La_Dolce_Vita OR when_Fellini_met_Balenciaga

And here i am my dear followers, from now on i am officially a UK resident! It took me a week to get organized and put myself together, but i believe that i have created the ideal writing/working space. Would you like to have a look into my new flat?

Flat A103 / Room B @ Emily Bowes Court Halls of Residence

I know that my tittle looks a bit weird, but i am ready to explain it! As you can understand my MA just begun, to be honest the induction week started 2 days ago and this means that there is still some time available for blogging, chatting and can i say facebook-ing? On Monday i had the great idea to download a classical movie and at the same time relaxing with a glass of wine. And that movie was Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960); fot those who are unfamiliar with the italian language (bad for you people) the title means "the sweet life" or "the good life".

La dolce vita  is a 1960 comedy-drama film written and directed by the critically acclaimed director Federico Fellini. The film is a story of a passive journalist's week in Rome, and his search for both happiness and love that will never come. Generally cited as the film that marks the transition between Fellini's earlier neo-realist films and his later art films, it is widely considered one of the great achievements in world cinema. The only thing i would like to point out is that in 2010, the film was ranked #11 in Empire magazine's "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" and, of course, it possesses a place in other kind of lists like this.  

I think that there is no need to say anything about the plot of the film, you can google it after all. I would only like to point out a few things that make this film a distinctive one; not only for its innovative structure, but also for its extravagant costumes. Moreover, Fellini's film managed to create a particular kind of "film-culture" available and widely used by the generations that followed. 

Structure._ :

Based on the most common interpretation of the storyline, the film can be divided into a prologue, seven major episodes interrupted by an intermezzo, and an epilogue. If the evenings of each episode were joined with the morning of the respective preceding episode together as a day, they would form seven consecutive days. That kind of structure gives the film its innovative and symmetrically symbolic structure. The evocations are obvious: seven deadly sins, seven sacraments, seven virtues and, of course, seven were the days of creation! I will only mention the film's opening scene, where a statue of Christ suspended by cables from an helicopter flies over the ruins of ancient Rome. The symbolism of Christ, arms outstretched as if blessing all of Rome as it flies overhead, is soon replaced by the profane lifestyle and neomodern architecture of the "new" Rome founded on the economic miracle of the late 1950s. In this point, it is necessary to point out that perceived by the Catholic Church as a parody of Christ's second coming, the scene and the entire film were condemned by the Vatican newspaper L'Observatore Romano in 1960. The film was characterized as "shameful" and banned in Spain until 1975. 

Costumes._ :

Although critics have often commented on the extravagant costumes used throughout Fellini's films, few realized that the origin behind La dolce vita was the sack dress, introduced by the designer Balenciaga in 1957. In various interviews, Fellini claimed that the film's initial inspiration was in fact this particular style. Brunello Rondi, Fellini's co-screenwriter and long-time collaborator, confirmed this view explaining that "the fashion of women's sack dresses which possessed that sense of luxurious butterflying out around a body that might be physically beautiful but not morally so; these sack dresses struck Fellini because they rendered a woman very gorgeous who could, instead, be a skeleton of squalor and solitude inside." 

Culture._ :

The film has influenced or else been referenced in contemporary films, television shows, and songs. In Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation (2003), Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) and Bob (Bill Murray) meet in the middle of the night and watch the famous Trevi Fountain sequence while drinking sake.  Coppola said, "I saw that movie on TV when I was in Japan. It's not plot-driven, it's about them wandering around. And there was something with the Japanese subtitles and them speaking Italian - it had a truly enchanting quality".

In Goodbye Lenin (2003), directed by Wolfgang Becker, a statue of Lenin is flown across Berlin, recalling the opening scene of Fellini's film. 

The title of Korean film,  A Bittersweet Life (2005), is a pun on the English translation of La dolce vita  and the restaurant that the protagonist enforces for the mob is called La Dolce Vita. 

The two protagonists of Marcos Carnevale's Elsa y Fred (2005) recreate the scene in the Fontana di Trevi performed originally by Ekberg and Mastroianni. 

In Simon Pegg's How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (2008), Alison (Kirsten Dunst) cites La dolce vita as her favourite movie. 

Woody Allen's Celebrity (1998) is a New York-set re-working of La dolce vita with Kenneth Branagh taking up Mastroianni's role, and Goldie Hawn and Charlize Theron taking on the roles held by Anouk Aimée and Anita Ekberg, respectively.

* Last, but not least i have to admit that Marcello Mastroianni was definitely a beautiful man!