La Dolce Vita

Writing to film costume designer Cecil Beaton in 1961, Truman Capote reported that he had seen La Dolce Vita and could not understand how Beaton could have liked it: “So pretentious, fake arty and BORING!” Capote saw many films and commented on them in letters to friends and associates. He tried his hand at screenwriting, most notably in an adaptation of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw entitled The Innocents, which he cowrote with William Archibald in 1960. An attempt at a screenplay for The Great Gatsby was rejected by Paramount Pictures in 1971. This is an aspect of Capote’s writing career of which I was unaware.

It was interesting to read Capote’s brief comment on Fellini’s breakthrough film from 1960 and compare it to my own reaction when I saw it for the first time in 2006. In some ways the film seems dated and possessed of a self-willed passion and frenzy that sometimes seems self-indulgent. In other ways the film seems prescient, predicting, setting the scene for, the revolutionary spirit and self-destructiveness of the decade of the 1960s.

The main character is the reporter Marcello, superbly played by Marcello Mastroianni. In a sense the film is about Marcello’s struggle to find his course in life, to sort out his relationships with various women, to decide on a vocation. Although he seems to want to be a writer, to grapple with subjects of significance, he is drawn to a life of libertine self-indulgence—drinking, carousing, partying with the rich and famous, doing nothing of importance at all. Ultimately this life seems to seize hold of him permanently.

There are a number of interesting set pieces in the film, several of them focused on Bacchanalian parties, one on the frenzy that surrounds two children who have supposedly had a vision of the Virgin Mary. The later surreal Fellini is becoming evident in this film, especially in some of the party scenes, where excess energy and chaos and celebration of decadence for its own sake has become the film’s center.

There is no standard plot structure in this film. It simply follows the wanderings of Marcello over a period of several days. We see him carousing with his friends, reassuring his jealous (and apparently pregnant) lover, played by Anouk Aimee, romancing another lover played by Anita Ekberg, driving here and there. The pace and plotting of the film reminded me of Robert Altman films, and it may be that Fellini was an influence on Altman.

For me the most moving part of the film concerned a visit from Marcello’s father, played by Annibale Ninchi. The older man comes down from the country town where he lives ostensibly for business reasons, but in fact to visit his son and to carouse. For a time he seems capable of keeping pace with, even outpacing his son, but ultimately exhaustion overtakes him and he becomes ill, leaving to return to the country. There is a strange and poignant distance between father and son. Both strain to overcome it, and when the older man leaves, Marcello is sorrowful that he is leaving. One senses his desire for a more solid connection.

The serious life that for a time Marcello flirts with is embodied in the film by his older friend and mentor Steiner, a writer and philosopher whose success inspires Marcello. Steiner encourages Marcello to pursue the higher life, but when the older man kills his children and then himself (apparently out of despair over the world in which he lives) Marcello’s pursuit of a life of meaning and significance founders.

Ultimately superficiality, love of excess and hedonism, overcome Marcello.

The film itself is nearly three hours long. The black and white cinematography is excellent. A strong American jazz-based soundtrack accompanies the sometimes frenetic pace and action.

I should have seen this film decades ago, when I might have felt and participated in the subversive passion that made La Dolce Vita important to so many. Today it seems an important monument from Fellini’s career, an artifact that is impressive and compelling in ways but that in others seems contrived and too insistent on the decadence and carefree rejection of traditional ways and mores that it seeks to celebrate.