Allonsanfàn (1974)

Allonsanfàn is a wry, strange look at the absurd tragedy of radical Italians. It technically takes place in the early 19th century, but it could be just as home in the 1860s, 1920s or 1970s. In fact, especially the 1970s - a decade in which domestic terrorism killed Aldo Moro and laid bombs in Bologna's train station. A decade where the idealism of 1968 had ripened into a hyper-violent, extreme nihilism (both on the Left and the Right), where killing became a currency of discourse. (Thanks, Paul Ginsborg, by the way, for teaching the PPCC about modern Italian history! Seriously, readership, A History of Contemporary Italy is wonderful.)

Anyway, in Allonsanfàn, we follow a disillusioned, weary and aging radical, Fulvio Imbrani (Marcello Mastroianni), as he repeatedly tries (and fails) to extricate himself form his former revolutionary life. This is often to grotesque or comedic results (such as when he makes a suicide pact with one fellow comrade, only to let the other guy go first), though - as is the usual style of 1970s commedie all'italiana - it's also very sad, beneath everything. The aristocratic Fulvio stumbles out of prison one day, feverish and exhausted, narrowly avoiding a grim fate at the hands of the state. His revolutionary comrades likewise almost behead him, thinking he had spilled all their secrets. When this is proved false, he is left to mend in the comfort of his big fancy bed in his big fancy mansion. And big fancy mansions - they are hard to say no to.

Indeed, Fulvio's ideals - which were already a little brittle - now crumble under the weight of this material comfort. Of course, this gnaws at him - aren't those big fancy chandeliers just symbols of oppression? And his poor nanny, still making his bed and doing back-breaking agricultural labor outside? Fulvio's strength of opinion, though, has been broken out of him. Or maybe he's just tired of being indignant and sure of everything, because he proceeds to embark in a misguided, frequently half-assed adventure to cut his old ties. We found ourselves snickering, sometimes with disgust, sometimes with glee, at Fulvio's silliness, selfishness and pitiable state - and we found ourselves constantly grafting this story onto the wider meaning of 1970s Italian politics, messy and unfortunate as they were. "How can we live in this world?" one earnest revolutionary laments. "When everyone seems asleep, and we're the only ones who seem to have woken up?" It's a sad, slightly delusional statement, and Fulvio's in the unfortunate position of recognizing the idealists' misguided attempts to (for example) free the Southern peasants, while not having the courage or ability (or good luck!) to get free of their grasp. He's made his bed, and now he's going to LIE IN IT, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.

Allonsanfàn himself turns out to be a character, a young revolutionary (Stanko Molnar), who is the most dedicated, the grimmest, and, ultimately, the most delusional. A stand-in for the young, violent Red Brigades? Allonsanfàn is also, oddly, named after the first two words of La Marseillaise ("Wake up, children!") - indeed, the strains of revolutionary France are an important reference for the revolutionaries of this film. (In the way that the Paris Commune inspired the 1968 Italian idealists?)

Marcello Mastroianni is, as usual, wonderful in this, aging charmer that he is. Indeed, he channels that same world-weariness that we saw in Una giornata particolare, as well as the sense of a man trapped in an almost Kafka-esque surrealist nightmare, much like his role as the doomed bricklayer from Dramma della gelosia. The music by Ennio Morricone, particularly the theme of the revolution, was also incredibly catchy and wonderful: this scene, where an embittered Fulvio meditates on his former comrades, was just wonderful. "I've healed. I've changed." Brrr, lovely!

I girasoli (1970)

I girasoli (Sunflowers) is one of those epic WW2 love stories that spans decades and several countries. While hinting at stories like Doctor Zhivago, what with the sense of massive European history pulling and pushing lovers together and apart, it's not quite as good - but it is pretty decent. Its triple pedigree - De Sica, Mastroianni, Loren - makes sure that, while not great, it's good.

