Ep 39: La Dolce Vita

Lady P's partying it up, Italian style, with fellow panelists Martin Kessler and Kristen Sales. Today's 39th Sight and Sound entry is Federico Fellini's LA DOLCE VITA. The film stars Marcello Mastroianni as a young intellectual type also coincidentally (or not) named Marcello. Throughout the course of the film we watch as Marcello attends parties, embarks on ill-fated love affairs, and cruises around the countryside. Fellini allows the viewer to indulge in all the fast car/faster women cliches, but keeps the viewer at an ironic distance, purposefully undercutting the glamour of his subjects. This irony, which is weaved throughout the film, serves to underline the film's central question: Is the sweet life really all that sweet? The panel mulls over that question, as well as whether or not that question is compelling enough to earn LA DOLCE VITA the title of 39th Greatest Film Of All Time.

Then, in case you needed further proof that rich, good-looking people are just as miserable as the rest of us, our second topic covers ways that extravagant wealth is depicted onscreen. The chasing of money has long been a fascination for American movie audiences. Our canon is littered with films about the folly of striving for financial success (see Citizen Kane, The Godfather, The Wolf of Wall Street, etc.) The panel talks about Hollywood's obsession with millionaires, and compares it with how European cinema deals with its moneyed elites.