La Dolce Vita

The famous scene of Anita Ekberg in the Fontana di Trevi. This is one of the most celebrated images in cinema's history.

A beautiful film indeed but with tragic emotions within ~ watch it if you haven't

La Dolce Vita (Italian for "The Sweet Life") is a 1960 film directed by Federico Fellini. It is usually cited as the film that signals the split between Fellini's earlier neo-realist films and his later art films.

Set in Rome, Italy in the 1950s where Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) covers the more sensational side of the news; movie stars, religious visions, and the decadent aristocracy. The film shows seven days and nights in the life of the reporter.

Marcello is living with Emma (Yvonne Furneaux), a woman who loves him and wants a traditional marriage, but she is possessive and shows little ability to understand his unarticulated search for value and meaning in his life. He has encounters with other women – Anouk Aimée as a beautiful, wealthy, and jaded friend/lover; Anita Ekberg as an American movie star named Sylvia. Marcello also briefly meets an unspoiled and charming girl working at a beachside restaurant.

Steiner (Alain Cuny), who has a loving family and success, is also suffering the same anomie in which Marcello is trapped. Later in the film, Marcello returns to Steiner's apartment: Steiner has shot his children and committed suicide. His ultimate expression of despair, the inability of this paragon to love enough, pushes Marcello over the edge. Instead of moving from journalism to the higher realm of writing he contemplated, he sells out to become a public relations hack, a drunk decadent party boy, now within the milieu that he previously saw as the outsider observing. In the end, he seems to have cut himself adrift on a sea of frivolity and self-disgust, with no real idea of how to find himself again.

Themes and motifs

In the film's opening sequence, Marcello and a photographer colleague, named Paparazzo, ride in a helicopter. They are following another helicopter carrying a gilded statue of Jesus, suspended from a cable. The statue is being flown to the Vatican. Along the way, Marcello's helicopter stops to observe a group of women sunbathing on a rooftop. Marcello asks the women for their phone number, and they ask him where the statue is being taken. The noisy engine of the helicopter precludes any mutual understanding. This motif of miscommunication replays itself throughout the film. The film also shows the presence of religious values and the Catholic church.

In the final scene of the film, Marcello and the girl from the restaurant meet again at the beach, separated physically by the tides, separated emotionally by his now defeated cynicism and her innocence.