Early in the war, Neopolitan Giovanna (Sofia Loren) and not-Neopolitan Antonio (Marcello Mastroianni) are lovers on the beach. They decide to get married, since that'll give Antonio - who's convinced he'll soon be sent to the African front - twelve days of delay. "Who knows," Giovanna says brightly. "Maybe the war will be over by then!" Once the twelve days are up, however, the war is far from over (indeed, one of Giovanna and Antonio's honeymoon frolics is interrupted by a bridge-bombing on day 10) - and so they try to make Antonio seem insane. When that doesn't work, they resign themselves to the inevitable: Antonio is sent to the Russian front.

Years pass, the Italian soldiers return, but still no word from Antonio. Yet more years pass - Stalin dies (!), so it's 1953 (!), so (pencil scribbling) that makes it about ten years apart - and Antonio's mother gives him up for dead. But Giovanna, convinced he's still alive, decides to travel to Russia herself, armed only with her steely determination and an ancient wartime photograph of him. What she finds there (which you can probably Google, but we'll endeavor to be at least a little spoiler-free) is sad.

The film is soaked in shared history between Italy and Russia, and the rest of Europe, as both sides pick up the pieces after the war. De Sica emphasizes this common humanity and common heritage by using visual parallels repeatedly throughout the film: the train that Antonio leaves on, the train that brings news of the front, the train that backgrounds their post-war reunion. Antonio's limp, Giovanna's colleague's limp. The near frost-bitten Antonio collapsing in the Russian snow, becoming just one more fallen comrade as the army moves ahead. And, of course, the sunflowers of Russia ("Each sunflower represents someone who died here - an Italian soldier, a Russian soldier, a German soldier, civilians, men, women, children," a character helpfully explains) and the yellow mimosas of southern Italy. Or whatever those flowers are.

Anyway, the point is that this story is supposed to be a drop in a rainstorm: in Giovanna and Antonio's tender heartbreak, we're supposed to see all the thousands of other Giovannas and Antonios that were ripped apart by the war.

Generally, it works. Okay, yes, we cried. But it's not quite as magnificent as it aspires to be. The cinematography is glorious and large - many of the scenes are impressively enormous, capturing rolling fields, thousands of graves, the pristine blue sky. But we were also constantly distracted by De Sica's overenthusiastic use of the dolly. Had he just bought a new one or something? The jumpy zooming and ambitiously long takes (watch for one where a family moves all their furniture in a pick-up truck, and the camera manages to get all the way around the truck while, presumably, both truck and camera car are in motion). A story of this scale also warrants a richness of characterization which is lacking. While Sofia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni are everybody's favorites, and we certainly like them too, we felt that Giovanna and Antonio weren't clearly-enough defined, apart from their love story narrative. The mother-in-law was the barest sketch of a character.

So, all in all, a decently moving large-scale wartime story. Not mind-blowing, but not terrible. Kinda tearjerking. Like, tearnudging.

Dramma della gelosia (1970)

First thing's first: we loved Dramma della gelosia (tutti i particolari in cronaca) (Jealousy drama (with all the details), though its international title was The Pizza Triangle). It was everything we loved about Ettore Scola's other masterpiece, C'eravamo tanto amati, coupled with the zany, sexualized, politicized, over-the-top commedia all'italiana story akin to our favorite Lina Wertmuller movies. In other words, the perfect 1970s Italian film.

The story begins with the fidgety, disheveled Oreste (an amazing Marcello Mastroianni) being asked by the police and lawyers how it exactly happened. Aided by a sad-looking Nello (Giancarlo Giannini), Oreste, Nello and an older man reenact the accidental murder of Adelaide (Monica Vitti) - Oreste and Nello's former lover. There's a bittersweet pageantry to watching everything slow down and seeing the absurdity of this very human drama unfold.

