Criterion Collection: La Dolce Vita [DVD] [1960] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

Everyone will have heard that this is a classic film. It's reputation is well deserved. You realise that after the first 10 minutes as Jesus flies above Roman rooftops and it continues like that with superb shots and settings, realistic acting and some memorable dialogue for three hours. The time passes quickly. The fountain scene is always mentioned but there are other scenes: dancing at the castle, the argument at night on the deserted road, the party at the end among them that remain vivid in the memory.It is a film that has obviously influenced many directors including Robert Altman, Francis and Sofia Coppola, John Schlesinger, Woody Allen and more. It is a surrealist film in essence as that opening scene indicts but not surrealist in a form that would normally put off the average film goer and is episodic but not in a cluttered un structured form that some films take.My only criticism is that I was watching and wanting Fellini to take the scenes further. Watching the film 60 years after the original release I have now become used to what was the new and exciting back in 1960. Since 1960 nudity and titillation have become common place, better equipment and framing are taken from what was experimental in La Dolce Vita and made them normal and social morals are more relaxed meaning La Dolce Vita loses that shock factor when viewed today. Having saying that the film now under review has all these in context and in a film that works in all respects and has still not aged.Whether you watch this for the first time or the 10th, whether you first viewed in in 1960 and are revisiting this is a film that you will always find something to entertain. It will always have the viewer engrossed.

Unquestionably a great film and with its picaresque non-linear structure tremendously influential. It's also surprisingly watchable as Mastroianni's character gradually descends from disillusionment to near insanity. The latter sequences seem to foreshadow the psychedelic masterpieces of later in the decade,helped perhaps by the appearance in a small role of a very young Nico ( later associated with Warhol and The Velvet Underground )

I like everything in this movie, because it's a masterpiece from the most popular filmmaker of all time. Fellini gives us a critique of the culture of stardom, a look of the seductive lifestyles of Rome's rich and glamorous. Magnificent.

Being the third time ive seen this we're reminded of legacy glass and frame composition and art direction 3 of his favourite attributes commonly used in combination to bring a timeless style to life. Taking the score into consideration in most of his works meant overtime. Such dedication.

I bought this film with the intention of using it to help me with my Italian....but once I started watching it I became engrossed in the film. The story is simple and follows the life of an Italian reporter in Rome who appears to be sometimes observing the decadence around him and other times participating in the debauchery around him as he goes about his work.My only gripe is the awful English subtitles which often do not properly translate the Italian spoken in the film.

It's been a long time since I've seen this film, it's still quite shocking in placesbut just not quite as shocking as it first was. At the end it was more rubbing in your faces to shock you, and it looks so tame now.

I bought this bluray disc because I had seen it as a teenager in the 60's and was curious how the years had treated it. To my surprise it was very good( except for the cloths which made it dated) , and a film of many merits incl. its director Federico Fellini , who was a master at telling a story and using the right location to add atmosphere to the film.A very good restored print , clean and clear , in Italian with English subtitles.

Well, if you are a child of the sixties and a student of the film then you cannot be but knocked out by this movie. It defined everything that was cool at that time. We all (male that is)wanted to be Marcello M and the symbolism was almost too much to bear. The sexuality was understated but because of that was so intense. Some films and books change your life -this is in that category.