Lost in the Movies: La Dolce Vita

La Dolce Vita


This is an entry in "The Big Ones," a series covering 32 classic films for the first time on The Dancing Image. There are spoilers.

There aren't too many movies I've watched twice in the same day. I can, however, think of at least one: La Dolce Vita. It's not the likeliest candidate for that honor - after all, there's the length (almost three hours) and the episodic narrative, creating the impression of several movies rather than just one. Not exactly an experience screaming for instant replay. And yet... Many years ago, during a summer vacation when I was home alone, I rented La Dolce Vita and gave it a spin. I was disappointed; the film left me cold, unfurling across the screen without letting me in. Its idea of decadent fun seemed tame and outdated, its characters smugly unsympathetic, its themes and ideas pretentious and overblown. I was bored, and missed the warm, magical aura of Fellini classics like La Strada and Nights of Cabiria.

That night, I felt a vague stirring. I kept thinking about the movie; something about it, something I couldn't quite put my finger on, was drawing me back. Around 10 or 11 at night I went downstairs, put the video cassette back into the player and started the film over again. This time, I was hooked. Somehow, without meaning to, I had discovered the way into the movie - at least for me. Often celebrated as a visual feast, albeit more philosophically shallow than it seemed at the time (and derided by its detractors for the same reason), La Dolce Vita is actually most successful - to my eyes - as a film of ideas, albeit ideas difficult to articulate (which is why some of the dialogue seems too pretentious and on-the-nose). The emptiness that drove me away from the film initially was now what reeled me in - or rather the sense of anxiety and alienation beneath the flashy but shallow facade. There was a "there" there after all, brought into existence by its own self-doubt.


Over the years, I've found myself better attuned to La Dolce Vita's oft-celebrated charms (Nico in a knight's visor high among them). I've enjoyed the lively playfulness of Anita Ekberg's sequences, the deft characterization of a guilty sell-out, and the sharpness of the social satire (this is, after all, the film which gave us the term paparazzi, and the camera-wielding vultures surrounding the unknowing widow remain as chilling as ever). But I've also remembered what I discovered that summer night: a movie anchored - just barely - by a recognition of innocence lost, of freshness with the bloom taken off, of spirituality evaporated in the cold dawn light. La Dolce Vita is rare among transitional films for being seen as a success, and an archetype, yet make no mistake - this is Fellini in the process of a great change, and the film is a discovery rather than a culmination.

Looked at one way, La Dolce Vita belongs to the second half of Fellini's career: it is flamboyant, unencumbered by the traces of neorealism, and set in the world of the rich and fabulous. Yet switching stances, we can also see La Dolce Vita as the last of the "early" Fellinis - still moored in a sense of social reality, no dreams and fantasies, and anchored by the last tendrils of a wounded, romantic self-awareness. The film's richness derives from both periods, waving goodbye to the iconic image of Giulietta Masina in Cabiria and La Strada, yet vaguely recalling that fleeting sense of energy, that bruised, romantic engagement with life which characterized the early works. I've always felt as if the young girl waving across the stream to Marcello at picture's end could be Cabiria or especially Gelsomina, sad and lonely perhaps but retaining a sense of purity which Marcello has lost.

I suppose these observations and descriptions reveal my true colors: I am more attached to the fifties Fellini than the sixties or seventies one. While swept away by the visual wealth of Juliet of the Spirits or Amarcord (and on those terms, nothing in the early films can compete - Fellini without color always seems to be lacking something), I react more emotionally and intuitively to Nights of Cabiria and I Vitelloni, with their vital warmth and sense of magic in the everyday. This is why I initially recoiled from La Dolce Vita (for what its worth, 8 1/2 left me completely cold on first viewing), but also why it grew on me. I could see, and was fascinated by, its connections to the works I responded to with more immediacy.