The rest of the film makes us retrace the steps - via Rashomon-like courthouse interjections - of when Adelaide the florist and Oreste the bricklayer met, fell in love, and then met Nello the pizza chef, and fell in love with him too. This love triangle, and the three's extremes of ultimatums, aborted polyamory, attempted suicides and - yes - lots of jealousy and hurt feelings, make up the rest of this strange, touching film. In the vein of Ettore Scola's other PPCCed film, there is a heavy air of surreality (lots of fourth-wall breaking) coupled with compassionate humanism. It all seems so silly and forgivable in hindsight. Also, as per C'eravamo tanto amati and Lina Wertmuller's films, the Italian Left is a prominent supporting character, and the downtrodden, working class Oreste and Nello even meet after getting beat up by the police at a march. Like the bourgeois "padrone" in C'eravamo…, the rich Roman is again portrayed as fat, dull-eyed and very ignorant (played here by the hulking Hércules Cortés).

What was interesting about this film - and called to mind Giancarlo Giannini's later golden years in skeezy picaresque tales like Pasqualino Settebellezze and Mi manda Picone - was its high levels of "zozzeria" - that is, scumminess. The setting is Rome, but the city looks disgusting, and the characters frequent dumps, housing projects and ugly highways. Oreste is hounded by an enormous fly, and his entrances are signaled by loud buzzing. He twitches, his hair is greasy and his clothes are mismatched. In one of the most hilarious scenes, Adelaide attempts to list his pros and cons; when she gets to the cons, she admits, "And you're not very hygienic. Remember that one night? You even made a sound." Oreste and Adelaide meet when he falls asleep on a pile of paper and debris. They frolic on a polluted beach, have a picnic at the dump.

The script successfully juggles tenderness with a sharp wit; we found ourselves laughing often, even if it was so sad. And some of the lines were great! Example: when Adelaide first spots Oreste snoozing on a trash heap at a Communist fair (they have those, I guess?), she hops off the swings and goes to wake him with a kiss. They're both a little drunk and unsteady, and when he wakes, he looks at her, thinks for a bit, and says, "You lost a bet." What a first line! Or a wonderful scene when Adelaide seeks the aid of a therapist: "So what's the diagnosis? I'm traumatized, I've had a shock? It's a neurological disorder? Or am I a whore?" The therapist cuts in quickly: "Let's not get into scientific jargon!"

The most impressive of the cast was Marcello Mastroianni, who was playing heavily against type. We wouldn't have believed that Mastroianni would have been able to shed his dashing, Everyman persona to become someone as decrepit and bizarre (and Roman) as Oreste. The details of his performance - the tic around his eyes; his stubbed, broken fingernails; the general air of decay and hobo-ness - was amazing. In fact, we were so amazed that we had to check if he won anything for this; and he did! Best Actor at Cannes!

Giancarlo Giannini, our other favorite, was also playing heavily against type. Whereas he usually occupied the role of the wild-eyed, unhinged and in love laborer (see Wertmuller's Mimi metallurgico ferrito nell'onore), here he was young, upbeat and oddly tween heartthrob-esque. He was also playing a Tuscan, and the accent was awesome.

Monica Vitti's best moments were definitely the swings between carefree, joyous hedonism and the wracks of self-doubt. In fact, the latter almost seemed satirical of typical soap opera femininity (as was much of this film's treatment of sexual mores and gender norms in general). Yet, as with the writing and everything else, even when things bordered on satirical, they never lacked sympathy.

Highly recommended.

La cagna (1972)

Ugh. What a piece of misogynistic pap.

Other reviews of La cagna (literally, The Bitch, though the international title is Liza) have mentioned it being "highly symbolic" - but surely the director, Marco Ferreri, could have made these same symbolic points using a less rubbish story.

Liza (Catherine Deneuve) and Giorgio (Marcello Mastroianni) are directionless misfits, fleeing from society in an ad hoc, haphazard way. They both end up on a tiny, remote island in the Mediterranean - Liza having swam away from her friend's yacht, Giorgio having established himself as a hermit there with his dog, Melampo. Shortly after Liza's arrival, they "fall in love" - or something, at least. Giorgio then drives Liza back to civilization in his motorboat. Liza then promptly returns, kills Melampo, and takes the dog's place.

