La Dolce Vita (1960)

Many great movies are like old sweaters on a chilly November day, you pull it on from time to time and you like it because it's familiar, it's comforting because it's familiar. Sure, there might be a new loose thread or an interesting stain you missed the last time you put it on, but half of it's comfort comes from remembering how good it felt to put it on last time and how you know it's going to feel just like that this time. But a few great movies, none more so than Federico Fellini's "La Dolce Vita," mean something very different to you every time you watch it, it reflects upon a truth about the world or yourself that is unique to that viewing that may not be all that pleasant and is rarely comforting, but it's important because it makes you think about yourself.

"La Dolce Vita" achieves this by being so exact and general at the same time. It is about a very specific man, a reporter named Marcello Rubini played my Marcello Mastroianni. He has very specific adventures, ones that are unique to him and are not very universal. He is not an everyman and yet I have never watched "La Dolce Vita" and not thought of myself in relation to this character. I compare myself to him positively, sometimes I despair that I am too much like him, or I tell myself to avoid being like him at all. Most movie characters remain movie characters, they are people separated from you by the unbreakable and unpassable screen. But Marcello Rubini is an allegory for you and the movie forces you to ask yourself, "What is the sweet life and am I living it?"

The film begins with a shot of a helicopter, carrying Marcello, flying over Rome hauling a statue of Jesus. "La Dolce Vita" is covered in Christian religious symbols but none of its characters are very religious. Besides the Christ statue, there is a gathering of the devout to visit children who are telling people they have seen the Virgin Mary but Marcello and his girlfriend Emma (Yvonne Furneaux) are not among the members of the faithful, Marcello is covering it for his paper. He stands outside of religion. Overt Christian regalia is constantly swirling around him (he lives in Rome where the Vatican is always looming) but he ignores it, turning to his own idols; sex, booze, and partying. And when the last Christ symbol, an ugly giant fish that is caught and dragged on the beach at the end of the movie, is presented to him, Marcello considers it for a moment and then wanders off and has an awkward encounter with a woman he met briefly before who remembers him but he has forgotten. Miscommunication seems to happen at all the religious incidents; he can't speak with sunbathers from the helicopter because of the noise and at the children's sighting of the Virgin, he loses his girlfriend in the crowd. What is Fellini saying, that Marcello can't see what is right in front of him? That the emptiness of his life could be filled if he let Christ enter it?

It is hard to say. Marcello's life is certainly empty but I'm not sure Fellini is suggesting that religion is the answer. All the symbols are false. The statue is a beautiful representation of Jesus, not the man Himself. The children who've seen the Virgin are doubted by a priest and certainly, by the way they point about and scream "She's there. Now she's there," we doubt them too. And the fish has been caught, exposed and gasping, dragged on shore and poked and gaped at. Perhaps this is Fellini's example of the man's perversion of religion but it doesn't appear to be the antidote for Marcello's problems. He could probably stand to believe in something, Marcello, but he won't find the happiness he seeks in a pew.

Nor will he, the film points out, find it in women. Marcello juggles three women in "La Dolce Vita," two of which could lead to something meaningful, one which is pure lust, and all three he makes a mess of for his fear of choosing wrong. He has a steady girlfriend, Emma, who we first meet as she is trying to kill herself. She's crazy about Marcello in a way that is not reciprocated. He likes her enough but she's more of a convenience, his go-to girl for upscale parties and social events. He keeps her around because he doesn't have anything else steady going for him. Late in the film they fight in his car out in the middle of nowhere. He tells her she makes him miserable. She storms out of the car and yells at him to go. He backs of a little and begs her to get back in the car. She finally does and then he becomes more angry than before and barks at her to get out again. She refuses. He tries to physically remove her and actually strikes her. She gets out and he takes off. She's stranded. We see the next dawn and she's there shaking and windswept. He drives back. She gets in. The next shot is of them in bed holding each other. We get the sense that this has happened before and will certainly happen again.

Marcello also has a long standing flirtation and affair with the socialite Maddalena (Anouk Aimee). She's the first of his women we meet. She comes into a club and is waiting for somebody else. She reveals a black eye under her chic sunglasses. Marcello approaches her and they take off they spend the night together. Marcello thinks he wants Maddalena because of her society glamour but when he's around her circle, he finds them spiritless and boring. They are certainly attracted to each other, he more than her for a change, and she even announces her love for him at a party. However, she's drunk and is necking with another man moments after. Being with her would being resigned to public empty splendor and private faithlessness.

Then there is the American actress Sylvia (Anita Ekberg) who's arrival in Rome Marcello covers. She is all sex and he is quickly put under her spell. We think he has a relationship with her but when we think back on it, he really doesn't. She breezes through Rome and his hounded by so many reporters and fans that Marcello spends very little time with her. They dance closely but her boyfriend is just yards away watching. She leads him all over the city and Marcello comes close to kissing her but it never happens. She is the elusive perfect woman, and when she leaves, that complicates his relationships for the rest of the movie. He honestly believes he could have a meaningful relationship with this woman despite the fact that they shared no meaningful moments between them. Even the famous scene in the Trevi fountain is simply a lark for her, probably forgotten before she dries off. But for him, it was like wading in the waters of female heaven and Emma or Maddalena can never stack up.

The movie doesn't reveal who Marcello "should" end up with, we aren't rooting for one particular romance because all three are flawed. Emma is probably best for Marcello but Fellini makes it clear that these women and, to be sure, having lots of women, are not the answer. Many of Marcello's trysts go late into the night so late that he's still clothed when the sun goes up. The promise of the night is always gone with the dawn and Marcello is left emptier than ever. Nor can he find solace in his male relationships. There are two. One with a friend named Steiner (Alain Cuny) and the other with his father (Annibale Ninchi) who comes to visit from the country. Steiner is successful and Marcello idolizes him. He wants what Steiner has. He and Emma go to a party at Steiner's and are more than impressed by his wife, their children and the collection of intellilectuals and artists in attendance. Steiner reveals to Marcello that he's not very happy and it disturbs Marcello. Later, when Steiner really loses it an illusion has been destroyed. Marcello takes his father out to dinner and spends the evening smirking at him bemusedly, a little longingly. The father charms everyone around him, he is joyful and happy content in his life. But later, in those horrible dawns, the father is seen as a tired old man. His life is empty too and Marcello looks at him as if he's looking into his own dark future.

Does this man sound like you? Probably not. But Fellini writes the character in such a way and Mastroianni plays the character in such a way that you forced to apply the questions asked in the film to yourself. What do I want out of life? Am I happy? Will I be if I continue this way? Mastroianni is so passive that the audience is constantly putting themselves in his shoes. He gives a performance that is at once a stunning depiction of a uniquely desperate man and at the same time he can easily disappear into the movie and allow the viewer to inhabit it. Marcello is not an unhappy man, he seems like most people, getting by and living a fine life. Towards the end he gets a little despaired but we get the feeling that this is a bad day and that the frustration of his private hollowness has reached the surface and become momentarily public. And the film is not a sad one, well not in the way "Sophie's Choice" is sad, for example. Fellini provides no answer to obtaining happiness and Marcello is certainly just as lost at the end as he was at the beginning but the effect is not depressing. It is illuminating. Depending on where you are in your life the movie can be a validation of the choices you've made, a cautionary tale for the paths you will take, or a scathing review of the life you've led so far, no matter how much you have in common with Marcello on the surface. "La Dolce Vita" doesn't know what the sweet life is or how to get it but it calls to mind that neither do you. The film is not an instruction manual but a benchmark to measure your own life against and you stack up differently every time you see it.