When I did the AFI Challenge, I had a few challenges of my own: getting a copy of the films as I watched them. I had many of them already, and a number of others were available on different streaming services I had. I have a lot more streaming services these days, but in those days, if it wasn’t on Amazon Prime, Netflix, or maybe Hulu, I was somewhat out of luck. That meant checking around for the best deal. Was a DVD purchase a good idea? If I wanted to go with a digital copy, do I rent or buy it? Like I said, I have more streaming services today. I should be able to find most of these films on one of them. Heck, I watched one off the free service Tubi.
But there were bound to be a couple that would fall through the cracks, so to speak, and the first one where I had to make a tough choice was Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. The only streaming service it was available on was one I didn’t have, and I didn’t see the need to get it for, I am guessing, one film. That meant a Blu-ray purchase. I don’t regret it.
La Dolce Vita is Italian for “the sweet life” or “the good life”. Essentially, the film follows tabloid reporter Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni) as he, well, tries to find that good life. The film’s structure is basically a series of vignettes that most film scholars agree is best viewed as a series of episodes set over seven days. Now, that’s not seven consecutive days as the final day shows Marcello as a much older man than he was in the other days/episodes. So no, this is not a week or so in the life of Marcello. It’s more like a sketch of his life and why it may be ultimately unsatisfying.
That seems to be more of what this film is about. What is the good life? Marcello has a fiance named Emma (Yvonne Furneaux), but he doesn’t seem to care much for her. That comes largely from the fact that he is very inclined to cheat on her, sleeping with wealthy Maddalena (Anouk Aimée) in the first full episode, and that’s when he’s not trying to get a bunch of sunbathing women’s phone numbers as he hovers above them in a helicopter in the “prologue”. As it is, Emma appears to be, best interpretation, the jealous type who overdoses on drugs when Marcello is out for a long time without checking in. More likely, she appears to have some mental illness that makes her emotionally unstable. But that’s probably my judging a character by 2023 American standards and not 1960 Italian cinematic standards. It may not matter that much as both Emma and Maddalena also appear in other “episodes,” and that makes them a bit more noteworthy than many of the other side characters Marcello rubs elbows with.
But that’s a distraction. It appears to me that each of the various episodes offers a different possibility, and each episode ends with some sense that whatever it was isn’t good enough. Sure, Marcello can pick up Maddalena at a bar and spend the night with her, but then he’ll go home to see Emma has overdosed, and not for the first time, and he has to rush her to the hospital and try to avoid the ever-present paparazzi that appear everywhere, taking pictures of everyone. Since Marcello seems to spend time with the rich and famous, it does make sense. The thing is, none of the various episodes end with something that might make for a satisfying ending save maybe the last one, one where Marcello, much older, sees a teenage girl he met years earlier who hasn’t aged, and the film closes with her breaking the fourth wall to offer the audience an enigmatic smile. What does it mean? Did Marcello finally find the good life, or is the dead squid on the beach a sign that life ends, and the “good life” can only be as good as one makes it?
Or is life just a series of ups and downs and what we expect to provide the good life just doesn’t?
I’m sure there are plenty of cinematic types who have offered interpretations for a film like this, but for me, I’d prefer to try to puzzle it out for myself. And for the record, I very much enjoyed the film. It’s a slice of life of sorts, one where Marcello meets various people who theoretically could be happy or offer him some sort of wisdom, but it never really comes, and the last episode seems to suggest he’s become a sad shadow of his former self whose idea of fun isn’t working out because no one at the party he’s attending seem to be all that inclined towards the orgy he’s trying to start. His wealthy and sophisticated friend is having an existential crisis, and he later murders his two children before killing himself. His father seems to enjoy life, but he suffers a mild heart attack and Marcello can’t get the old man he rarely sees to open up much. A night where he and Maddalena arrange a hook-up that might lead to a more permanent relationship doesn’t pan out when she literally falls for the next guy she meets before they can do anything. People advise him basically to never marry or anything, but he and Emma are still together, maybe, with the one episode that doesn’t open with a party or potential happiness is one where Emma and Marcello are arguing in the car, one where he kicks her out, later turns out differently as hours later he goes back to get her, and she just goes home with him like nothing happened. But that’s the same episode where the wealthy sophisticate murders his children and then himself, an episode that ends when the man’s wife, the mother to the children, comes home and isn’t sure what’s going on.
Perhaps the most famous of the episodes is the second, the one where Marcello gets to spend the night wandering the streets of Rome with an American movie star, Sylvia Rank (Anita Ekberg). Sylvia speaks English. Marcello speaks Italian. She’s beautiful, glamorous, and makes a joke about the key to her success being her well-endowed chest. She’s a silly person at times, someone who will howl along with some off-screen dogs or grab a stray kitten to take around while sending Marcello off to find some milk in the middle of the night. The film’s most famous scene may be when Marcello, returning with the milk, finds her wading in Rome’s famous Trevi Fountain. And even that one ends with her alcoholic American boyfriend slapping her once and him multiple times while the ever-present paparazzi take pictures the entire time, even encouraging the American man to pop their friend once or twice to get some good photos of the (one-sided) fight.
So, what is the good life? The film doesn’t seem to say, but I suspect that’s because the answer is there isn’t one. There’s just life. It has its ups and downs, and we’re all just trying to find our way.
But that’s just a guess. I could be very wrong.
NEXT: Given some of the Jimmy Stewart films on the Stacker list and how I don’t care for more than one of them, I’m pleased to see that my next selection is a Jimmy Stewart film I legitimately like, and it’s one of my favorite Westerns of all time. Be back soon for 1962’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
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