There are obvious, striking similarities between this and Lina Wertmuller's far superior Swept Away - the remote island setting, the sadomasochistic love affair, even the actors' looks. But what Wertmuller achieves is a subversion and criticism of La Cagna's central conceit: bourgeois ennui, and how men and women react to it by retreating into primal roles of dominance and submission. Heck, even the uneven Adam Resurrected, which featured a similar nurse/patient, dog/master-roleplaying love affair, was more subtle than this. Both Wertmuller and, to an extent, Adam Resurrected satirized this patriarchal fantasy of "natural"/"savage"/"in the wild" gender roles - La cagna instead embraces them, presenting them as the real thing, as enviable, even.

La cagna also unfortunately relies on lobby room jazz muzak coupled with moody shots of Mastroianni and Deneuve to denote profound philosophical depths. But honestly, Ferreri's not fooling anyone: the characters are paper-thin, the attempts at backstory sloppy and unconvincing ("Ludwig is wrong! No, Ludwig is wrong!" Liza insists - sparing us who Ludwig is or what he's wrong about; the blunt flashback to Melampo as Giorgio crouches over another dead dog - how much more obvious do you need to be? WE GET IT). There's no sense of how much time is passing, no investment in the relationship, and no build and release of dramatic tension. Instead, we trudge along with inane dialogue and, at its worst, tediously stupid gender politics. And those sunglasses! Self-described "Robinson Crusoe" Giorgio springs for Yves Saint Laurent sneakers, but not sunglasses? Oh, come on.

No, we're sorry, but we really don't care about Giorgio's deep guilt over his abandoned, unstable family at home and their bourgeois restrictions on his creativity. Melampo - Pinocchio's dog - may indicate that Giorgio is Pinocchio, but Peter Pan might be more appropriate.

C'eravamo tanto amati (1974)

This may be obvious to connoisseurs of Italian cinema, but C'eravamo tanto amati (We All Loved Each Other So Much) is really great - who knew! We got it for Christmas, threw it into our Pile O' DVDs, found it months later (today), assumed it was some old school tearjerker and put it in - and what a surprise we got! This was fresh, quirky, self-deprecating, inventive, silly, sweet and intelligent. And many other descriptive words. We loved it!


Stefania Sandrelli and Vittorio Gassman dumping poor ol' Nino Manfredi. Don't worry, Nino, the PPCC will protect and love you.

We at the PPCC, for however much we like Italian films, are really philistines regarding them: we have little sense of history or significance, and only nominally recognize things like neorealismo. We just haven't watched enough Italian cinema critically to make the broad generalizations we're so comfortable making in our Hindi film reviews. But after a film like this one and the recently PPCCed La meglio gioventù, we can only say, Mamma mia, ancora! That's-a one-a SPICY MOVIE! We need-a some-a MORE, please! We want to learn more!

C'eravamo tanto amati - from our uneducated, dominantly Hollywood/Bollywood perspective - was fabulously bizarre. Breaks in the fourth wall, characters addressing the camera and communicating via "internal" spoken monologues, repeated scenes, and an irreverent sense of humor that doesn't even let the attempted suicide of one of the characters make things too grim. That's not to say this film doesn't have heart - it has a sweet, earnest vibe that forgives humans, warts and all, and highlights the ridiculous surreality of our self-made dramas.


"Should I take off my braces?" she asks. His reply: "Uhm... no."

Antonio (Nino Manfredi), Gianni (Vittorio Gassman), and Nicola (Stefano Satta Flores) are old war buddies, former partigiani - AKA guerrilla fighters in the anti-Nazi resistance in Italy during World War II. After the war, during the notoriously hard times of the 1950s, they each struggle to get by. Antonio, an easygoing working class Roman, is a male nurse. One day, he meets and falls in love with the gorgeous, northern Luciana (Stefania Sandrelli). But as soon as he introduces Luciana to his debonair friend, Gianni, he loses her to him. Then she loses Gianni when the latter meanders away, inadvertently becoming trapped by a family of rich, former Fascist "padroni" (owners) and their well-meaning, ignorant daughter Elide (Giovanna Ralli). Once this happens, Luciana quickly moves onto the intellectual, self-aggrandizing Nicola. And so on.

