Anniversary of La Dolce Vita

On February 3, 1960, Federico Fellini's "La Dolce Vita" premiered in Rome.

The origin of this film is as follows. In 1953, Fellini's fourth film was released, but the first to bring him general success. The film was called "I vitelloni (The Young and the Passionate)". One of the main characters of this picture was called Moraldo Rubini. Inspired by the success of "I vitelloni (The Young and the Passionate)", Fellini decided to shoot a sequel to this film and even began writing a script called "Moraldo in the City". However, then he switched to making films with his beloved wife - Giulietta Masina - in the lead roles: "La strada", "Il Bidone (The Swindle)", "Le notti di Cabiria (Nights of Cabiria)", and the idea of a sequel faded into the background. Two events that took place in 1958 brought Fellini back to the idea of returning to the concept of a sequel. This is, firstly, a scandalous impromptu striptease arranged by the Turkish dancer Haish Nana in one of the nightclubs in Rome. Secondly, photographs of Anita Ekberg taken by his friend - the photographer Pierluigi Praturlon after an evening spent with the actress in a nightclub in Rome. Fellini completed the script, adding scenes inspired by these events, and began looking for a producer for the future film.

Fellini had no particular problems finding a producer: the famous Italian film producer Dino De Laurentiis readily volunteered to produce the film and even provided an advance payment of 70 million Italian lire (about $ 1.15 million in current prices). De Laurentiis already had a successful experience working with Fellini: he produced several of his previous films, including "La strada" and "Nights of Cabiria". However, this time there was no successful collaboration. Fellini initially decided to shoot Marcello Mastroianni in the main role. He even changed the name of the main character in the script from Moraldo to Marcello (although he left his last name - Rubini). But Dino De Laurentiis categorically objected to this choice. Firstly, for purely marketing reasons, the producer believed that a foreigner should play the main role. For example , Paul Newman or Gerard Philip. And secondly, for some reason, Mastroianni did not impress Laurentiis as a macho "who flings women onto the bed." In short, no compromise was reached, and De Laurentiis left the project, and Fellini had to look for producer who was ready not only to finance the project, but also to return the advance to Laurentiis.

Such a producer was found in the person of media mogul Angelo Rizzoli, who bought the film rights from De Laurentiis, returned the advance and invested in the creation of the film, according to some sources, 540 million lire (approximately $ 8.9 million today). Some changes were made to the original draft of the script, for which screenwriters Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, Brunello Rondi, and Pier Paolo Pasolini were involved. The result was a script with little or no connection to "I vitelloni (The Young and the Passionate)" called "La Dolce Vita". Filming began in March 1959.

Filming began with scenes with Anita Ekberg, in particular the famous scene at the Trevi Fountain. According to Federico Fellini, this scene was filmed during a week in March, when the nights were still cold. Anita Ekberg stood in cold water in a dress for hours without any problems. And Marcello Mastroianni, on the contrary, had to wear a wetsuit under his clothes, and even this did not save him from the cold. So he drank a whole bottle of vodka, so he was completely drunk during the filming of the scene.

Having appeared on the screens, Fellini's film "La Dolce Vita" produced, as they say, the effect of an exploding bomb. Literally a day after the premiere of the film, a review by the famous Italian cinematographer Gian Luigi Rondi (who later became president of the Italian Film Academy) appeared in the Roman newspaper Il Tempo, in which the film is given the following characteristic:

“The film - one of the most terrible, highest, and in its own way most tragic films that we have ever seen on a screen - is the feast of all the falsehoods, mystifications, corruptions of our age, and the funereal portrait of a apparently still young and healthy society which, as in medieval paintings, dances with Death and does not see it, is the "human comedy" of a crisis which, as in Goya's drawings or Kafka's stories, is changing men into "monsters" without men having time to notice."

A little later, in August 1960, another well-known Italian film critic, Hugo Casiraghi, wrote in his review:

"Never before, at least in Italy, has any film caused so much fierce controversy. You had to be in Italy in February of this year in order to personally It was discussed everywhere - at home and on the street, in party committees, in clubs, it was talked about from the parliamentary rostrum and from the church pulpit. Editors of the morning newspapers refuted their own film critics (this was later France.) The evening newspapers prominently published "reviews of the fighting" that flared up because of the film, and devoted entire pages to a poll of readers ... the most delicate and well-mannered gentlemen said and wrote that this spectacle was disgusting and sickening. However, it is very important to note, that none of them even tried to question the veracity of this picture, no one dared to say that Fellini was mistaken and that the monsters he depicts exist only in his sick and perverted fantasy. No, they said otherwise. It was said that in Italy, and in particular in Rome, there are a great many people who work, suffer, fight, many honest and pure people. But Italian filmmakers were well aware of this before, only they were forbidden to show such people on the screen ..."

