As much as any master filmmaker, Federico Fellini handled actors and technicians the way a conductor controls an orchestra. La Dolce Vita, Fellini's landmark skewering of Italian jet setters, is a case in point. It's a cinematic symphony, a free-flowing piece of music with seemingly unrelated segments that can be viewed as variations on a theme. Then, after almost three hours of dazzle, Fellini lets the music simply fade away. No big crescendo. It's just over. Many people didn't know what to think when they first saw it, but others marveled at his unique vision.

Marcello Mastroianni plays an Italian celebrity journalist named, fittingly enough, Marcello (partially inspired by paparazzi photographer Tazio Secchiaroli) - and he serves as our tour guide through the upper reaches of a vacant society that's obsessed with glittering surfaces and seems destined to destroy itself. Sex and religion permeate the mostly implied storyline; the brilliant opening sequence, during which a statue of Christ is transported by helicopter over urban rooftops that feature elegant women sunbathing in bikinis, is a trenchantly hilarious appetizer. Ever the autobiographical director, Fellini seems hopelessly attracted to the very shallowness that's appalling him, just as Marcello is. This push-and-pull of desire adds a fascinating dimension to the proceedings.

Marcello moves through a variety of empty escapades with little emotional layover from one instance to the next, but that was obviously Fellini's point. The first segment concerns his dalliance with a bored heiress (Anouk Aimee) and a prostitute (Adriana Moneta). Then we move on to Marcello's usual mistress (Yvonne Furneaux) who takes an overdose of sleeping pills only to have her lover leave the hospital to cover the arrival of a voluptuous Hollywood starlet (Anita Ekberg, in a small, but nevertheless iconic, performance.)

The Ekberg interlude is probably the best remembered segment of the film, due mainly to Ekberg's thermonuclear body. (It's a wonder Ekberg and Mastroianni had any chemistry at all. When Mastroianni first met her, he told Fellini she reminded him of a German soldier who forced him onto a truck during the war!) But Fellini follows it with a devastatingly sarcastic sequence concerning a couple of children who've become media stars by claiming that they've had a vision of the Virgin Mary.

Eventually, Marcello's life will fall apart at the seams, but don't expect the orgy he attends, or the innocent waitress he becomes obsessed with, to leave him with any answers. Fellini obviously abandons all hope for the character. In fact that's the reason he had trouble finding financers for the project in the first place.

That's right - no one wanted to make La Dolce Vita. Dino De Laurentiis tried, even though he felt every person in the script was despicable, but he finally dropped out over intense creative differences with Fellini. Then, when Fellini finally secured the services of producers Giuseppe Amato and Angelo Rizzoli, he proceeded to drive them crazy by re-imagining sequences on the spot. "Until I have said we'll film here," Fellini explained, "I feel free to change, to keep inventing things."

The budget had already soared to then-astronomical levels for an Italian production when Fellini insisted that Amato and Rizzoli re-create a real-life stretch of road on Rome's Cinecitta Studio lot, a move that would increase the picture's total cost by a staggering 50%! Amato flatly refused, but finally relented when Rizzoli convinced Fellini to surrender his contracted percentage of the film's profits. Sudden costume changes were also the order of the day, with Cinecitta's seamstresses working around the clock to meet the demand. Given that there were over 800 extras on the film, they couldn't afford to rest.

La Dolce Vita contains scenes of enormous satirical bite, and Fellini was wholly unconcerned with who he might offend. The film, right on cue, caused a scandal upon its release - with the Catholic Church, in particular, strongly objecting to its content. Today, it's a bit difficult to fathom what the fuss was about. There's sex, to be sure, but it's mostly implied; on the set, Fellini's assistant complained, "He wants to play the pig, but doesn't know how." - and the religious attacks are aimed as much at non-believers as at the clergy itself. Perhaps Fellini's friend, Father Angelo Arpa, a professor of theology at the University of Rome, put it best when he said, "Never has cinema included in sin such a profound sense of bitterness and weariness, or misfortune and desolation."

When implored at the time to explain the meaning of the picture, Fellini himself said, "I am not a man who dashes off messages. When you describe your epoch, no matter how impartially, you notice that there are emergencies, events, attitudes that strike you more than certain others and that are more important...So you unconsciously become a moralist. If La Dolce Vita has a meaning it came all by itself; I did not go after it." In effect, the film could have sprung only from the mind of Federico Fellini. Watch any 30 seconds of it, and you're immediately certain who was behind the camera. That's the sign of a true artist, regardless of whether or not you appreciate his vision.

Producers: Giuseppe Amato and Angelo Rizzoli
Director: Federico Fellini
Screenplay: Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, and Tullio Pinelli
Music: Nino Rota
Cinematography: Otello Martelli
Editing: Leo Catozzo
Art Design: Piero Gherardi Costumes: Piero Gherardi Makeup: Otello Fava Cast: Marcello Mastroianni (Marcello Rubini), Anouk Aimee (Maddalena), Adriana Moneta (Prostitute), Yvonne Furneaux (Emma), Anita Ekberg (Sylvia), Lex Barker (Robert), Walter Santesso (Paparazzo), Annibale Ninchi (Marcello's Father), Valeria Ciangottini (Paola), Alain Cuny (Steiner), Nadia Gray (Nadia), Magali Noel (Fanny), Jacques Sernas (Matinee Idol), Adriano Celentano (Rock & Roll Singer), Giovanna Busetti and Massimo Busetti (Lying Children of the Miracle).
BW-174m. Letterboxed.

by Paul Tatara