For a film about heartbreak, economic strife and war, it's awfully upbeat. Antonio especially has a particularly self-deprecating wit, often summarizing difficult and complex tragedies with a single, dry Romanism. "Boh," he says at the film's conclusion.

"What does that mean?!" the over-articulate Nicola demands, fuming.

It just means - boh. Whatever. In the face of the ridiculousness of life, Antonio's response - a resigned shrug - seems to be the most sensible.

And the film itself is like one big Antonio too - teasing itself and the fashionable Italian cinema which preceded it. This film - which, according to a "citation needed" Wikipedia entry, is the most influential of the commedia all'italiana films - is indeed much more like the later, bizarre tragicomedies of Lina Wertmuller and Giancarlo Giannini. It feels like a conscious break from the dreary gloom of Italian movies from the 1950s and 1960s. There's a running joke throughout the film that only the self-important Nicola fully appreciates Ladri di biciclette (The Bicycle Thieves), a film now renowned as being the Italian neorealist film (after La dolce vita, maybe). Speaking of La dolce vita, there's also a wonderfully bizarre and self-referential sequence when Antonio and Luciana stumble upon the filming of the famous Trevi Fountain scene (complete with great cameos by Federico Fellini and Marcello Mastroianni). It's a film making fun of other films!


OMG, that looks familiar!


Federico Fellini and Marcello Mastroianni playing themselves.

Apart from the fun, lively narrative, we also fell in love with the four principal characters - who were uniformly bumbling and ridiculous. Nino Manfredi was especially lovable as the kindhearted Antonio. There's a very sweet scene when Antonio bumps into Luciana many years after their initial break-up. He notices a little boy hovering around her and, becoming increasingly distracted by the boy and Luciana's hands twirling the boy's hat, he eventually stammers, "Wait, excuse me, is he... is he...?" She nods with a smile. Antonio extends his hand to the boy, "My name is Antonio. What's your name?"

"Luigi," the boy replies.

Antonio turns back to Luciana, voice wavering and eyes tearful, "You named him after my mother's uncle!"


Antonio and Luciana, the early days.


Oh yeah! Mike Bongiorno also makes a cameo, huzzah! We want to be the next Mike Bongiorno.

We can't really find any criticism for this film. We enjoyed every minute of it. This was right up our alley, and we were delighted and captivated. If you too like mildly weird and silly humanistic tragicomedies, this one's a real treat.

Una giornata particolare (1977)

Una giornata particolare (A special day) is a sometimes poignant, sometimes drab look at humanity imprisoned in dreary, mind-numbing, collective insanity. Taking place over one day - the day in 1938 when Hitler visited Mussolini, heralded by an ecstatic Italian public - and in one place - a decrepit, working class apartment block in Rome - it is very disturbing in its portrayal of normalized cruelty. While the setting - World War II-era Rome - has been presented in a number of glorified ways (compare this, for example, to the sun-drenched Life is Beautiful), this film strips everything down to its most unremarkable. Fascism starts to look a lot less epic, or at least Hollywood villainous, and a lot more Orwellian: deceptively bland and terrifyingly insidious.


Sophia and Marcello, acqua e sapone.

Antonietta (a highly deglamorized Sophia Loren) is a working class housewife, who, along with her husband and six children, swallows Fascism without a second thought. She doesn't bother to worry too deeply about anything further than her own kitchen, the petty complaints of her family and her apartment landlady. Instead, she tidily dresses her children in their black Fascist Youth uniforms and, for fun, works on her scrapbook dedicated to Il Duce. On the "special day" when Hitler himself has come to Rome, she packs everyone off to troop down to Piazza Venezia while she stays behind and listens to the proceedings on the radio. The only other person left in the apartment building is Gabriele (a tired-looking Marcello Mastroianni), a persecuted homosexual radio announcer who was considering suicide the very moment Antonietta knocks on his door in search of her lost myna bird. Grateful for the distraction and company, Gabriele invites himself over for coffee. Antonietta, meanwhile, misunderstands his advances as sexual - and she's not entirely averse to the idea (well hey, it is Marcello Mastroianni!).

