Discuss La Dolce Vita
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Can anyone explain why this movie is great?
posted by rooprectSTAFFMOD on February 17, 2022 at 10:13 PM
Just watched this movie, twice. I read the Criterion essay, watched the bonus features, hopped on youtube and watched a bunch of people talking about how great this movie is. And yet, none of these things said anything notable, just opinions & fawning praise using adjectives that could just as well describe a bottle of bleach.
I didn't hate the movie. I thought it was pretty good. But, as many say, "the greatest film of all time"...? I'm a much bigger fan of the other 1960 films that lost to this at Cannes; Antonioni's "L'avventura", Bergman's "The Virgin Spring", even Hitchcock's "Psycho" gave me so much more artistic satisfaction.
I did catch Fellini's interesting breaks in perspective: a 1st person POV shot with characters talking directly to the camera which seamlessly shifts to a 3rd perspective voyeur shot. Vice versa in the memorable last scene. That was cool. I also caught the excellent visuals. Everything is very picturesque. But those are technical points that can be found in many other movies of the time and some predating Fellini. Why is this movie great? I'm trying hard to see what I've missed.
Reply by rooprect
on February 20, 2022 at 10:45 PM
Reporting back with what I've learned from other film buffs I've asked. Might give this flick a 3rd try hah
Fellini didn't start with immediate cinematic "greatness", not like say Orson Welles. Rather, most people say Fellini's greatness was a style that he developed and defined over the course of half a dozen movies. "La Dolce Vita" is on the early edge, so what we see here is more like a precursor of things to come.
Basically (film buffs say) Fellini's contribution to cinema was a sort of psychedelic approach, twisting reality with mind trippy stuff, and this came to a notable peak with "8 1/2" which came 3 years after La Dolce Vita.
As for La Dolce Vita itself, we're just seeing the style starting to brew. Things like the aforementioned warping of POV, unexpectedly breaking the 4th wall & building it back up again, or the cryptic scene where Steiner's reflection doesn't quite match his body, these are early examples of Fellini breaking from reality. Or in cinema terms, he's breaking from neorealism which was the driving style of Italian cinema after the war. Fellini, in particular with La Dolce Vita, was one of the first influential Italian filmmakers to nudge neorealism out the door and usher in surrealism. Here it's still kept within the context of a traditional "realistic" narrative, but in his next film 8 1/2 he would take it to the next step.
So I guess, sure, I've half convinced myself that this film might be great. I'll give it another go, then follow it with 8 1/2.
In case anyone else has taken this path (trying like hell to become a Fellini fan despite your initial bleh) I'd love to hear how it turned out :p Otherwise I'll leave this as a marker for other confused felliniphobes...