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LA SEDATA VITA Supposedly so shocking, so daring in themes it was decided to sell La Dolce Vita as an “adults only” roadshow in the more cosmopolitan American cities. And it didn’t do half bad as one, either. In Chicago, it followed Ben-Hur at the famed Michael Todd Theatre. In black and white, the picture wasn’t prestige stag, or what had been hoped to be; it was Federico Fellini leasurely gasping at the depravity of his modern Roma, showing sinners and lechers prefiguring Silvio Berlusconi who are deserving of Hell because they’re aimless, alienated, bored. Hailed by many as a searing look at what was the beginning of the Paparatszi culture, Fellini is preaching disguised hypocrisy as “truths”—he was then and remained throughout his years just as much a languishing voyeur as the smoking, drinking and sex-obsessed parasites he exploited. For what seemed like years all people talked about was Anita Ekberg in the fountain and the “orgy” with its prancers and dancers gyrating to Pérez Prado’s “Patricia.” But the talk stopped when most of us as teens got to see the picture at the drive-in months later and were disappointed because the hype of ads—“uncut, uncensored, now for all to see, the nights, the drunken revels, the sins and the sinners, the perverted decadence of the jet set rich”—produced expectation never realized on the screen. There was more action going on at A Summer Place than Fellini’s place. Ekberg’s boobarama notoriety aside, it’s Marcello Mastroianni who benefited most—he became an international superstar. (Today’s audiences may laugh apprehensively at his character’s face-slapping, feather-dropping misogyny.) The kindest thing to be said: after Juliet of the Spirits, Satyricon, Fellini’s Roma and Fellini’s Casanova, La Dolce Vita looks blessedly sedate. Compared to L’Avventura, La Notte, Last Year at Marienbad and Fellini’s 8 ½, it may be the less exceptionable of the Euro “masterpieces.” Occasionally showing up on TCM with a TV-14 rating. Winner of the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. With Anouk Aimée (somnambulantly driving a Cadillac convertible at night wearing sun glasses), Lex Barker, Nadia Gray. Filmed in TotalScope. (Opening 6/14/1961, running 17 weeks.) Oscar win for best b & costume design. Nominations for best director, original screenplay, art direction/set decoration. (Otello Martelli wasn’t nominated for the one award deserved—best black and white cinematography; that went to The Hustler.) ROLL OVER IMAGE & POSTERS
Text COPYRIGHT © 2001 RALPH BENNER (Revised 4/2011) All Rights Reserved. |
