Okay, get ready and hold onto your hats folks, as I was NOT 100% enthralled with this film and think it's a bit overrated. Yes, this of course if the signal that you should NOT read any more but simply mark my review as "not helpful" because my opinion differs from the norm. I actually get this a lot if I buck popular wisdom but shouldn't a review try to say something different other than "I agree with you and everyone else"? Now don't misunderstand me--I did NOT dislike the film nor do I say it was poorly made. But the film's messages about fame and the pointlessness of life got rather tiresome to me after a while. Plus, while at first the film seems to say that certain lifestyles or types of people are hollow and banal, the final message of the overall film seems to be ALL life is pointless. I really enjoyed the scenes with Anita Ekberg--they remind me of the pointless adulation of celebrity today (such as Anna Nicole Smith) but after a while it seemed that Fellini was pretty much lampooning and condemning everything and leaving the viewer with the possible conclusion that life is meaningless so you may as well become an idiot (like Marcello had become by the end of the film). In many ways, though the movie is often upbeat and trivial, the meta-message is much more depressing and cold than that many Bergman films. I at least liked to have seen SOME spark of hope or at least a movie that didn't go on for so long that it left me a bit depressed.
Overall, not a bad film at all, but there are many Fellini films I prefer, such as WHITE SHEIK, LA STRADA and AMARCORD.
Overall, not a bad film at all, but there are many Fellini films I prefer, such as WHITE SHEIK, LA STRADA and AMARCORD.