733 La dolce vita

[Ovader]

I don't have the CC edition but I just looked at Beaver's screengrabs and the faces are flatten or stretched compared to the other DVD editions. At the moment I haven't read any other comments here or elsewhere regarding this issue.

EDIT: I just read about the mumps on the Australian edition here.

[nicolasp21]

Hi everyone! I was wondering where did they get the picture that is printed in the disc. I haven't found it in the whole film, I guess they're editorial pictures or something like that. If anyone knows the source, please share that info with me! :)

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

This is from where Marcello is off in the other room in the villa while Maddalena is calling to him through the grate in the wall.

[nicolasp21]

This is from where Marcello is off in the other room in the villa while Maddalena is calling to him through the grate in the wall.

Yes, I know! The scene It's usually called "La stanza dei discorsi seri". But what I can't find is that exact frame.
There's no long shot of this man giving a kiss to Maddalena. You can see both of them in a wide angle and then he's kissing her in a close up shot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9APuyomImY

[domino harvey]

Labels often use press or set photos for packaging imagery, it’s likely pulled from one of those

[MichaelB]

A major reason for this being that the quality of on-set stills will be noticeably superior to frame blowups.

[Blutarsky]

I just noticed new screenshots added as of recent to the film’s page on the site. I wonder if this will be the next paramount title, and first Fellini film in the collection, to get a 4K release.

[nicolas]

I just noticed new screenshots added as of recent to the film’s page on the site. I wonder if this will be the next paramount title, and first Fellini film in the collection, to get a 4K release.

That would be an absolute dream. The film really needs an entire disc to "breathe" properly. Whoever of these two labels does it, I implore them to put out an encode that does the masterpiece justice.

[ryannichols7]

this is way too big a title to be a boxset exclusive, I wouldn't be shocked at all to see this happen. hopefully we get some good news soon

pretty wild Fellini still doesn't have a single UHD for any of his movies anywhere in the world yet

[rrenault]

There is a Paramount Blu-ray that’s readily available in the U.S. for what it’s worth, so it can be easily acquired individually. As for the new film stills in the CC site, those have been there a while. A few months back people were guessing they implied a 4K upgrade, but it still hasn’t been announced. Either way, I’m guessing this would be another one of their 4K SDR discs if it were to happen, and I don’t think a newer scan of the film exists than what’s on the Blu-ray(it dates from 2010), so I don’t really know how big a priority this one is from a technical standpoint. 8 1/2 has a much more recent scan.

I guess all I’m saying is LDV is one of those scans that from a technical standpoint a label like BFI, Carlotta, or Eureka probably wouldn’t bother putting on 4K.

[Altair]

This was my first time seeing it since I was a teenager. I enjoyed it as an epic descent into an aspirational inferno of beautiful decadence - emptiness has never been this fun. Curiously, I couldn't help but think that it lacked all the true bite of Sweet Smell of Success: there's no character here as frightening as Burt Lancaster, and Marcello is too cool and lacks the edge of Tony Curtis. Rome at night is glorious, but I don't think Fellini is able to pull off the pathos of Steiner's end - the film overreacted wildly here - and the epilogue on the beach... the child's smile just about works, but I was not left feeling devastated. I was left wanting a martini.

[Noiretirc]

I haven't seen this in a long time. You may have given me the answer to my Christmas viewing conundrum!

Oh Man, I'm a complete sucker for that ending. Her gaze right at me/us is forever etched onto my brain. That smirk! And for me the "message" here is much more powerful than what Scrooge or It's A Wonderful Life or other Christmas schlock has to offer.

Plus...the music!!

[Altair]

Interesting to think of the film in relation to Dickens - Fellini certainly intersects with his brash characters. What do you think the "message" is?

[Noiretirc]

Redemption is close at hand. There is always a way out of a rut. But who among us is willing to change our habits / surroundings / conveniences?

Sorry. That's not very profound or academic.

Whenever I'm fucking up, it's not Mother Mary or Jesus or a friend that I imagine giving me a pep-talk. It's this girl on the beach.

[Noiretirc]

Another seemingly little thing at this ending which blows me away:

Marcello raises his hand to...put it over his face in a moment of great realization / shame? No! He nearly does that, but then feebly waves goodbye.

It's simply brilliant. I'd love to know if Fellini directed this, or if Mastroianni came up with this.

[Lowry_Sam]

I alternate between this film and Brazil as my all-time favorite. Marcello’s dream is to be a writer, but he works as a tabloid journalist to pay the bills and gets caught up in the lives he documents, often being easily distracted by them. His long-time friend, on the other hand, appears to be in greater control of his life and has greater success as a result of his ability to delay gratification. Marcello is partially envious of this sedate life in contrast to his own which may seem glamorous to some on the surface but is sad to those that know him and that he’s not living up to his full potential.

