Movie Night

[rejectomorph]

TCM ran La Dolce Vita las night. It was part of their series of movies selected by fashionista Isaac Mizrahi, and the presentation included a wraparound in which he was interviewed about how he was influenced by the movie. While I'm glad he chose this movie for the series (it almost never gets shown anymore), I was not pleased by the interview, in which he blathered a bit about how, when he first saw it, he was inspired to lose ten pounds because all the people in the movie were so hot, and he wanted to be like them. Then he praised the glamour of the movie for its positive influence on contemporary fashion design (especially his own.)

I know that fashionistas tend to be a bit shallow, but is that really all he saw in that movie? The glamorous folk don't come off very well in that tough-minded film (and neither does much else about the modern world.) Watching it tonight, I was again struck by how prescient Fellini's vision was. The failings of the world of celebrity and glamour which he exposed in La Dolce Vita have since spread so far as to become the dominant mode of contemporary culture. I suppose that this means that, as a cautionary warning, the movie was a failure. Presumably, a lot of people now see it the same way Isaac Mizrahi sees it-- as a depiction of some sort of ideal world of luxury and glamour, rather than as a depiction (among other things) of the sad emptiness of pointless self-indulgence.

I don't think of it as Fellini's failure, though. His intent is clear enough for anyone who knows how to pay attention. The problem is that too few people do pay attention. Maybe a movie needs more corpses before they'll take notice of it. La Dolce Vita has only four, not counting the big fish at the end. But it remains one of my favorite movies, whether a wide audience gets it or not.

Comments

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

i'm ashamed to say i've never seen that. must get to blockbuster and rent it, or go back to netflix. your point about the shallow solipsism of modern culture is right on (to employ an ancient phrase).

[rejectomorph]

Actually, I almost envy you getting to see it for the first time. It was quite a remarkable experience when I was 18, though I don't know if it would be as startling to see it for the first time now as it was in 1963. It was a pioneering movie in many ways, including Fellini's innovative use of an episodic format rather than the standard, three-act story. The innovation was later imitated by many directors, including Robert Altman with "Mash" and George Lucas with "American Graffiti." When Fellini did it, it was new and astonishing.

Surprisingly, the movie was released on DVD for the first time only a year ago. The DVD offers three choices of sound track, two of them being stereo, but I'd recommend going with the original mono version. I doubt that stereo would add anything to the movie, and some reviewers actually found the stereo remix distracting. The dubbed English language version that played some American theatres is not included.

I'm not sure which version of the English subtitles is used on the DVD. The subtitles on the version I saw on television the other night were not the same ones on the theatrical release I saw years ago. The new subtitles are closer to complete than were those on the original American release (judging from the paperback of the translated complete screenplay I read years ago), but that means they flip by pretty fast in some places. I kept wishing that I had rewind on TCM, so I could re-read them.

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

i'll keep what you've written here in mind when i watch it. it's #1 on my new netflix list. i liked both Mash and American Graffiti very much and will be sure to compare them in my mind as i go.

when i watched Fellini's Roma last year, i found that parts of it were fairly understandable, but the sections with dialect weren't. i'll be prepared to read fast! :)

[marseille.livejournal.com]

Fellini probably would have said that people missing the point is proves the point!