Word: vitas
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GARY: At last, LA DOLCE VITA has come to Boston. Perhaps the most magnificent film to come from post-war Italy. Doice is an angry and moving indictment of the continent's rotting aristocracy; and it's also a remarkably beautiful film. This is no movie to be missed. Evenings...
What is the fuss all about? Something-and nothing. In fundamental intention, La Dolce Vita is an attempted apocalypse, a vast (3 hrs.) evocation of the Second Coming of Christ. But for those who do not care to be edified by spiritual symbolism, Director Federico (La Strada) Fellini has supplied plenty of earthy realism by clothing his allegory in the robes of a modern Roman saturnalia, stained by spiritual depravity and sexual excess...
...film was suggested by a Roman scandal of the last ten years, and Fellini has somehow persuaded hundreds of Roman whores, faggots, screen queens, pressagents, newsmen, artists, lawyers, and even some asthenic aristocrats, to play themselves-or revolting caricatures of themselves. These sensations have made La Dolce Vita, in one season, one of the most profitable pictures ever produced (world gross to date: $20 million). Released now in the U.S. for ten-a-week, reserved-seat showings at special prices ($1.50-$3.50), the film will undoubtedly raise another ruckus and bank another fortune. Advance sales are crowding...
...What a Mess!" The merits of this depressing allegory are many. In conception it is noble and profound, and its visualization of the principal symbols-particularly the apparitions of Christ and antichrist -is stunning. Fellini may be pardoned for believing that "La Dolce Vita is my greatest work." Nonetheless, he is wrong. For all its vitality, the film is decadent, an artistic failure. The creator thinks the film "puts a thermometer to a sick world," but it may be that he has simply taken his own temperature...
Worst of all, La Dolce Vita fails to attract the moviegoer as much as it repulses him, fails to inspire his sympathies as well as his disgust. Everyman is passive throughout the picture, largely unconscious of the awful fate that is overtaking him. He therefore puts up no moral struggle against his fate, and without struggle there is no drama. Many spectators will be inclined to agree with the character who remarks in the concluding scene: "Mamma mia, what a disgusting mess...