Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg get wet in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita
With 1960′s La Dolce Vita, Federico Fellini would leave behind his Italian Neo-Realist roots once and for all and in the process create one of the cornerstones of world cinema. It was the film which inspired the adjective “Felliniesque,” used to describe a certain circus-like representation of modern life and it would turn Marcello Mastroianni into an international star.
Philip French talks about the cinema classic in the pages of Sunday’s Guardian/Observer.
Read what Roger Ebert has to say about it in his Great Movies column and contrast it with one of his first ever movie reviews, written for The Daily Illini when he was a college sophmore in 1961.
Feeling lazy? Then just read 10 factoids about the film taken from the Observer piece after the jump and be done with it.
- Most of the film was shot in a studio. Over 80 sets were made including the dome of St Peter’s Basilica.
- The film won the Palme d’Or at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival.
- The famous scene in the Trevi Fountain was shot on a cold evening in March. While Anita Ekberg stood in the water for hours with no problem, Marcello Mastroianni – according to Fellini – had to wear a wetsuit under his clothing and eventually down a bottle of vodka to be able to shoot the scene.
- Paparazzo, the news photographer played by Walter Santesso, is the origin of the word paparazzi, now used in the plural to describe intrusive photographers. The Italian family name Paparazzo is believed to come from the word papateceo, meaning mosquito.
- There is a cameo performance from Christa Päffgen, aka Nico, who later found fame with Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground. Nico was invited to visit the set and so charmed Fellini that he gave her a sizeable speaking role, playing herself.
- The film received 20 minutes of applause when a rough edit was shown, but at its premiere in Milan people booed and protested during the film. A woman approached Fellini as he left the cinema, saying, ‘You are putting Italy into the hands of the Bolsheviks’, while a man spat on him. Fellini received 400 telegrams accusing him of atheism, communism and treason within a day of the Milan showing.
- It was a massive box-office hit, making $10m in its first year, and then a further $8m in America – more than any other foreign film before it. Only 26 foreign-language films have ever grossed more than $10m in America.
- Spain’s moral censors ensured it was not released there until 1981.
- The Divine Comedy‘s Neil Hannon speaks from the screenplay of La Dolce Vita (translated into English) at the end of the song ‘The Certainty of Chance’. The words are the intellectual Steiner’s: ‘Sometimes at night the darkness and silence weighs on me. Peace frightens me. Perhaps I fear it most of all. I feel it’s only a facade, hiding the face of hell.’
- Many films make reference to La Dolce Vita including Good Bye Lenin! (in which a statue is flown by helicopter), Lost in Translation and Pulp Fiction. Woody Allen’s Celebrity is a reworking of the film, set in New York
Filed under: Miscellaneous
This completely cracks me up….
“A woman approached Fellini as he left the cinema, saying , ‘You have put Italy into the hands of the Bolsheviks…’ Fellini received 400 telegrams accusing him of atheism, communism & treason.” LMFAO
That is SO hysterical. Ahhh,the Europeans….
Plus the goddess Anita had no problem standing in the cold water & Marcello had wear a wetsuit & drink a bottle of vodka. So who’s the Fing diva? LOL
And they spit on him! Talk about your passionate Italian stereotypes!
Anita must’ve had an extra layer of Scandinavian insulation.
Of all of Fellini’s films, La Dolce Vita is the one that I admire greatly but can’t find myself *enjoying*. There’s a repetitive quality to it, and that’s both temporarily fun and kind of frustrating. It’s the bridge film, between everything even resembling his neo-realistic endeavors and, as you write, Craig, the purely “Felliniesque” run of Fellini’s.
Now, 8-1/2, I could watch just about once every couple of weeks. La Dolce Vita, I’ve only seen it twice. I consider it Fellini’s growing pain film, where his career can be accurately halved with each portion before it and after it separate.
It’s still an obviously fine, technically brilliant film–and it’s probably the best “growing pains” film I can think of from a filmmaker–but it doesn’t inherently satisfy me the way so much of his filmography does. Yet its importance is obvious and inarguable.
Those Italians and their passion; those Scandinavians and their insulation… :-)
The Moon Is Blue (Preminger) represented murmurs of changes afoot in pop culture, but La Dolce Vita is possibly the best example of a film that represented a cultural shift, and it took a European film to do it. It might be viewed as the granddaddy of Lolita, I Am Curious (Yellow), Who’s Afraid of Viriginia Woolf? and Deep Throat.
The image keeps playing in my head of Ekberg throwing her head back, tossing her ample mane of hair and gushing — repeatedly — “Marcello! Marcello!”
Is it safe to say Pierre that La Dolce Vita captures a cultural moment (or inspires one) the impact of which might be loss on those of us who weren’t alive in 1960?
When you look at it that way, Craig, the answer is yes. But, of course, the study of history is valuable for those who haven’t lived it. One can better appreciate any film or work of art when one understands its historical context. Some films are timeless, and others can be enjoyed absent a historical context.
I was attempting to draw a bridge between your opinion of the film and Alexander’s.
I think the impact of even a film like Citizen Kane is dimmed unless you can understand the context of what a break it was from what had come before.