Among all the various posts, nobody has explored the elements of Italian Neo-Realism so evident in this movie (use of on-site, non-professional extras, mostly on-location shooting, etc). Please, you true movie buffs, let me hear some comments on this. I'm not a buff myself, but would love to hear from someone who is. Thanks.
shareLa dolce vita really does seem to me like a "transitional movie" in Fellini's opus. It has both the neorealistic elements of his previous films and foreshadowings of his later, dreamlike films with the unusual way the plot and the dialogues are structured.
I'm not an expert on Fellini though, maybe some one else can add something to this.
I've long thought of this film as the missing link between Italian neorealism and the French nouvelle vague.
While "La Dolce Vita" lacks the latter's explicit experiments in form (jump cuts, real-time plots, breaking the fourth wall, etc), it has a loose, episodic plot that is more concerned with the existential implications of the main character's lifestyle than with concrete story events.
Within Fellini's filmography, the transitional effect of "La Dolce Vita" is undeniable. It is the watershed film separating the earlier, linear and mainstream movies (e.g. "La Strada", "Nights of Cabiria") from the more experimental fare of "8 1/2" or "City of Women".
I don't know if someone noticed this neorealism-nouvelle vague link before, and can't think of any other films signalling that transition in European cinema. Can you?