"Actor: Valeria Ciangottini"

• 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

• 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