MikePadgett.com

• Director: Federico Fellini
• Italy, 1960
• 

Something about Fellini’s films always leaves me cold. They’re literate, exquisitely shot and intensely artistic. But ultimately I never seem to get on with them.

La Dolce Vita is an iconic classic, one of Fellini’s brightest pearls in a whole string of them. It charts the path of Marcello Rubini, a journalist who aspires to greater things but cannot escape his fascination for the lifestyles of Rome’s playboys and girls. And on the way, the images are indelible: a statue of Christ airlifted over the city by helicopter, Anita Ekberg frolicking in the Fontana Di Trevi, the strangely sad cabaret.

I ought to love this movie. The satire’s so powerful that one character’s name has become part of our language. But as with 8½ it just feels empty. A spectacle for the sake of a spectacle. A beautiful tableau minus a fitting caption.