Page 112 - PROTAGONIST 121

La dolce vita is not only one of the greatest movies in film history worldwide;

it is the movie that, still today, has crystallized in the imagination of
spectators everywhere a style, an elegance, and an aesthetic, which

represent Italy and the Made in Italy brand throughout the world.

Languidly reclining on a couch at the he was a master. He recounted the world tressed Fellini because he couldn’t identify
stern of a luxurious yacht as it navigates through a lie and embellished its appear- with the changes in society and customs.
the waters of the island of Mortorio, in ance so people wouldn’t see (too clearly) These changes were replacing his idea of
the Maddalena Archipelago, the ex-Spice the unpleasant dirt of reality. aesthetic and style – the image of Italy –
Girl Geri Halliwell sings “Take me back This is why a bitter and poignant with another matrix that was much more
to my sweet la vida / Find my love my movie like La dolce vita still instinctively boorish, television-oriented, plastic. A fake
dolce vita.” evokes an image of all-Italian beauty and reality that had nothing to do with dreams
It’s only one of the many potential elegance today. and desire, but reveled instead in falseness
takes on a term that already existed before and mere appearance.
the movie, but which was made iconic and After all, Federico Fellini did the Federico Fellini reacted to this bit-
immortal, in Italy and (above all) abroad, same thing with his stories of the provinc- terness with a melancholy movie that was
by Federico Fellini’s 1960 masterpiece. es, the places he himself came from be- almost a testament, in which he returned
La dolce vita is not only one of the fore he became an integral part of Rome’s to the cruise ship splendor he had created
greatest movies in film history worldwide, intellectual and film world. In this case, with the fabulous Rex in Amarcord and
its power still holds today, sixty years after too, first with I Vitelloni and then with transformed it into the steamship Gloria
being released and winning the Golden Amarcord, Federico Fellini depicted an N., on which the story of And the Ship Sails
Palm at the Cannes Film Festival. It has Italy that had been modified by memory, On takes place.
crystallized, in the imagination of specta- dreams, and his imagination. Fellini’s re-
tors everywhere, a style (of life, and more), ality was always modeled on desire; this is To Fellini, the Gloria N. and its passen-
an elegance, and an aesthetic, which rep- why invented images are so universal and gers represented a world and an Italy that
resent Italy and the Made in Italy brand immune to the passage of time. he felt were disappearing, as they set sail for
throughout the world. a funereal destination. But luckily for him
Thus, he sang of an Italy which was and (above all) for us, the ship laden with
In the film, Marcello Mastroianni, simultaneously very real and fantastical, Felliniesque imagination, his idea of beau-
gorgeous and blasé, was always impecca- and it became the worldwide image of Ita- ty and Italy, his aesthetic and his poetics,
ble and impeccably dressed in a strictly ly. Federico Fellini also did this with female continues to merrily navigate the seas of
dark suit and a strictly white shirt. Only beauty (Mediterranean and not), bringing cinema, fascinating spectators all over the
at the end of the movie did Fellini and the to the silver screen women of legendary world as they gaze at the ship like the pro-
costume designer Piero Gherardi (who proportions, both for their shape and meas- tagonists of Amarcord admired the Rex, in
won an Oscar for his work) invert this urements, and for the power of their image. hopes of going on board and trying to imi-
color combination. This aesthetic and Gradisca and the Tobacconist in Am- tate that inimitable style.
chromatic inversion represented the char- arcord; Anita Ekberg in La Dolce Vita; the
acter’s change of personality and mood, as women in Casanova. And even more, the Only one filmmaker has had the nec-
he abandoned his ambitions and values, dreamlike harems in 8 ½ and City of Wom- essary courage, bravado, and ability to take
and lets himself go with the flow of a syb- en, in which Donatella Damiani, the unfor- Fellini’s aesthetic in hand and continue to
aritic and dissolute life which, in fact, had gettable starlet who was almost always clad propose a fantastical yet real image of Italy:
very little “dolce” about it. in a bikini, embodied a quintessential ver- Paolo Sorrentino.
With the monumental beauty of Rome sion of a femininity that Fellini imposed (as Fellini placed an enormous rhinoceros
(the Trevi Fountain, Via Veneto, the Baths he did with all his other beloved women) as on board the Gloria N.; along with the pro-
of Caracalla, the EUR) and a series of cars a model on his spectators. tagonist, it is the only survivor of the ship-
that made Italian automotive history (such wreck at the end of the movie. Thus, it is no
as the Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spider and the City of Women was a source of great bit- coincidence that Sorrentino fills his movies
1.9 TI, the Autobianchi Bianchina Tras- terness for Fellini due to the backlash raised and TV series with exotic animals. That
formabile, the Fiat 1100 station wagon, by the feminist front. It was compounded lifeboat, which drifted for many years, has
and the 500), Federico Fellini successful- by the additional bitterness caused by the been rescued by the Neapolitan director in
ly played a game of legerdemain, at which Eighties: a decade that profoundly dis- an evident and ideal passing of the baton.

110 Cinema Protagonist