The Christian Democratic Party of Italy and the Vatican strongly opposed this film for its depiction of the city of Rome and its vicious aristocracy (historically very close to the church). The government of Fernando Tambroni, who came to power a month after the film's premiere, banned the screening of the film. However, this government is remembered only for the fact that it dispersed communist demonstrations, banned the "La Dolce Vita" and stayed in power for 4 whole months (!). After the resignation of Tambroni in July 1960, the Fellini film returned to the screens of Italian cinemas.

However, outside of Italy, Fellini's film was met with general acclaim. In May 1960, the film was awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes International Film Festival. And this despite the fact that among its competitors were the Soviet "Баллада о солдате (Ballad of a Soldier)" by Mikhail Kalatozov, the Italian "L'Avventura (The Adventure)" by Michelangelo Antonioni, the French "Le trou (The Hole)" by Jacques Becker, the Swedish "Jungfrukällan (The Virgin Spring)" by Ingmar Bergman. The Italian Film Academy, despite all the heated debate in society, awarded Federico Fellini its David di Donatello award for directing.

In 1961, "La Dolce Vita" was nominated for the British BAFTA Award for Best Film from any Source. But this award, by the decision of the British Film Academy, went to the film "The Apartment" by Billy Wilder. The company of the losers of the film Fellini was "Inherit the Wind" by Stanley Kramer, "L'Avventura (The Adventure)" by Michelangelo Antonioni, "Spartacus" by Stanley Kubrick, "Les quatre cents coups (400 Blows)" by François Truffaut. In 1962, Federico Fellini was nominated for an Oscar for directing "La Dolce Vita". But the American Film Academy gave preference to the directors of the film "West Side Story" by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins (of course: the Americans!).

However, in fairness it should be noted that far from all countries Fellini's film was given a warm welcome. The pro-fascist regimes of Franco in Spain and Salazar in Portugal banned the film from being shown in their respective countries. And this ban lasted until the death of the dictators. In the Soviet Union, "La Dolce Vita" was also not shown in cinemas. Remarkable unanimity!

The film received laudatory reviews from film critics not only upon its release, but also decades later - in the 21st century. Roger Ebert gave the film a maximum of 4 stars and included it in his "Great Movies" list. According to one of the most respected Russian film critics, Sergei Kudryavtsev,

"this picture ... should be regarded as a modern philosophical fresco about Italian society, which experienced an "economic miracle" at the very end of the 50s after several years of poverty, clearly stabilized, acquiring all the features Fellini wanted, first of all, to show how careless, empty and meaningless life is, in which loneliness, alienation and separation of people reign .... With its outward simplicity and clarity, "La Dolce Vita" for the first time struck with the baroque director's vision, the complexity of the composition, the symbolism of the prologue and the poetic finale - one of the most refined and inexplicably exciting lyrical scenes in the history of world cinema."

However, as it turns out, pro-fascist political views or heightened religiosity are far from always the only reasons for the negative attitude towards this Fellini masterpiece. On the site Kinopoisk, I found a dozen reviews that are very sharply critical of this film. Mainly for plotlessness and the incomprehensibility that follows from it. Moreover, which is typical, the age of all the authors of such reviews is from 20 to 30 years. In this regard, it is appropriate, in my opinion, to quote from the review of the aforementioned guru of American film criticism, Roger Ebert:

"Movies do not change, but their viewers do. When I saw "La Dolce Vita" in 1960, I was an adolescent for whom "the sweet life" represented everything I dreamed of: sin, exotic European glamour, the weary romance of the cynical newspaperman. When I saw it again, around 1970, I was living in a version of Marcello's world; Chicago's North Avenue was not the Via Veneto, but at 3 a.m. the denizens were just as colorful, and I was about Marcello's age. When I saw the movie around 1980, Marcello was the same age, but I was 10 years older, had stopped drinking, and saw him not as a role model but as a victim, condemned to an endless search for happiness that could never be found, not that way. By 1991, when I analyzed the film a frame at a time at the University of Colorado, Marcello seemed younger still, and while I had once admired and then criticized him, now I pitied and loved him. And when I saw the movie right after Mastroianni died, I thought that Fellini and Marcello had taken a moment of discovery and made it immortal. There may be no such thing as the sweet life. But it is necessary to find that out for yourself."

Nevertheless, the "detractors" of Fellini's masterpiece were in the "overwhelming minority", both in the early 60s of the last century and at the beginning of the 21st century. The assessment of the film by ordinary moviegoers in the early 60s is evidenced by its financial performance. During the first year of showing the picture in Italy, it collected 2.271 billion lire, or $36.6 million today. In the United States, this figure was even higher: the total proceeds from the screening of the film amounted to $ 27.571 million, or almost $ 275 million today. As for the rating of the film by modern moviegoers, almost 70% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users rated this film 8 and above.

Given the above success rates for Federico Fellini's "La Dolce Vita", it has a FilmGourmand rating of 8,587 and ranks 290th in the Golden Thousand.