Little by little, however, Antonietta and Gabriele move past the pleasantries and the stark differences in their lives, outlooks and beliefs are revealed. When Gabriele finds a Mussolini quote in her scrapbook saying that woman are basically born to serve, he asks her about it with polite disbelief. Antonietta doesn't bat an eyelid: "Of course I believe that. All the great men of history were men, after all." The tension - sexual, political, emotional - eventually comes to a crashing climax with Gabriele's revelation that he's gay and, from then on, the PPCC had a distinct feeling of being in an Orwellian, dark version of The Breakfast Club: that is, watching two "Others" grow increasingly companionable during a one-day vacation from their normal lives. Except this time round, it's not school and the studly, hardcore punk, it's Fascism and the the dapper and unfortunately uninterested neighbor.


Domesticated and dedicated.


This one can be called still life at home.

The look of this film is drab and colorless - at best, it felt a bit Morandi-esque, often, though, it just looked boring. We almost forgot how gorgeous our beloved Rome is, and when Sophia and Marcello have their little breakdown on the rooftop, we were stretching our neck to catch sight of the sunny apartment buildings in the distance. Ah, Roma. That said, the monotonous aesthetic perfectly captured the imprisoning boredom of Antonietta's life. In those final moments, when we see her standing at the window and looking into the courtyard, you can't help but imagine bars on the windows. The film is devastating in showing us how, like the "stupid" myna who tries to flee in the early scenes but is eventually caught, the "ignorant" Antonietta is given a taste of freedom through her chaotic confrontation-cum-bonding with Gabriele, only to have that freedom snatched away, probably forever. For however much Gabriele can shake Antonietta's life up with his "subversive" and challenging identity, he is just as trapped as she is. (This (oddly and irritatingly a little homophobic) old New York Times interview notes that, in 1938, the Italian government exiled a number of homosexuals to Sardinia, where they couldn't "contaminate" the Fascist Party. Indeed, Gabriele relates how he was kicked out of the Party for not being a "man" and his lover sent to Sardinia.) The prison that these people live in - Fascist Italy - is both seemingly mundane (the kids wonder about whether Goebbels was the one who looked funny, and it's obvious that things like concentration camps don't even enter into their equation) but also everywhere and controlling: the Nazi swastika draped over a window, the continuous drone of tinny Fascist anthems from the radio. Even if the building is empty, there is a feeling that the walls are watching and there is no escape.


Silenzio! That flag can probably hear you!

A film like this relies almost entirely on the performances, as all of the drama is dialogue-driven. Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren are probably the most well known Italian actors of their generation and they deliver very strong performances which several reviewers have noted were "against type". That is, Mastroianni and Loren have a bit of a reputation among the international intelligentsia for their gorgeous, Latin lover roles. Here the two of them are decidedly not so glittering - both looking haggard and a little unkempt. But we should also say that we at the PPCC don't really buy the "type" for them - especially not for Mastroianni, who, in every film we've seen of him, played limp lettuces rather than studly Casanovas. Just consider his role as a tabloid journalist in La Dolce Vita with his incompetent flirting with the Swedish model, incompetent boyfriending with his Good Italian Girlfriend and incompetent one-night standing left and right (always initiated by the women!). He never seemed like the predatory playah, he always just seemed a bit bumbling and confused but, thanks to his good looks, appealing. He never really seemed to work it in the same way that, for example, Shashi Kapoor worked his incredibly irresistible sex appeal.

