Search results
La dolce vita (Italian: [la ˈdoltʃe ˈviːta]; Italian for 'the sweet life' or 'the good life' [ 2 ]) is a 1960 satirical comedy-drama film directed by Federico Fellini. It was written by Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, and Brunello Rondi.
- Overview
- Production notes and credits
- Cast
- Academy Award nominations (* denotes win)
La Dolce Vita, (Italian: “The Sweet Life”) Italian film, released in 1960, that was widely hailed as one of the most important ever made and the first of several acclaimed collaborations between director Federico Fellini and actor Marcello Mastroianni, who came to represent the director’s alter ego.
(Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation.)
Britannica Quiz
Pop Culture Vocabulary Quiz
In La Dolce Vita, Mastroianni portrayed a disillusioned journalist and gossip writer, ashamed of the shallowness of his profession but too weak to remove himself from the nightly temptations it offers: booze, easy women, and exotic fun. Rife with irony and surreal imagery whose meaning may only have been known to the director himself, the film is a compelling indictment of the decadence of modern life, mass consumerism, and what passes for high culture.
The film’s opening scene—a helicopter flying a statue of Christ to Rome is juxtaposed with a shot of a bevy of bikini-clad women—is but one of many that mix the sacred with the shallow. Such sequences caused controversy and led some countries—and the Vatican—to condemn or outright ban the film. The sets are strange and exotic, the costumes are elaborate, and many of the movie’s scenes now rank among the most famous in film history, such as one showing the blonde, zaftig Anita Ekberg frolicking in the Trevi Fountain. La Dolce Vita is credited with contributing the word paparazzi to the English language (it derives from the name of the photographer in the film, Paparazzo) and adding the adjective “Felliniesque,” referring in part to the director’s embrace of the surreal, to the movie critic’s lexicon.
•Studio: Astor Pictures Corporation
•Director: Federico Fellini
•Writer: Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, and Brunello Rondi
•Music: Nino Rota
•Marcello Mastroianni (Marcello Rubino)
•Anita Ekberg (Sylvia)
•Anouk Aimée (Maddalena)
•Annibale Ninchi (Marcello’s father)
•Best director
•Writing
•Costume design (black and white)*
•Art direction (black and white)
- Lee Pfeiffer
The biggest hit from the most popular Italian filmmaker of all time, La dolce vita rocketed Federico Fellini to international mainstream success—ironically, by offering a damning critique of the culture of stardom.
- Marcello Rubini
Marcello is a gossip columnist, and is searching for a way to become a serious writer. He’s fully involved in Rome’s ‘dolce vita’. He’s flirting with an aristocrat who’s always looking for new emotions. He has a partner, Emma, and feels oppressed by her jealousy; she attempts to commit suicide.
Aug 29, 2019 · Federico Fellini’s 1960 masterpiece “La Dolce Vita” is the pivot point between his gritty, early neorealist efforts like “I Vitelloni” and “La Strada” and later, phantasmagoric...
Jan 5, 1997 · I have heard theories that Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” catalogs the seven deadly sins, takes place on the seven hills of Rome, and involves seven nights and seven dawns, but I have never looked into them, because that would reduce the movie to a crossword puzzle.
May 20, 2021 · La Dolce Vita, released only three years before his masterpiece, 8½, is one of Federico Fellini’s best-known films, although in some ways, it is not typical of his craft.
