[La Dolce Vita] propelled Fellini into the front rank of international directors.

| Jun 12, 2020

The western cinema has needed for a long time its own kind of healthy puritanism to counter that from the east - notably Poland - and with directors like Fellini and Karel Reisz it now seems that it is getting it.

| Apr 10, 2020

Fellini admits to having a confused sense of values, to being as uncertain as a child. Why then does he try to make realist films? It's a great pity; for if La Dolce Vita had beenless grandiose and more private and personal it might have worked.

| Feb 10, 2020

It is a brilliant film, but there is nothing sweet about it.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 3, 2020

This film defined a decade before the decade arrived.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 23, 2019

Fellini has set out to move us with the depravity of contemporary life and has chosen what seems to me a poor method: cataloging sins. Very soon we find ourselves thinking: Is that all?

| May 1, 2013

What is happiness within the film's world? Fellini offers no easy answers.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 3, 2011

Everything has changed, and nothing has changed. How sour it still is.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jun 1, 2011

Perhaps many spectators will squirm at the three-hour length of the film or of some of its sequences (though director Federico Fellini cut some 30 minutes from his final print), yet others will never notice they've sat that long.

| May 8, 2007

The film was hugely successful and widely praised in its time, though it's really nothing more than the old C.B. De Mille formula of titillation and moralizing.

| May 8, 2007

There are perhaps a couple of party scenes too many, and the peripheral characters can be unconvincing, but the stylish cinematography and Fellini's bizarre, extravagant visuals are absolutely riveting.

| Jan 26, 2006

[An] epic of anomie.

Full Review | Dec 27, 2004

Marcello's journey is a string of remarkable vignettes that delivers fashion and sociology in equal measure.

Full Review | Dec 24, 2004

Rather than wallow in cynicism, Fellini's genius is characterised by a zest for life -- albeit a tragically insatiable one -- as he sprinkles dreamlike snapshots like glitter in the darkness.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 7, 2004

It comes from a period in which the filmmaker was perched between neorealism and all-out fantasia. As such, it represents the best of two worlds, even as Marcello can't find contentment in either one.

| Original Score: A | Dec 2, 2004

Federico Fellini's parody of the parasites who bask in the glory of cheap publicity not only exposes the emptiness of their lives, but also of those who report their antics as if they were of world-shattering import.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 6, 2004

The circus that became the '60s was ushered in cinematically by La Dolce Vita, Federico Fellini's masterwork about the so-called 'sweet life' on Rome's teeming Via Veneto.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Sep 23, 2004

As much as La Strada, 8 1/2 or Amarcord, La Dolce Vita still marks a summit of Fellini and of post-war Italian moviemaking.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 9, 2004

[Fellini's] poetic sensibilities are in full effect. There's also a tremendous soulfulness that roots the movie's depiction of sin in the soil of introspection.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 20, 2004

It received universal acclaim upon its release in 1960, and in retrospect it's the work that best represents its director.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 13, 2004