Anyway, once again, we think the main value of this film is in educating the non-Italian audience in the quotidian life of Fascist Italy. It is indeed surreal to hear the characters take things like Hitler, Mussolini and black shirts so lightly - as if this was all very mundane instead of historically significant and terrifying. But then again, we guess that's what it would feel like from the inside of the cage! If you're in the mood for more from this sad, dismal chapter of Italian history, only with an extra factor of major freakiness and philosophical meat, check out Pasqualino Settebellezze as well.

La dolce vita (1960)

A typical scene from Fellini's classic. The drunk guy in the back is named... Paparazzo.

Hedonism - especially drinking and partying - has been explored in a number of ways. From the tragic wallowing of Devdas, to the bittersweet romanticism of Naina, to the awful hyperrealism of Aberdeen - whatever you think of the demon drink, you can probably find a film that suits your fancy. But if you want a film that sucks all the fun and glamour out of partying and makes you seriously consider taking monastic vows, watch La Dolce Vita (The Sweet Life).

Like Rashomon, La Dolce Vita is one of those Perfect Films. Directed by the most famous (especially among trendy Anglo-American intellectuals) Italian director, Federico Fellini, it follows the surreal life of a tabloid journalist, Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni), as he navigates the glitterati of 1950s Rome. On the surface of things, Marcello really is living the "sweet life" - he schmoozes with rich and beautiful stars, he is beautiful himself, he is out every night in the top-end, trendy nightclubs and restaurants of Via Veneto. Even better, Marcello enjoys a position of relative privilege, since he is there to expose this world and generally he can pretend to remain untouched, unsoiled and "above" its debauchery. Marcello is cool as a cucumber, in all senses of the word: he is neither fawning fan nor judgmental outsider. Instead, he easily slips in and out of a variety of situations - the film follows him through nightclubs, prostitute's homes, decaying palaces, and, of course, into the Trevi fountain - as an agreeable, unassuming participant. Marcello's private, gnawing frustration at the superficiality of the "sweet life" is only revealed in his attachment to his bourgeois intellectual friend, Steiner (Alain Cuny), and his stubbornly co-dependent relationship with his Good Italian Girl, Emma (Yvonne Furneaux). Marcello's despair can only be seen in the beading sweat on his forehead. But the tension between what Marcello wants - something more, something deeper and more satisfying - and what he has - access to glamour, material wealth - is never resolved. In fact, the climax of the film leads to Marcello's spiraling decline and things end on a particularly bleak note.


A frazzled, despairing Marcello, at the end of his tether.

Like many classics, the film is powerful on a number of levels: a commentary on celebrity culture, on the Italian - and especially Roman - obsession with la bella figura (i.e. the philosophy where aesthetics are all-important), the boredom of parties, and on materialism versus true happiness. Poor Marcello never quite finds the joy he's looking for - mostly because he keeps searching for it down the wrong paths. When the most promising path - a dedication to bourgeois intellectualism; the Steiner route - turns out to have the most horrific end, he despairs. Things fall apart, and no amount of artificial sweeteners - drinking, partying, glamour - can ease his truly sour life.

Oh God, that was a horrible pun. Sorry about that!

Anyway, moving on: We'll talk about the bella figura philosophy, since we reckon most of our readers are non-Italians and hence might be unfamiliar with this important cultural concept. La bella figura is an Italian phrase which literally means, "the beautiful figure" or "beautiful image". It has all sorts of connotations in everyday Italian mentality. Whereas "Did you look good?" would sound pretty weird in English if you asked your friend this after a job interview, it's a pretty standard thing in Italian: "Hai fatto bella figura?" It doesn't just mean were your clothes in order and your shoes shined, it means did you project the right image, the correct overall aesthetic: enthusiastic, interested, well-put-together, whatever. In the previously PPCCed Come Te Nessuno Mai, one of the sweetest scenes occurs when protagonist Silvio gets punched in the face by a long-time friend whose girlfriend he's kissed. We then see Silvio in his apartment building's elevator, staring in the mirror and sobbing, "Che figura di merda! Che figura di merda! Che figura di merda!" (Literally, "What a shit figure!")

