La dolce vita
Excerpt from the book 'Federico Fellini. The Complete Films', by Chris Wiegand
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Marcello visits an intellectual gathering held by his friend Steiner and is called out to Terni to report on an alleged religious miracle. He dines with his father and then finds himself at an aristocrat's house party outside Rome. The next day brings a debauched orgy at the home of a movie producer. Marcello presides over the socialite-stuffed gathering and witnesses a striptease performance by a newly divorced woman. The news then arrives that Steiner has murdered himself and his two children. As dawn breaks, Marcello emerges bleary-eyed on to the beach, where he is confronted with two symbolic images. A washed up sea monster sprawled on the sand reflects his own degenerated state. Some distance away, he observes a young girl representing purity and innocence. He tries to communicate with the girl but cannot make himself heard. He is left, like La strada's Zampanò, alone on the beach.
La dolce vita introduced Mastroianni and Ekberg to an international audience. The film's one-time producer Dino de Laurentiis had initially recommended Paul Newman for the lead role of the gossip columnist. Fellini refused on the grounds that Newman was the kind of glamorous star Marcello would chase along the via Veneto. In Newman's place, he cast seasoned stage actor Mastroianni, who he had met in 1948 when the actor appeared alongside Masina in a production of Leo Ferrero's Angelica. Although the film doesn't mark the actor's screen debut - he'd appeared previously in Luchino Visconti's 1957 classic Le notti bianche (White Nights) - it earned him considerable critical acclaim and public attention. In the years that followed La dolce vita's release, he would become known as 'Il Bel Marcello' in Italy. With later films such as Divorzio all'italiana (Divorce - Italian Style, 1961) Mastroianni became Italy's most internationally famous actor. He was recognised as Fellini's cinematic alter ego, sharing a working relationship with the director similar to that between François Truffaut and Jean-Pierre Léaud. Mastroianni's status as a surrogate Fellini was highlighted in La dolce vita by Marcello's profession - Fellini had worked as a journalist in his early days in Rome.
Alongside Mastroianni, Fellini cast Anita Ekberg, a former Miss Sweden and a striking 'sweater girl' with the kind of full fantasy figure he liked to sketch. Fellini first spied Ekberg in photos of her dancing in the Trevi Fountain in Tempo illustrato. She had previously appeared with Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda in King Vidor's flawed adaptation of War and Peace, filmed in Rome and released in 1956.
Page 1 2 3
Page 1 2 3
Marcello visits an intellectual gathering held by his friend Steiner and is called out to Terni to report on an alleged religious miracle. He dines with his father and then finds himself at an aristocrat's house party outside Rome. The next day brings a debauched orgy at the home of a movie producer. Marcello presides over the socialite-stuffed gathering and witnesses a striptease performance by a newly divorced woman. The news then arrives that Steiner has murdered himself and his two children. As dawn breaks, Marcello emerges bleary-eyed on to the beach, where he is confronted with two symbolic images. A washed up sea monster sprawled on the sand reflects his own degenerated state. Some distance away, he observes a young girl representing purity and innocence. He tries to communicate with the girl but cannot make himself heard. He is left, like La strada's Zampanò, alone on the beach.
La dolce vita introduced Mastroianni and Ekberg to an international audience. The film's one-time producer Dino de Laurentiis had initially recommended Paul Newman for the lead role of the gossip columnist. Fellini refused on the grounds that Newman was the kind of glamorous star Marcello would chase along the via Veneto. In Newman's place, he cast seasoned stage actor Mastroianni, who he had met in 1948 when the actor appeared alongside Masina in a production of Leo Ferrero's Angelica. Although the film doesn't mark the actor's screen debut - he'd appeared previously in Luchino Visconti's 1957 classic Le notti bianche (White Nights) - it earned him considerable critical acclaim and public attention. In the years that followed La dolce vita's release, he would become known as 'Il Bel Marcello' in Italy. With later films such as Divorzio all'italiana (Divorce - Italian Style, 1961) Mastroianni became Italy's most internationally famous actor. He was recognised as Fellini's cinematic alter ego, sharing a working relationship with the director similar to that between François Truffaut and Jean-Pierre Léaud. Mastroianni's status as a surrogate Fellini was highlighted in La dolce vita by Marcello's profession - Fellini had worked as a journalist in his early days in Rome.
Alongside Mastroianni, Fellini cast Anita Ekberg, a former Miss Sweden and a striking 'sweater girl' with the kind of full fantasy figure he liked to sketch. Fellini first spied Ekberg in photos of her dancing in the Trevi Fountain in Tempo illustrato. She had previously appeared with Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda in King Vidor's flawed adaptation of War and Peace, filmed in Rome and released in 1956.
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