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 Its idea of decadent fun seemed tame and outdated, its characters smugly unsympathetic, its themes and ideas pretentious and overblown.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.
