"Actor: Annibale Ninchi"

• La Dolce Vita | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £20.00   |  Saving you £-0.01 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Marcello Mastroianni plays a playboy reporter on the hunt for scandal amongst Rome's high society in this classic Italian film directed by Federico Fellini. Both drawn to and repelled by the decadent lifestyle that provides his living he finds himself torn between his passion for a starlet (Anita Ekberg) and his desire for a Bohemian life like that of his friend (Alain Cuny)...

• La Dolce Vita | DVD | (26/03/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  At three brief hours, Fellini's cynical, engrossing social commentary, La Dolce Vita, stands as his timeless masterpiece. A rich, detailed panorama of Rome's modern decadence and sophisticated immorality, the film is episodic in structure but held tightly in focus by the wandering protagonist through whom we witness the sordid action. Marcello Rubini is a tabloid reporter trapped in a shallow high-society existence, as extraordinarily played by Marcello Mastroianni, a man of paradoxical, emotional juxtapositions: cool but tortured, sexy but impotent. He dreams about writing something important but remains seduced by the money and prestige that accompany his shallow position. He romanticises about finding true love but acts unfazed upon finding that his girlfriend has taken an overdose of sleeping pills. Instead, he engages in a ménage à trois, then frolics in a fountain with a giggling American starlet (bombshell Anita Ekberg), and in the film's unforgettably inspired finale, attends a wild orgy that ends, symbolically with its participants finding a rotting sea animal while wandering the beach at dawn. Fellini saw his film as life affirming (thus its title, "The Sweet Life"), but it's impossible to take him seriously. While Mastroianni drifts from one worldly pleasure to another, be it sex, drink, glamorous parties or rich foods, they are presented, through his detached eyes, as merely momentary distractions. His existence, an endless series of wild evenings and lonely mornings, is ultimately soulless and facile. Because he lacks the courage to change, Mastroianni is left with no alternative but to wearily accept and enjoy this "sweet" life. --Dave McCoy, Amazon.com

• Fellini's 8 1/2 | Blu Ray | (03/02/2020) from £16.33   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Fellini's most acclaimed work, 8 1/2 won two Oscars ® including Best Foreign Film. Fellini is unanimously voted by film critics - and notably, by filmmakers - as one of the greatest directors of all time. And Fellini's 8 ½ is revered as the most important European film ever made and film buffs' ultimate film of all time! MARCELLO MASTROIANNI is Fellini's alter ego, Guido, a successful filmmaker who, embarking on his next film, discovers he has a complete director's block: he has no story to tell ! Harassed by his producers, his mistress (SANDRA MILO) and his wife (ANOUK AIMEE) while struggling to find the inspiration for his film, he increasingly retreats in dreamy recollections of his life and lovers, until fantasy - personified by the heavenly beautiful CLAUDIA CARDINALE - his memories and reality merge in the director's mind and on screen - in an astonishing, masterful spectacle which culminates in an electrifying triumph of optimism. As Guido, Fellini's alter-ego says at the end of 8 ½: Life is a party, let's live it together Special Features: New unique intimate interview with Sandra Milo the film's co-lead and off-screen real life ˜companion' of Fellini. Filmed especially for this CultFilms release Interview with Lina Wertmuller, Fellini's Assistant Director on 8 ½. Filmed especially for CultFilms. Lost Sequence documentary on the making of 8 ½ with interviews with cast crew and Fellini himself: the focus is on one of film-lore's great mystery! Where a massive sequence was shot with all the cast, but not included in the film, and it was never seen again. Tribute to Fellini's speech on receiving his Academy Award Oscar

• La Dolce Vita (1961) (Criterion Collection) UK Only | Blu Ray | (18/10/2021) from £17.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  The biggest hit from the most popular Italian filmmaker of all time, La dolce vita rocketed FEDERICO FELLINI (8½) to international mainstream successironically, by offering a damning critique of the culture of stardom. A look at the darkness beneath the seductive lifestyles of Rome's rich and glamorous, the film follows a notorious celebrity journalistplayed by a sublimely cool MARCELLO MASTROIANNI (8½)during a hectic week spent on the peripheries of the spotlight. This mordant picture was an incisive commentary on the deepening decadence of the European 1960s, and it provided a prescient glimpse of just how gossip- and fame-obsessed our society would become. Special Features: New 4K digital restoration by the Film Foundation, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray New visual essay by : : kogonada New interview with filmmaker Lina Wertmüller, who worked as assistant director on the film Scholar David Forgacs discusses the period in Italy's history when the film was made New interview with Italian film journalist Antonello Sarno about the outlandish fashions seen in the film Audio interview with actor Marcello Mastroianni from the early 1960s, conducted by film historian Gideon Bachmann Felliniana, a presentation of ephemera related to La dolce vita from the collection of Don Young PLUS: An essay by critic Gary Giddins