La Dolce Vita (1960)

A few words come to mind. Malaise. Melancholy. Seduction. In a sprawling 3-hour episodic film, Fellini managed to capture a moment in time, postwar Italy.  Sorrentino's The Great Beauty did the same for contemporary Italy, yet we experience the same decadent emptiness. Maybe Italy hasn't changed so much since then. Though film has come a very long way. Black-and-white photography is beautiful in its own way. But sound in some of these old Italian films is just terrible. They were very poorly dubbed. It's almost hard to take it seriously.

There are some really breathtaking scenes in this film. I think some episodes are better than others. I was particularly entranced by the first few episodes. The physical emptiness of the Roman streets, and the now-iconic Trevi Fountain, is striking. It provincial-izes the city in a way that I think actually probably reflects reality. When I roamed the streets of Venice at night, it was similarly empty. I tried to capture that emptiness in words in my blog, but obviously film does that a little better.

It's the episodic structure that is so unique about this film. Seemingly non-linear moments in Marcello's life. Characters come and go, some recur and some never return. I thought Anita Ekberg would be in more of the film being top-billed, but she actually features in only one episode. It is not immediately obvious how each episode relates. And I think for me to really understand and fully appreciate this masterpiece, it will take additional viewings and more life experience.