Just as the farewell over water evokes La Strada (at least Zampano could weep for his lost soul), so the first nighttime sequence in La Dolce Vita reminds us of Nights of Cabiria, but with our identification reversed. When Cabiria was picked up by a movie star, who then reunited with his lover and left her hanging out in the living room, we laughed at the pompous privilege of the rich and shared her sense of bemused disbelief. Yet the same scenario repeats itself this time, with divided sympathies. Clearly Marcello is our protagonist, and we understand his cynical, worldly perspective, but Fellini strays from time to time, lingering on the plump, aging hooker who simply shakes her head at these two slummers and hopes she gets paid for the use of her home. It's the last time in the movie we get even a glimpse of the "common" perspective (except for the exasperating presence of Marcello's girlfriend) - from now on, Fellini accepts, without quite embracing, a sophisticated worldview.

It's a movie made by someone who has gotten lost, who knows he can't go home again (the scenes with the father are especially poignant in this regard) yet is still close enough to the memory to feel homesick. This sensation is complicated by the fact that Marcello isn't homesick for one simple place, time, or sensibility, longing instead for several (some even contradictory), all seemingly burnt up in the dazzling streetlights of the Via Veneto. He is far from his provincial upbringing, long ago lost contact with Catholicism, feels unable to commit to his intellectual principles, and can neither reject nor commit to his clinging, loyal, yet tiresome lover. And what exists in place of all these once-grounding influences? Nothing, a chimera - and here the film's "tameness" (from a modern perspective) is to its benefit: Marcello's adventures are one long tease, either physically unconsummated (the hilarious delays and distractions which prevent him from hooking up with Anita Ekberg) or emotionally frustrated (Anouk Aimee sleeps with him, but refuses to "talk seriously").

Even the closing "orgy" is a lot of pomp with little to show for itself. Barely any flesh to speak of, just big talk and feathers floating in the air: chickens indeed. It's the sexual equivalent to the false "miracle" in the film's third big sequence - a big hoopla with no deliverance at its end, only death (in that case, a spectator killed in the rainy hullabaloo, in this case, a bizarre sea monster washed ashore). From La Dolce Vita, Fellini would go on to fashion ever bigger and more dazzling visions, dreamscapes larger-than-life and more truly Felliniesque than anything that had come before. Yet in a way, the dreamer had already disappeared, when Marcello shrugged his shoulders, straggling away from the rawness of the early morning shore, as the mysterious cherub turned to looks at us, still unconsciously embracing the true "sweet life" which Marcello will never rediscover.



La Dolce Vita appears at 2:15 in "Sixties Rising," a chapter in my video series "32 Days of Movies."

Tomorrow: E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
 • 
Yesterday: The Decalogue

4 comments:

The Taxi Driver said...

I'm very critical of posts about Fellini, especially La Dolce Vita in particular and although your piece is well thought out and written I think there is something missing from your interpretation. It seemed, in fact, that at some points you were instead describing Antoinioni's L'Aventura (sometimes referred to as La Dolcwe Vita in reverse) and not this wonderful, magical film.

With La Dole Vita I don't see Marcello as the Fellini surrogate, but see Fellini trying to work out the same story that Cabiria told but from the opposite side of the fence (everything Fellini did involved duality after all). They are essentially even the same film: both episodic, both find heroes on a spiritual journey, both tell stories of redemption, both feature a trip to a holy place that reveals the shallowness of religion and both end with tragedy before the possibility of rebirth is offered. The difference: one accepts and one doesn't.

However, because both offer the possibility of redemption both are very positive films. Marcello refuses because he's lived too long, seen too much and can't possible change now. His failure to hear the girl at the end is in a way the sacrifice he offers her in hopes that she will find a better path, much like Gesolima's sacrifice for Zampano in La Strada. As far as I am concerned this story has been remade twice in modern times, once as Lost in Translation and once as Up in The Air. These are not tragic figures (although the people around Marcello are maybe very much tragic), they, unlike Antoinio's heroes in L'Aventure, have a centre and although they are too old to change they provide their sacrifice for the betterment of another and not out of their own shallowness.

That's why the scenes with the father are so effective, they show an outsider buying into the life and then quickly realizing his mistake. He can escape. Marcello is too ingrained. The culture and himself have become entwined.

