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BookPrices.net - La Dolce Vita
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List Price: $14.98
Our Price: $8.50
Your Save: $ 6.48 ( 43% )
Availability:
Manufacturer: Republic Pictures
Starring: Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg, Anouk Aimée, Yvonne Furneaux, Magali Noël
Directed By: Federico Fellini
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786300208599
Format: Black & White
ISBN: 6300208591
Label: Republic Pictures
Manufacturer: Republic Pictures
Number Of Items: 2
Publisher: Republic Pictures
Release Date: 1998-01-01
Running Time: 178
Studio: Republic Pictures
Theatrical Release Date: 1961-04-19
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Film.
Comment: I am a bit of a film buff, but by no means am I an expert. However, I have sat through more than one art film deemed to be brillant, that I have found to be nothing but pretentious, overrated, boring twaddle. Recognizing the huge gapping hole left in my knowledge of film history by never having seen "La Dolce Vita", I purchased this film on DVD. After I had paid my money and the DVD was on its way to my home, I had the chance to read some of the Amazon reviews of this film and I second guessed my sanity in having so blythly forked over my hard-earned funds for this film. Many Amazon reviewers called this film things like "inflated", "boring" and "overrated". "Uh-oh", I thought, "Am I in for three hours of being bored out of my tree? Fie on my need to be culturally literate!" Perhaps I would better served by watching re-runs of "Ugly Betty" than another boring, artsy film.
Upon viewing this film my biggest disappointment is that I waited this long to actually see it. My goodness, this film is simply wonderful. The opening sequence was worth the price of admission. I laughed out loud. What wit, what genius, what delicious irony, what marvelous social commentary! I know it is considered by film critics to be one of the greatest openings sequences in the history of film, but until I saw it for myself I really couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. This is where film moves away from being entertainment to art. I am still somewhat speechless as to what this movie is about -- if I could tell you, you wouldn't need to see the movie -- and you need to see this movie. Fellini's use of old Italy contrasted with new Italy is superb. His casting is absolutely flawless. This film is nihilistic and life affirming all at the same time. We are the sea monster that washes ashore with its eyes wide open. Fellini's world is tragic, and meaningless, yet there is a peculiar beauty in the human need to survive and experience all of it.
This is a spectacular film.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Unauthorized payments on Amazon
Comment: I was charged a month later for "Amazon Prime" which I did not sign up for, nor did I authorize the charge, which will cause overdrafts in my bank account. I am very displeased that Amazon would not ask me to authorize this charge or even send me an e-mail informing me of it. I have cancelled this "membership" as soon as I discovered the charge, but as it will not process for 1-2 business days, my bank account will still be overdrawn, leaving me with over $100 in NSF fees. I was told by customer service that Amazon would cover these fees if the charge could not be promptly reversed. Thank you.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fellini's voice
Comment: La Dolce Vita is a travelogue of one man's singular and unique experience. Fellini spares us the familiar arc and keeps the journey in a steady rhythm. There has never been a film before it that has captured tragedy, comedy, music, philosophy, romance, and social commentary in such a naturalistic style, yet it could not have been done without flawless preparation. Every scene has been one way or another an influence in cinema ever since.
Customer Rating:
Summary: its good to be a king
Comment: I always been against old movies as they demonstrate freedom of speech didnt start till 21 century but I manage to watch this opus.
Short resume is--its good to be a king--when you dont have to worry about bread for today and tomorrow you start making nonsense called La Dolche Vita.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Titanic film
Comment: La Dolce Vita (The Sweet Life), as ironic a title as has ever been used in motion picture history, Federico Fellini's 1960 film commentary on modern hedonism and anomy, and filmed in 1959 in Rome, may just be the best film in his canon, for it combines the Neo-Realism of earlier classics like La Strada and Nights Of Cabiria, while admixing some of the surreal touches of his later classics. Plus, it is the best written and most ambitious of his films. In many ways, its lead star, Marcello Mastroianni, would play a similar version of this film's lead character, gossip journalist Marcello Rubini, in Michelangelo Antonioni's La Notte (The Night), which followed the travails of a marriage over a single night. While this film does not follow a marriage, it does follow Marcello's personal travails over the course of a week full of nights and early mornings- although not necessarily in that order. Otherwise it may have been better titled La Settimana (The Week), or La Vuoto Vita (The Empty Life).