For better or worse, then, Italian culture valorizes aesthetics. While that may make it sound superficial, we at the PPCC are keen promoters of aesthetics. We like beautiful things. We get enthusiastic about beautiful things. We don't think there's anything wrong with that. Quite the opposite - we think beauty (and the sublime) are highly valuable facets of the human experience! And Italian culture is just very aware of that - this is the culture that produced and embraced the Rennaissance, humanist art, the Sistine Chapel, Donatello's David, Gucci, Prada, our beloved Giancarlo Giannini (see blog banner)!


Anita Eckberg has a brief but enduringly famous role as an air-headed visiting Swedish celeb.

However, as with all things, a life based purely on la bella figura is not going to give you everything you need - and, in particular, it won't give you much spiritual satisfaction. La Dolce Vita's Marcello is acutely aware of this. Even as he adjusts his hair and smooths down his (no doubt brand-name) suit, he suffers from the vacuousness around him. He wants more - but he's just not sure what. Domestic comfort and intellectual pursuits aren't the answer - the desperately needy Emma and the surprise of Steiner make sure of that. Religion isn't the answer either - Fellini constantly paints Roman Catholicism in a cynical, post-Christian way. For example, the opening scene is of a helicopter flying over Rome carrying an enormous statue of Jesus Christ with arms outspread. In the helicopter are Marcello and his photographer, Paparazzo (his name is the origin of the term paparazzi; Walter Santesso), and, after flying over a rooftop pool where scantily-clad women are lounging, they pull the helicopter around to exchange phone numbers. Later in the film, Marcello covers a story about two children in the countryside who claim to have seen the Madonna. It's clearly a scam, and the camera lingers on the infirm elderly people who have come to wait in the pouring rain for the children to speak again. Even just little details - such as the crooked, disorienting staircase inside Saint Peter's that Marcello has to climb as he chases after his latest scoop - emphasize this alienation. The Church won't help you, bro!


The iconic first scene, as helicopters fly over ancient Roman ruins with a huge Jesus in tow.

And so he's left with his "sweet life" of parties, drinking and superficial "fun". Fellini does an excellent job of undermining any tawdry glamour that lifestyle might have by always including at least one bored, exasperated sober person in the party scenes. This person is both a conscience and a realist; by seeing this person (and it's usually an unimportant character, like a waiter or the guy who owns the house in the end) and their reactions, we see just how pitifully grasping the sweet lifers are. And even worse, they'll be waking up with wicked hangovers tomorrow morning! Marcello begins the film as this sober, disparaging outsider, but slowly slides into becoming a sweet lifer himself - in the end becoming a drunken source of ridicule and pity.

The performances are all top-notch. Marcello Mastroianni was one of the few Roman actors who spoke with barely a regional accent. Instead, his "RP Italian", coupled with his conservative-yet-stylish suits and his blandly handsome face perfectly establish his neutrality as the hero. We read somewhere that Fellini picked Mastroianni for that very reason - he wanted someone who was bland but agreeable, a face that was pretty but not particularly memorable. And Mastroianni is great - he projects the bubbling undercurrent of anxiety and despair in a meltdown-free way. (And we haven't even touched on his excellent portrayal of the ironically impotent Latin lover stereotype!) Everyone else in the film has brief roles - Anita Eckberg is wonderful and iconic as the scarily empty-headed celebrity, Alain Cuny as Steiner is fantastically creepy, Walter Santesso's Paparazzo has a smarmy, cocky, Roman-issimo air, and Yvonne Furneaux as the doomed Emma projects vulnerability and imbalance wonderfully. Anouk Aimée has a small but critical role as Marcello's incredibly posh on-off lover, Maddalena, and she was glamorous and tragic.

The film is long - around three hours - and its episodic nature might alienate some viewers who prefer linear narratives. It's also a total downer, like watching nihilism purified on film, and - as happens, most of the rare comedy is culturally-specific (they satirize Roman-ism a lot). But it is both an important work and a very, very well-made piece of art, so we definitely recommend it.