La Dolce Vita (2-Disc Collector's Edition) | Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg

La Dolce Vita (2-Disc Collector's Edition) | Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg | Existentialism and Its Limits

DVDs:

La Dolce Vita (2-D...

	La Dolce Vita (2-Disc Collector's Edition) Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg Koch Lorber Films, 2004 average customer review:based on 109 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

Excellent film and edition

There's not much to add to the laudits for this film. Groundbreaking director in what some consider his most groundbreaking film. The era produced many innovative films that influenced cinema thereafter, and La Dolce Vita is primary in that regard.

More to the point of this review, this Criterion edition meets the highest of the quality standards they have almost solely set for the film DVD. Any DVD today that doesn't have commentary and features are a rip-off for buyers, but the quality varies significantly (I dare you to sit through Rob Reiner's commentary on "When Harry Met Sally").

Criterion truly understands the film lover, the person who wants to know as much as possible about the film, including the how and why of its elements and the who and what behind its making. They realize that not only film students are interested in the process and people of moviemaking. Not cheap, their editions however offer far more value than the usual DVD release.

The commentary by Richard Schickel, a true expert on film, is extremely literate and informative. His command of his knowledge keeps the insights coming non-stop. His purpose is to inform and to interest, and he stays right on the mark throughout.

Enough features are included to require a second disk, and I believe this edition contains more than any other Fellini film edition. Interviews with Fellini himself as well as others involved in the production give excellent background and context to the film and to Fellini and his career.

Film buffs will appreciate the care with which this extensive set of extras has been compiled. Criterion certainly has set the standards for film editions, and this is one of their best.

for more information click here

Existentialism and Its Limits

It is difficult to imagine a deeper film than this. Fellini presents several existential choices for his main character, Marcello, played by the marvelous Marcello Mastroianni -- jet-set life (the visiting starlet and its possibilities), intellectual respectability (Steiner and company), religious ecstasy (the children's sighting of Mary), passionate love (the curious fling with Maddalena), bourgeois love (his needy girlfriend, Emma).

As the film exposes each choice as a fraud, a farce, or a disaster, what does it mean to say Marcello is free to choose? He is trapped by too much rather than too little choice -- an elegant encapsulation of existentialism!

So much for my attempt to unpack the film's meaning; the many memorable scenes, and the many subsequent films that allude to them, are the better reason to cherish it.

for more information click here

La Dolce Vita

Daring for its time, Fellini's Oscar-nominated "Vita" is often remembered for the zaftig Anita Ekberg's swim in the Trevi Fountain and for the very first shot in the film, of a statue of Jesus being lifted over the city of Rome by helicopter. Yet its almost three hours' running time includes a procession of unforgettable images and scenes, as Mastroianni--in a sublime performance--marches numbly into the vacuous, debauched life of modern-day celebrity in Rome, finally succumbing to the empty, forced frivolity surrounding him. A sharply observed, absorbing study of dizzying decadence.

for more information click here