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Originally Posted by Dr. Eugene Felikson

What exactly is so good about La Dolce Vita? I've never understood it. I hear it praised all the time.

EDIT: serious question

hm let's see the first time i saw it i came home drunk at 3am and it was on tv and i was like "what the fuck is this???" it was the part with the dad and the dancers in the sad cabaret and what happens after.

anyway eventually i saw it in full, i've seen it a bunch of times, i saw it when it was bought and restored by scorsese & it was shown in all its glory at the national gallery of art. it was fucking gorgeous.

anyway, about the movie

first, if you have eyes you'll have to agree at least that the cinematography is delicious. the editing is also perfect enough to be invisible. so thats takes care of that.

now for the story which is what i supposed bored you.

***SPOILER ALERT***

la dolce vita tells a pretty straighforward linear story, which is that of the successive degradation of a sellout who throws away the chance of being an artist in order to chase money and meaningless relationships. he goes from promising writer to journalist to pr sellout.

this happens in a kind of progressive spiritual void-- the church isn't there, philosophy isn't there (his philosopher friend kills himself), his father isn't there, he can find no love, the old nobility is a bunch of inbred degenerates, divorces get celebrated with parties, and when he has a chance to hear again his muse (the little girl at the beach) he quickly abandons her for the noise & racket of "the world". which is why at the end she reappears, remember? and he can't hear her anymore, he walks away with his party friends, and there's a chasm (literally, some sort of formation on the sand) between them. this all works on the images--no subtitles necessary really.

f you look at parallels, claudia cardinale in 81/2 is the same muse figure, the woman who inspires him to make art rather than fuck (his mistress) or feel terrible about himself (his wife). this is almost classic plato. 81/2 is in many ways the same story as la dolce vita, except that this character chose art and is able to find some sort of salvation or escape. by the way, woody allen almost literally ripped that off for deconstructing harry.

now this tale of degeneration is all a pretty clear and obvious narrative and not revolutionary in any sense, you could go back to balzac's "lost illusions" for its sources, or even further, you could look at picaresque literature and find the same themes of progressive corruption of its hero--even going back to the satyricon. still, the way he does it is wonderful and 50+ years after he made it still relevant to our media-centric time of tmz and perez hilton.

give it another shot if you can or maybe watch it with the commentary on.

but anyway, hm, the problem i think you have relating is that the world where marcello ends is the world where you begin-- the world of kim kardashian and jerry springer and nihilism. fellini saw this era coming on and his vision turned out pretty prophetic, but looking back with no reference to a world that had meaning you might not get a sense of anything lost and therefore not see the tragedy.