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| Beauty in the Breakdown |
At the moment there's a lot I can say about Fellini's
La Dolce Vita. I could talk about the characters, specifically Marcello's womanizing (a theme I also saw in Fellini's
8 1/2) or I could talk about the the plot and how/why Fellini would choose to break the plot of the film over the course of the hero's week, but instead I'm going to go intro a little depth over the visual imagery of the film and what that says about Rome. Unlike other films about Rome I have seen such as
The Bicycle Thieves or
Rome, Open City,
La Dolce Vita chooses to be a film not meshed at all in neorealism or even with characters that are in somewhat possible circumstances, but rather takes us into Marcello, the newspaperman's mind of the world rather than what the world actually is. Scenes such as the one in the church or in the fountain are in perfect juxtaposition with one another because they break down two essential parts of the human experience: what is and what isn't. On one hand, you're dealing with themes that could easily be apart of anyone's lifestyle such as the mass or living in a decaying city, but on the other there's all this life, all these beautiful women that are throwing themselves into your world that when you take it into account you can't help but notice that even though there's a decaying city and you're obviously going through some sort of haze in your life there is the beautiful woman!
And another!
And another!
And in the mind of the male fantasy that is the beauty. That is why men build cities like Rome and create art and news to impress the women and even when you literally follow Christ there are the bikini-clad women. What does Marcello offer his father, his male role model? Is it a story or a picture or something made of construct creative or otherwise?
That is the art. The surrealist part is that that is not life. It's glitz and glamour and in contrast to
Open City or
Thieves the visual imagery stems not in the architecture, there is architecture that follows the previously mentioned films it's about the extra beauty of the blonde woman bathing in the glow of the city. Chaos surrounding her, she is still a beautiful women and with those around who needs news or cities?
Do you agree with me? Am I completely daft? Did I miss some other point of
La Dolce Vita? Let the comments commence!
I believe that Marcello is defiantly a womanizer, and I can't really seem to understand the point for this movie. Almost each night is spent with another woman, and at the end there is really no revelation or, well, ending.
ReplyDeleteI do agree that the movie has some interesting scenery, but almost all of it is fake. The Trevi Fountain, for example, is just a set piece that they made in a studio.
Over all, I didn't like it. It was way to long, and just needed more..."uph"