Review of Felini's La Dolce Vita

My first impressions of Felini’s La Dolce Vita was that it is a pointless film. The plot wallows around with no apparent direction for practically the whole time. Yet, on reflection, the film develops from an innocence and naivety to a lost world of hedonism and consumerism.  Shot in 1960, I think this film is in a similar genre as other neo-realist films of the 50s. It delves deeply into the life of a journalist seeking meaning in life; as a lover and writer. Yet, the only way he finds fulfillment is through money and sex leading to the conclusion that Italian society was empty, soul-less, and lacking any meaning.

            The film begins simply enough with helicopters bringing the Pope a statue of Christ to St. Peter’s square; a gesture of religiosity and of high morals and purpose. Contrasted with the end of the film and we see that the main character has devolved into something unholy, less then when we began the film. The dead fish perhaps symbolizing his dead mortal soul.

            Throughout the film we are taken on short story after short story about Mastroianni finding peace and contentment in life, finding the “sweet life.” He is a reporter who wants to be a serious writer, but he covers movie stars and sensational stories. He also works with the paparazzi. The film is setup as a conflict between Mastroianni and his choice of lifestyle; what will he choose? The life of a serious journalist who marries his fiancé or the life of a publicity agent who lives the life of a free bachelor? In the end Mastroianni chooses the life of the carefree bachelor. Essential to this choice is the suicide of his idol, the intellectual who plays the organ and socializes with poets, artists, and so on. His suicide, is the conflict of the film. It depicts Mastroianni’s conflict about settling down or living an, apparently, meaningless lifestyle of parties, sorely lacking in morality or seriousness. But that is what Mastroianni’s character chooses; the hedonistic life of Rome, not the life of a serious journalist and dedicated husband, a scoundrel who sells his words to the highest bidder.

            I thought the film was excellent. Perhaps the best neo-realist film. It portrays the changes taking hold of modern industrialized society. The main character goes through rejection, confusion, and aimlessness. The plot reveals this lack of direction, this apparent crisis in Italian society. In contrast Rosselini had subjects to write about, the war in Italy and Germany, the devastation that Italy suffered at the hands of allied bombing raids. But, La Dolce Vita has moved past all that. It focuses on the high modernist times in Rome. A time of apparent lack of direction, of aimlessness, of hedonism. The central unifying theme is whether Mastroianni should remain committed to his life as a journalist and to his fiancé or whether he should reject those bourgeoisie values and turn to a life focused on money and sex, which he does.

            I think Felini’s major conclusion is that the “sweet life” is better than a typical middle class bourgeoisie lifestyle. By choosing to have Steiner commit suicide, I think, he is choosing to show the hollowness and insanity of bougeosie life. Hedonism, sex, money, freedom, that is what Mastroianni wants, that’s what he chooses against the prevailing bourgeoisie culture and values of the times. Is it the wrong choice? I think that is the question which the viewer is left to decide.

            Italian film history takes a turn with Felini’s film La Dolce Vita. Clearly it is still in a similar vein as the neo-realist films of the 40s. But it shows a new and different society that has emerged out of the immediate post- WWII era.