Amazon.com Essentials:
At three brief hours, Fellini's cynical, engrossing social
commentary, La Dolce Vita stands as his timeless masterpiece. A
rich, detailed panorama of Rome's modern decadence and sophisticated
immorality, the film is episodic in structure but held tightly in
focus by the wandering protagonist through whom we witness the sordid
action. Marcello Rubini is a tabloid reporter trapped in a shallow
high-society existence, as extraordinarily played by Marcello
Mastroianni, a man of paradoxical emotional juxtapositions: cool, but
tortured, sexy, but impotent. He dreams about writing something
important but remains seduced by the money and prestige that accompany
his shallow position. He romanticizes finding true love but acts
unfazed upon finding that his girlfriend has taken an overdose of
sleeping pills. Instead, he engages in an ménage à
trois, then frolics in a fountain with a giggling American starlet
(bombshell Anita Ekberg), and in the film's unforgettably inspired
finale, attends a wild orgy that ends, symbolically, with its
participants finding a rotting sea animal while wandering the beach at
dawn. Fellini saw his film as life affirming (thus its title, The
Sweet Life), but it's impossible to take him seriously. While
Mastroianni drifts from one worldly pleasure to another, be it sex,
drink, glamorous parties, or rich foods, they are presented, through
his detached eyes, are merely momentary distractions. His existence,
an endless series of wild evenings and lonely mornings, is ultimately
soulless and facile. Because he lacks the courage to change,
Mastroianni is left with no alternative but to wearily accept and
enjoy this "sweet" life. --Dave McCoy