You make the mistake of saying there are no fantasies or dreams in La Dolce Vita. There is one and it's during one of the films key moments. It happens in the fountain. The music swells, passion seems to be burning, the camera is close up; it's a magical moment until Fellini pulls back into a long shot and reveals it to actually be two ridiculous people standing in a fountain. Marcello can't tell the difference between love and lust and builds these ideas in his head as a means to cope.

Fellini does this again during the sequence with the children who claim to see the Madonna. He films everything from close up, showing us the reality of the situation and then pulls back to a long shot, filming behind all of the trucks and lights and whatnot, realizing this not to be a special event but a farce created by society. La Dolce Vita is, after all, society's tragedy not Marcello's.

I therefore have never experienced the coldness you speak of in this article. I was always drawn into this film, from first viewing, by the warmth and belief in the possibility that there is a better, more beautiful, spiritual life out there and that we exist between two poles which are exemplified by the flying Jesus statue at the beginning (beautiful but fake) and the sea monster (real but ugly) and how Marcello can't find a spot within either because he's become too jaded, but this doesn't stop him from allowing the innocents around him (the girl, his father, etc) from getting out while they still can.

Joel Bocko said...

Thanks for stopping by, Mike. I don't really disagree with any of your observations (except for interpreting the Trevi Fountain sequence as a fantasy - I was being literal, and in light of Fellini's follow-ups I think that literalness is warranted). In fact, I agree wholeheartedly with your interpretation of the film as Nights of Cabiria-in-reverse; indeed, this was my way into the movie.

That said, the piece is intended (as are many in the informal series) as a personal dialogue with the work. As such, it would be disingenuous for me to ignore my own reactions, however idiosyncratic. I did initially experience the movie as cold, and while I could eventually see more of the magic in it, I do feel it's closer to a L'Avventura, in its own very different way, than is sometimes recognized (especially in comparison to Fellini's 50s films). There is a cinematic as well as spiritual/cultural facet to this: both films seem almost guilty about the abandonment (not complete, but still fairly thorough) of neorealism, even as they recognize this as necessary to go deeper and further in their art. (In this light, the reporter's question to Sylvia, or rather her adviser's suggested answer - "say alive, dear", is quite amusing.)

At any rate, experiencing a certain "coldness," and then moving beyond that, is the path that took me into the movie and hence the one I felt necessary to retrace, however unique to me.

I do quite like your interpretation of Marcello's "refusal" to hear, which is not something I think I'd really considered before. I'm not sure if it's intended - his drunken obliviousness across the stream is quite a convincing ruse if so - but it adds an extra layer of poignancy & melancholy hope to the conclusion which I appreciate.

The Taxi Driver said...

Joel, some excellent points and an excellent dialogue indeed. First, your response that both La Dolce Vita and L'Aventura are an abandonment of neorealism. But is L'Aventura? Or is it more of a response on Antonioni's part to bring into effect the criticism he leveled against The Bicycle Thief which was that we need more than the action, we need to understand the psychological workings of the characters, which seems to be what L'Aventura is providing. Everything else is, for the most part, fairly realistic in it's approach.

I think the misunderstanding at the end is intentional for the reason that it bookends the entire films as it's the females at the beginning who don't understand Marcello when he is in the helicopter, which further goes towards my interpretation of Marcello not being able to find a place anywhere in society.

Joel Bocko said...

In a sense, L'Avventura and La Dolce Vita both retain faith with the neorealist tradition, certainly compared to what would come later (especially in Fellini's case). But I guess I'm thinking about content as much as style (although stylistically, there's a fundamental break especially with L'Avventura since the style becomes so pronounced - by L'Eclisse or Red Desert the camera style of neorealism seems completely dead). Mostly the fact that both these films move from the world of the poor or struggling (one way in which La Strada & Cabiria, for all their flights of fancy remained in touch with the neorealist ethos) to the world of the rich - struggling more spiritually than materially. Which makes sense given the economic changes Italy and also, I suspect, for Fellini as he was becoming an international figure.

Another great observation about the end there, and something I hadn't thought of - that parallel with the opening, and the helicopter (echoing the one with the Jesus statue and the sea monster).

Search This Blog