Movies
Film
Tracking Shots
Sweet Smell of Excess: Fellini's Ethical Society Reporting
Michael Atkinson
Tuesday, July 13th 2004
-
photo: Photofest/Film Forum
Still vital: Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg
Details:
La Dolce Vita
Directed by Federico Fellini
July 23 through August 5, Film Forum
Directed by Federico Fellini
July 23 through August 5, Film Forum
Most Popular
-
You Can't Escape the Canvasser's Pitch 'Got a minute?' The young bleeding-heart carnivores who hunt you down on your lunch hour
-
The Coen Brothers Make Another Mockery with Burn After Reading Remarkably consistent, there's nothing these boys can't hold up to ridicule
-
No Witness Protection for Mobster Turned Snitch Joe Campy. PS: He's Hiding in Plain Sight. PPS: He has a web site.
-
Mickey Rourke is The Wrestler The onetime Hollywood A-lister climbs back in the ring with Darren Aronofsky's latest
-
Midway Through the Toronto Film Fest, and Things are Looking Bleak Oh, Canada
Fellini may be the most dated and retrospectively overinflated of the new wave era's headline acts, but La Dolce Vita (1960) is still a potent, expressionistic launch into post-war Euro-emptiness that shares a rarely acknowledged helix with Antonioni's L'Avventura, released later that year. Outlandishly fashionable in its day thanks to the very decadence it critiques, the movie is almost Chayefsky-esque in its desolate portrait of a self-disgusted "society" reporter (Marcello Mastroianni) as he wanders in and out of the Roman celebrity-royalty-publicity swampland. Hardly just bourgeois target practice, Fellini's movie focuses on what had become of pop culture after fascism. The satirical attack lets Vita bloom into a living nightmare whose primary source of horror was the manner in which gossip, stardom, and entertainment media had laid siege to the world consciousness.
Disingenuous, perhaps, given Fellini's soon-to-be-apparent weakness for showbiz sawdust and tinsel. But in one movie, at least, the ethical baseline (heisted, you could argue, from Sweet Smell of Success) gave Fellini's roaming, cluttered mise-en-scène a chilling gravity he could never genuinely locate again. La Dolce Vita's welcome cynicism was powerfully influential, at least here—open season was declared on official cultural industries in so many films (The Manchurian Candidate, Medium Cool, The Long Goodbye, Network, etc.) that it became an American new wave motif.
Recent Articles
More by Michael Atkinson
Life Is Sweet
With its seventh installment, Michael Apted's drama of aging approaches a half-century
Satanic Verses
'. . . So Goes the Nation'
Vivid and Zesty: Old-School Feminist Emancipation
Breathless Pop Filmmaking
show/hide comments (0)
write a comment
Site Search «
Village Voice Insiders
- Weekly villagevoice.com
- Weekly freebies and Special Offers
- Daily "What To Do in NYC" E-mail
- Information on the Performing Arts
- New York Bites - Restaurants Newsletter
| buy, sell, trade 5,215 | musician 3,119 |
| rentals 15,522 | jobs 5,557 |
| adult entertainment 9,953 | |
| classifieds | backpage.com | Post ads for free! | |
|---|---|
