La Dolce Vita is Fellini's early 60s masterpiece about hedonism and willful ignorance that permeated the star and cultural classes not only in Italy but around the world.
Throughout the film, Marcello's life is shown to be everything television would have you aspire to. Sex with beautiful people, stylish clothes, swanky clubs and and endless party but there is an ever present refferal to the world outside this supposed paradise. There is Marcello's inability to connect to either his fiance or his wife and the only person he seeks connection with, Maddalena is incapable of keeping connection to him.
The meeting he has with his socialite friend Steiner starts as just another episode in the parade of parties but shares one sobering moment where his friend tells him that he feels entirely empty inside. That emptiness eventually is what transforms the film from an aimless exercise in exhibitionism to a pointed social critique on par with Renoir's 1939 masterpiece that portended the coming war in Europe.
La Dolce Vita however portends a different war, one that never actually came. An ostensibly inevitable nuclear conflict between the western and eastern blocs. Though there is only slight reference to this in Steiner's fears for his children's futures, these fears are what precipitate the momentary stop in the partying, not that it can be stopped for too long.
Absolutely worth watching and give it another shot if you don't like it the first time.
>>64459123
Did you come up with all that yourself or just copy it from somebody else?
We love modern emptiness to be good-looking and glamorous. If L'Avventura had been about some fat short Italian guy looking for his pig-look-alike girlfriend with the help of an equally fat ugly woman, no one would care. e.g., the reason why La Dolce Vita was popular with so many people was not because of its moral insights but its peeks into the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Its social and moral concerns notwithstanding, we like it because it has people like big titted Anita, handsome Marcello, lovely Aimee, and the rest. If that movie had been about a fat ugly slobs of Rome, it woulda had far less appeal
>>64459201
I wrote it myself about 5 minutes ago while making some pizza
>>64459201
cancer
>>64459123
>174 minutes
Yah, I'll take your word for it.
>>64459123
8 1/2 was better and more palletable
somehow more reddit than tfa threads
>>64459123
Literally put me off of Italian cinema. Fucking garbage wankery. I would rather watch cooking shows than this elitist bullshit.
>>64459928
>people that talk about a movie without having finished watching it.
>>64460015
/tv/ has a lot of problems with subtlety.
OP, I had a response prepared but given the quality of the other responses ITT I just don't feel like issuing it here anymore.
What does enlightened /tv/ think about perhaps utilizing secure tripcodes so that we could identify ourselves among the rabble? I'd feel a lot better if I could be certain I wasn't communicating with a vicious moron whenever I bothered to bare my essential soul to post.
>>64460478
I'm the emperor of /tv/. I used this tripcode earlier and will post it here again but you should know that 4chan is an anonymous website and that anonymity allows you the ability to try to defend new opinions.
If you feel like giving up that anonymity you can make a trip but I wouldn't advise using it in many circumstances outside your intended.
>>64460478
Hi, I'll go by this
>>64460647
I think you a little bitch white boi
>>64460786
Oh shit it's you again. You ran train on a thread a few days ago and were blasting shitposters left and right. Why does there have to be a tripfag who is well reasoned and articulate? I thought you were supposed to be attention whores and little else.
Since this is 4chan and we can't really do deep analysis i'll ask you to state simply whether La Dolce Vita is more or less effective satire than Rules of the Game?
>>64460906
Comparing how effective each film is is probably a lost cause. Both are great and work extremely well for their time periods but I'd call La Dolce Vita slightly more harrowing based on the fact that the killing that happens in it is premeditated and has greater existential relevance. But it's important to note that The rules of the game is meant to be primarily a comedy while La Dolce Vita is at least in my assessment a much more serious film.
I haven't watched them back to back though. I probably should.
>>64459123
I disagree with the bellicose undertones in what you write, but yes I love how Fellini portrayed both the emptiness in hedonism and the existential despair in La Dolce Vita. Steiner is undoubtedly one of the most tragic figures in cinema, and it's disappointing how I never seem to read about him when I see things about the film.
>>64461033
>La dolce Vita is more harrowing
I'd say that they are equal in that regard, as the hunt in RotG is planned as well, and it involved much more death by volume. We'd have to come to some agreement about whether animal death is a weighty as a human death, but to me the fact that real killing was going on in Renoir's film settles it for me.
Fellini is the poor man's Antonioni
>>64461130
>bellicose
What do you mean by this? I posted it here for a discussion.
The line
>Absolutely worth watching and give it another shot if you don't like it the first time.
is there to hopefully disarm posters like>>64459928
>Steiner is undoubtedly one of the most tragic figures in cinema
He is the key to the film. The one man in first class to see an iceberg on the horizon.
>>64461235
The war aspects, I see absolutely nothing in really any of Fellini's films indicating impending war, or did you not mean that literally?
>>64461130
>>64461272
No offense, and it's ok if you decline, but would you mind adopting a tripcode?
>>64461215
It's a brilliant scene and it shows the rich's penitent for violence. I don't think there should be discussion of which is better. There is obviously no definitive answer that pleases anyone fully. They are both fantastic films.
>>64461220
This is incorrect. I love Antonioni and La Dolce Vita has similar themes to some of Antonioni's work but Fellini is his own distinct filmmaker and thinking this way is a misstep.
>>64461272
In the conversation with Steiner, he mentions that he thinks a calamity will befall his children in their lifetime unless I'm remembering incorrectly.
This seems to be his motivation for his murder suicide.
>>64461419
>calamity will befall his children in their lifetime
but couldn't that mean anything? or even just be slight proof of his insanity? to me Steiner was used as sort of that trope of people not being what they seem rather than a character anticipating complete societal collapse even though the latter is naturally more enticing to imagine
>>64461561
I went back to get the actual quote.
He says
>Sometimes at night the darkness and silence weigh on me. It's peace that frightens me, I fear peace more than anything else. It seems to me it's just a facade with hell hiding behind it. I think of what my children will see in the future. 'It will be a wonderful world', they say. But how, when a phone call can end it all?
This combined with the lights in the background that remind me of air raid searchlights really signals to me a double meaning both for the political peace and the times when there is no party to distract him from his existential angst.
More on Fellini, I find it interesting how renowned he is for the more hectic, episodic, and nonlinear filming styles he employed in things like La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, Amarcord, etc even though I personally think La Strada is still his best film and that employed a more traditional and linear storytelling (which he seemed to use in a lot of the ones with Giuletta)
>>64461950
I still have to watch the earlier Fellini films. Nights of Cabiria and La Strada are on my list.
>>64461812
For some reason this really reminded me of that scene in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoise with the soldiers joining the dinner party
>the "point" of the episode seems to be its impact upon Marcello, a big smack of the meaninglessness of life thrown right in his face, just when he needed something to believe in. And after that, he completely abandons the ideals he once had, along with any chance of leaving his trivial "journalism"/gossip writing and returning to the book he once wanted to write
straight from an imdb post but I thought it really encapsulated what Fellini was going for
>>64462654
>straight from an imdb post
I read black text before green so didn't read whatever shit you posted from imdb
>>64459928
>shaved pits
Cancer killing Italian cinema.
>>64459123
>An ostensibly inevitable nuclear conflict between the western and eastern blocs. Though there is only slight reference to this in Steiner's fears for his children's futures, these fears are what precipitate the momentary stop in the partying, not that it can be stopped for too long.
Hah. Manufactured fears. There's the bubble of the celebrities, and outside that another bubble of the mortal fear of all mankind. What a pathetic joke.
>>64459214
Probably for a greater audience, but I love a good shlub.
