La Dolce Vita (1960)

I came to La Dolce Vita, being curious about such an influential classic and having recently seen 8 1/2, curious to get more of a flavour of Fellini. I thought 8 1/2 was all well and good but it was a little aimless- like it was procrastinating about the matter in hand... but that's almost forgivable since that's basically what the film is about. Maybe I was naive but I thought La Dolce Vita would be more.. focused?, not a magnification of everything that was wrong with 8 1/2 or if i have to be polite, everything i didn't like.
Clocking in at an extreme 3hrs, this film seems like the narcissist's director's cut of 8 1/2, if this film hadn't come first. It's Marcello Mastroianni gadding around Rome, smoking, wearing sunglasses at midnight, romancing and falling for some of the world's most luscious ladies and politely donating his love to some of the world's most desperate women. You know the deal. There's something very wierd about why Mastroianni makes for an attractive man. He looks like a chubby faced Alain Delon, he has this intense gaze but it looks less likely he's concentrating, more like he has an acute migraine. Probably what the perpetual sun specs are for. You should stop all the espresso and fags, mate. But then it DOES work for him. Who is I to complain?
Again, Fellini takes another interesting idea, the emergence of the 'paparazzo' and showbiz journalist and COMPLETELY forgets to use it and investigate it. Why do that when we just spend swathes of time hanging out at private parties, listening to overt philosophical conversions and getting wasted. Admittedly these things do happen and surely as fun is fun, as any designated driver will tell you - drinking and talking shit is not a spectators sport and in fact, there is nothing more sobering than watching people having a good time unable to join in.
But y'know, this is all immutabally beautiful to look at, of course. Everything is perfectly photographed and lit. The way the female actresses move, almost seems balletic but I'm afraid this is the negative intonation of 'style over content'. You can make the most astetically beautiful movie but i don't think you can make it over 3hrs long. It's exhausting to watch because you have to concentrate on this particularly dense and at the end- nothings really changed and we haven't really learned anything we didn't know...

I watched La Dolce Vita (1960), on DVD via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Freakonomics (2010)...