"On (the) big screen and in a luminous new print (La Dolce Vita) looks ravishing....Although some elements-like Christianity, eyeliner, and sexual modesty-seem touchingly quaint, Fellini's film looks both fresh and gorgeous." -Georgia Brown, Village Voice, September 1991 La Dolce Vita opens with one of the most telling images ever captured (in widescreen), pure in its symbolism yet entirely mechanical in fact: a helicopter is seen flying over Rome carrying a gigantic statue of Christ to St. Peter's Cathedral. "Oh, look," remarks a young woman, sunbathing below, "there's Jesus. Where's he going?" Fellini creates a rich, intricate tapestry of "Rome, the Babylon of my dreams" in La Dolce Vita. Juxtaposition and composition are finely tuned to exude an air of randomness. The episodic narrative follows Marcello, a jaded journalist (played by Mastroianni) on an odyssey in search of himself amid the decadent, dehumanized beauties (the mothers and the whores) of Rome's glitterati. "Whither Jesus?" is a question, perhaps addressed, perhaps dismissed, in several prize, witty set pieces including Anita Ekberg's visit to St. Peter's wearing a tight-fitting curé's habit; a "miracle" in a small town-the prank of two kids-and its resultant publicity; and Marcello and his poker-faced compatriots finding a dead fish, with its enormous open eye, on the beach. In Italy, Catholics were forbidden to see La Dolce Vita, but there are more scenes of quick and real pathos than there are orgies in the world on which Fellini, the former journalist, files his report.