Fellini’s Casanova boasts an assortment of people, locations, and entire sequences that are created and realized in a way that can only be called “Felliniesque.” Clichéd though it may be, there is simply no other adequate description.
“We must get beyond passions, like a great work of art. In such miraculous harmony. We should love each other outside of time… detached.” That’s a line from Federico Fellini’s art house classic La Dolce Vita, a movie that’s pure ’60s but is so freeing and whimsical in so many regards that it too exists …
There is a lot that happens in “Fellini Satyricon,” and multiple collaborators made it possible, but in the end, Fellini is the star of the show here. And what a show it is.
There is, in the end, no denying La Dolce Vita’s impact. It wasn’t just a film. As Antonello Sarno contends, it was (and still is) a “phenomenon in culture, fashion, and society.”
10. Altered States (1980) Directed by: Ken Russell Is it a horror film? Many of Ken Russell’s films could be argued as such, but there’s enough in Altered States that makes it less horror and more science fiction/psychological thriller. Based on the novel by Paddy Chayefsky, Altered States introduced the world to William Hurt (and …
Had I seen La Dolce Vita at an earlier age I would not have appreciated it the same way I do now. I’m sure I would have gotten caught up in the wild ride main character Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) takes. The spiralling mix of booze, women, and empty pleasure, the endless nights of loud music boxing one’s ears, and the mumbling alcohol dreams of a blonde that couldn’t possibly exist. This all would have been delightful to the younger, more irresponsible me. It meant nothing to feel nothing, and any hauntings of a void could be squashed with a smirk and a wry word of expression.