This film is often coupled with its immediate successor film, 8½, and usually compared to negatively by most critics. It's the superior film, however, because, despite being even a bit longer, at just about five minutes short of three full hours, there is not any of the fat that could be trimmed from 8½. The later film is also a more personalized Fellini romp, and while some scenes may have biographical import to Fellini and film scholars, they do not work in service to the narrative within that film. La Dolce Vita, however, has no such fat, and, indeed, could have gone on a bit longer without feeling the least bit tedious, for Fellini employs the same picaresque narrative techniques he did in earlier films. In essence, instead of one long nearly three hour film the viewer is watching a series of seven or so twenty to thirty minute long short films with just one recurring character.
This also allows for a good reason to justify why Marcello's character does not grow internally. He is the eternal troubadour, a modern emotionless Odysseus, flouncing about from one meaningless encounter to the next. That does not mean there are not moments of true depth and insight, and critics who have accused the film of being void of any deeper psychology are just plain wrong. Because someone is shallow does not mean that there is no reason beneath that façade, it just means there's not much beneath the façade- and that can be explained if one really pays attention to the film. In the film's commentary, critic Richard Schickel notes that film critic Alfred Bazin claimed that all of the characters in the film are simply behaviorist paradigms, without any internal motivations. Yet, we see far too many scenes that contradict this stance- one senses motivated by politics rather than art, and because one simply cannot delink one from the other. Behavior is caused by motivation, and scenes we see of Marcello with other minor characters- Maddalena, Emma, Sylvia, Paparazzo, his father, Steiner, Paola- clearly sketch in much of the man's background before the film starts.... The film's screenplay, written by Fellini with Ennio Flaiano, is impressive, not just for its written brilliance, but for the boundaries it pushed open for film as an art form. Nino Rota, as usual, provides a superb musical score. Perhaps only the Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann pairing equals the contributions of Fellini and Rota in creating memorable film scores. The art direction by Piero Gherardi, and cinematography by Otello Martelli, are all top notch, as well. The acting is first rate. Marcello Mastroianni went from a second tier Italian film star to an international sensation on the heels of his performance, and Anita Ekberg became one of the top pinup girls of the 1960s. Granted, her acting is not much, but the other females in the film are top notch, and all the supporting cast do well- especially Alain Cluny as Steiner and Annibale Ninchi as Marcello's father. Thankfully, the film's original producer, Dino de Laurentiis, didn't get his way and force Paul Newman into the lead role, for Mastroianni has a facile quality that the steely glare of Newman could never convey....Some believe that the seven days and nights of the film correspond to the seven hills of Rome or the Seven Deadly Sins. That is not really of import, for great art is never so easily and simply parsed. Whatever the reality is, the fact is that there's never been a better film about the anomy of the human condition- and it's not just modernity under scrutiny, for clearly Fellini shows that the pilgrims at the Madonna sighting, are as lost as any of the modern glitterati, thus implying it is endemic to the human condition, and reflected in the very picaresque structure of the film. La Dolce Vita is one of the great works of art by one of the greatest artists of the last century, and in that statement, there's not a hint of irony.
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Editorial Reviews:
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At three brief hours, La Dolce Vita, a piece of cynical, engrossing social commentary, stands as Federico Fellini's timeless masterpiece. A rich, detailed panorama of Rome's modern decadence and sophisticated immorality, the film is episodic in structure but held tightly in focus by the wandering protagonist through whom we witness the sordid action. Marcello Rubini (extraordinarily played by Marcello Mastroianni) is a tabloid reporter trapped in a shallow high-society existence. A man of paradoxical emotional juxtapositions (cool but tortured, sexy but impotent), he dreams about writing something important but remains seduced by the money and prestige that accompany his shallow position. He romanticizes finding true love but acts unfazed upon finding that his girlfriend has taken an overdose of sleeping pills. Instead, he engages in an ménage à trois, then frolics in a fountain with a giggling American starlet (bombshell Anita Ekberg), and in the film's unforgettably inspired finale, attends a wild orgy that ends, symbolically, with its participants finding a rotting sea animal while wandering the beach at dawn. Fellini saw his film as life affirming (thus its title, The Sweet Life), but it's impossible to take him seriously. While Mastroianni drifts from one worldly pleasure to another, be it sex, drink, glamorous parties, or rich foods, they are presented, through his detached eyes, are merely momentary distractions. His existence, an endless series of wild evenings and lonely mornings, is ultimately soulless and facile. Because he lacks the courage to change, Mastroianni is left with no alternative but to wearily accept and enjoy this "sweet" life. --Dave McCoy
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