Le Dolce Vita

A helicopter flies over Rome dangling a gigantic statue of Christ. “Oh, look,” remarks a woman sunbathing below, “there’s Jesus. Where’s he going?” Federico Fellini creates a rich, intricate tapestry of “Rome, the Babylon of my dreams” in La dolce vita. The episodic narrative follows a jaded journalist, Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni), on an odyssey in search of himself amid the decadent, dehumanized beauties of Rome’s glitterati. In Italy, Catholics were forbidden to see La dolce vita when it premiered, but in the world on which former journalist Fellini filed his report, there are more scenes of quick and real pathos than there are orgies.