The scene at the cafe on the beach is the one time he truly sets the distractions aside and focuses on his true purpose, but he can’t start. He confesses this to the waitress, a complete stranger. When we see him at the end he is with people with whom he seems intimate but know or care little about his life’s purpose. Meanwhile there’s the divide in the sand between him and the “stranger” who sees that he has gone back to his distractions but is enjoying himself nonetheless and he waves back as if to say “I know I am not doing what I professed, but that is life.”

[Noiretirc]

La Dolce Vita has never been my favourite film of all time, but I think this ending ranks as the greatest ever.

It's so beautiful and economical. Can you imagine what James Cameron would do with this?

She holds her gaze at us for all of one second? It floors me every time.

And I can't help thinking that Marcello very nearly did go to her, hear her, walk down the beach with her. I don't ever feel that his walking away was preordained.

[therewillbeblus]

Meanwhile there’s the divide in the sand between him and the “stranger” who sees that he has gone back to his distractions but is enjoying himself nonetheless and he waves back as if to say “I know I am not doing what I professed, but that is life.”

I don’t necessarily think he’s enjoying himself - his behavior at the party signals a sense of faux-intimacy, a frustrating impotence to drum up real excitement like an addict surrounding himself with people like him but unable to fulfill the cravings parts of him long for. The final shrug is deliberately ambiguous as to whether Marcello is consciously engaging with the stranger as you say, or has given up trying to understand any incoming information from other people altogether, as an existentially dead walking zombie trapped in solipsism.

I’ve written a lot about the film over the years, but I think one thing that rarely gets brought up is in questioning the notion of time proposed by the chapters. I'll just leave this here:

It's thematically relevant that we aren't privy to information about time (outside of a few examples, I don't think we're meant to believe that these days occur consecutively or that they even need to be happening within a short period of time). This Sisyphean narrative pre-beach house party could be stretched out over years for all we know. I don't interpret it that way with any rigidity, but it's fitting to the feeling of Marcello trapped in this existence- for him to be stuck in a depressing relationship, running into Maddalena repetitively without any romance realised and then running back into her (Tomorrow? A month later? Years?) only to have the same experience of desperate pining through inebriated self-forgetting history, to be dreaming about a change of careers with no motivation to actualize it, and so on. The film primarily functions as a portrayal of the Western individualist’s cyclical purgatory state of existential plights via perpetual longing for elusive contentment, and so for Fellini to trivialize time- our most imposing measurable tool of forward momentum, as well as the one that psychologically impacts us all and binds us in a collective harmony- he's fatalistically expressing the helplessness of Marcello by isolating his character away from social intimacy, personal growth, or hope.

Sometimes I like to think of the final episode as occurring less than a few years later because the implication that he could turn grey so quickly and devolve into regressive behaviors is even more tragic than assuming there was a longer progression. Fellini crafts this film in such a fluid way where I could be easily convinced that other chapters occurred with longer time gaps between one another than between them and the final chapter. Marcello spends the entire film treading water in a state of immobile apathy and looks the same, has the same romantic partner, routine, etc., so for him to finally surrender and transition into grey-haired full-tilt deviant Marcello with a shorter time occurring between the sixth day and the seventh that we see is appropriate within its internal logic. But again, time is meaningless here, and that's very much the point.

[Lowry_Sam]

Another film by Fellini with an amazing opening and bittersweet closing scene is Le notte di Cabiria. Giulietta Masina plays the prostitute with a heart of gold, in search of love but always ends up with heartbreak. Saying anything more would spoil it for you.

[Lowry_Sam]

I don’t necessarily think he’s enjoying himself - his behavior at the party signals a sense of faux-intimacy, a frustrating impotence to drum up real excitement like an addict surrounding himself with people like him but unable to fulfill the cravings parts of him long for.

I agree completely, however we the viewer can see this because we can see him in close-up. The waitress can only see him revelling with the others from afar (hence the symbolic divide in the sand between the 2) and conclude that he's simply gone back to his old ways and will probably never complete that book.

[therewillbeblus]

That would be a pretty definitive and expansive conclusion from such a small interaction, and as you say, a limited vantage point! I think the tragedy is more from our eyes than her's and she's used as a vehicle to initiate that feeling between us and Marcello

[Noiretirc]

I keep imagining an ending where he crosses the water, waves goodbye to his cohorts, and walks down the beach with the girl. They fade into the distance...The End.

Marcello seems worn out, hungover, sleep deprived, frustrated in this final scene. Surely he was ready to make that leap?

[therewillbeblus]

I think the whole point is he’s far gone past the point of readiness. He’s been ‘ready’ to do stuff like that the whole movie, in half measures but nevertheless thirsty to jump at opportunities for intimacy. He’s given that up

[Roger Ryan]

And, importantly, is the fact that Marcello can't hear what the young girl is saying when she calls out to him. Whatever ideals he might have held, he's beyond them now and has resigned himself to be surrounded by decadence, a decadence that will become even worse in the near future as predicted by a hanger-on.