La Dolce Vita / Federico Fellini

La Dolce Vita is a cult Italian movie released in 1960 and directed by the famous director, Federico Fellini. It basically follows the stories that unfold in a week in the life of famous gossip journalist in Rome, showing us the aristocratic life in Rome in the 60s. The main character, the paparazzi, is Marcello (played by Marcello Mastroianni) that has the same name with the actor who plays him. Marcello is a really handsome and a cool man that knows almost everyone in high society in Rome. The film shows us the ‘sweet life’ in Rome, as the title suggests, with all its colorfulness, the aristocracy, the cabarets, models, second-rate movie stars, homosexuals.. It shows this sweet night life and the characters in a neutral way, and does not judge them about their character. The film is formed of 7 sequences, or stories. Marcello usually acts as an observer and lets his fate determined randomly, always seduced by others to spend the night with them.

The other two main characters in the movie are Sylvia and Maddalena played by Anita Ekberg and Anouk Aimee respectively. Sylvia is a famous, seductive and a very beautiful Swedish-American actress which visits Rome. Fellini’s choice of giving this part to Anita Ekberg is significant since the character Sylvia is basically Anita Ekberg herself, the famous Swedish model, actress and a sex symbol back in her time. Many critics state that although the acting skills of Anita Ekberg are not exceptional, nobody could play her better than herself. Maddalena, on the other hand, is a beautiful and a very rich heiress who is bored of her life and is in the search of new adventures.

La Dolce Vita is a very famous film that is regarded as a masterpiece. It has been interpreted in many ways and is open to many different interpretations since it is deep and metaphorical in many aspects. I thought of it as Marcello’s learning about life and his journey to his inner self, as he spends time with many different types of people from the Roman society. The film is also satirical in my opinion, and criticizes the life of Roman aristocracy. In my opinion Marcello is in search for happiness and on his way observes the different choices of life paths with the help of different characters like Steiner (Alain Cuny) and is passive most of the time although he is the main character. He is in my opinion trying to find ‘his own’  sweet life while on the way being seduced by different life styles. In the movie, he lives a life which most people would envy, a life in which he has everything he wants and does not have to do much for it. He is basically free all the time; his job is to spend time among aristocracy and other members of high society. He has money, and there are always women around him. Yet he feels like he is wandering aimlessly and wasting his time.  He does not know what he wants exactly, does not know what to devote himself for and he is not sure about his passions. He doesn’t want to continue wandering aimlessly yet he doesn’t want to marry and settle down and continue his life in a cage neither.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

 The author was born in İzmir,Turkey in 1996 and is now living in Milan, Italy. He is currently studying International Economics and Management at Bocconi University. His fields of interests are history, politics and languages , and he is generally interested in social sciences. He speaks Turkish, English, Italian and a little bit of German and Russian. He started this blog in order to share his thoughts with people, to reach people who share similar interests and to create a platform for discussion. You can reach him via e-mail.

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