused on disgust. It is Marcello Rubini, a social reporter who writes for – as Steiner would say – a ‘semi- fascist’ illustrated magazine and who is well-established in Vatican circles and all the other ‘right places,’ who introduces us to this new world. It is a world overrun by consumption, by the cult of scandal, by a hysterical and insincere religiosity, and populated by a jaded nobility, a cynical and corrupt bourgeoisie, and intellectuals that listen – in the living room – to recorded nature sounds. He is a bit repulsed by that world, yet at the same time he is powerfully drawn to it – is soothed and fascinated by it. Perhaps he would like to be a witness to it, but instead he is its accomplice. Mastroianni’s honest face leads us to accept his miserable passivity, which borders on neglect, and fools us into believing that, despite all of this, life can be profoundly sweet.

Although constantly on the move, the film’s characters are nevertheless static, with the exception of Steiner, the sermonizing and enigmatic ‘maestro’ who chooses death for himself and for his children. (…)
Perhaps Sylvia is the only positive character of the film, with her animal recklessness, her defenseless candor, that free her blissful cries in the night. About his meeting with Anita, Fellini would write, ‘…that sense of wonder, of sudden astonishment, of incredulity, that you feel in front of extraordinary creatures such as giraffes, elephants, the baobab, I felt years later, when I saw her coming forward in the Hotel de la Ville’s gardens … I believe Ekberg to be, what’s more, phosphorescent.’

Actually, everything in the film is phosphorescent. Everything shines: mirrors, glasses, cars, the dancer covered with golden leaves. All is precious, glossy, and fluid – the burning, phantasmagorical world brought to life by a myriad of characters, the continuity of movement of the cameras and of that within the frames. The via Veneto rebuilt by Piero Gherardi of Cinecittà is identical to the real thing, but level, minus the uphill slope! The ultradened photography of Otello Martelli, the hypnotic music of Nino Rota, the richness of the dubbing, of the film score, with a thousand voices and a stereophonic variety of sounds. The power of the film – Fellini’s genius – lies in its ability to astound and to surprise us, but also to accompany us hand in hand while communicating a sensual and confused sense of abandonment, a mood that prevails over the harshness of the content.(…)

La Dolce Vita is also a jab at provincial and conservative Italy. When the film is about to be released, the country divides into two, with denunciations from the pulpits, family disputes, and outraged press campaigns in the newspapers. Fellini is spit on at the first screening in Milan. Other highly agitated crowd members shout ‘coward, vagabond, communist’ at Marcello.

But the anticipation is so great that, for the very first time, Rizzoli and Amato decide to raise the price of a ticket to one thousand Italian liras. The masses, fearing that the prefects will sequester the film, break down doors and flood into the Italian cinemas. It was to be the best box- office receipt of the season, and one of the best of all time. Fellini hit the mark.

Italy wanted to see itself in that seemingly beautiful and precise mirror that, being a great illusionist, he had created.
The film has an open ending. Anything could be read on Paolina’s angelic countenance – mischief, or even forgiveness. On that beach – leaving behind the sea monster that follows Fellini from youth and that he is still unable to stare in the face – Marcello is drunk with stories that have slipped through his fingers because he is unable to grab hold of them; perhaps he feels like falling asleep. Fellini, on the other hand, has identified his counterpart in Mastroianni, and, in Cinecittà a home, and is about to free himself from this burden. The true story, which will keep him busy for thirty years, the story of his dreams, is on the verge of beginning. He will know how to stand up against the mediatized world – by freeing the uncon- scious.

Gian Luca Farinelli