La Dolce Vita (The sweet life), Fellini (1960)

The scene takes place in Rome in the 1950s. The main character, Marcello Rubini (alias Marcello Mastroianni) is a journalist of a tabloid newspaper, but his dream has always been to become a writer. He works with a photo-grapher called Paparazzo. The word “paparazzi” originates from the film.

In the prologue, a helicopter carries a statue of the Christ over the city of Rome to the Vatican.
In the first scene of the film, Marcello and Paparazzo follow a couple in a restaurant. Marcello meets Maddalena there, a woman of the world who is idle. Then, Maddalena and Marcello walk around in Rome. They pick a prostitute up to her home, and in exchange, she lends them her room to make love. At dawn when coming back to his place, Marcello finds his wife Emma lying, she tried to commit suicide. He takes her to the hospital.

In the next scene, a Hollywood star, Sylvia (alias Anita Ekberg), arrives in Rome. The action is divided into several sub scenes: the arrival at the air-port, the visit to the Vatican, the interview, the party in the ruins, the walk at night and the fountain of Trevi. First surrounded by a crowd of photographers and journalists, Marcello finally manages to end up alone with her: this is the mythic scene of the fountain of Trevi, a dream that finishes with the rising of the sun.

[...] secret fear of chaos. His seeming serenity is actually very fragile. Whereas Marcello tries to resume his writing in a restaurant on the beach, a very young waitress that comes and goes distracts him: she is purity and innocence personified. Back in Rome, Marcello meets his father who has come to visit him. He takes him to the cabaret he was frequenting when he was young. They bring a dancer back home, but the father faints at dawn. That makes him come back to reality. [...]

[...] Issue: the growing Hedonism of our modern society In La dolce vita, Marcello moves from one action to the other like a spectator who discovers a film. His job is to be aware of what happens, in search of any juicy detail. He has a very active way of life, has a network of relations and the major part of his life is experienced at night. Even if the film seems to be unstructured, Fellini manages to organize the scenario by connecting the paints together through Marcello and some other main characters. [...]