Production Budget Analysis

The production budget for La Dolce Vita (1960) has not been publicly disclosed.

CAST: Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg, Anouk Aimée, Yvonne Furneaux, Magali Noël, Alain Cuny DIRECTOR: Federico Fellini CINEMATOGRAPHY: Otello Martelli MUSIC: Nino Rota PRODUCTION: Cinecittà Studios, Pathé Consortium Cinéma, Riama Film

Box Office Performance

La Dolce Vita earned $19,500,000 domestically and $147,000 internationally, for a worldwide total of $19,647,000. The film skewed heavily domestic (99%), suggesting strong North American appeal.

Detailed Box Office Notes

The film was a big hit in Europe with 13,617,148 admissions in Italy and 2,956,094 admissions in France, for a combined tickets sold in both countries. The film had the second most admissions for an Italian film behind War and Peace and was one of the top 10 most watched films in Italy.

The film earned $6 million in rentals in the United States and Canada in its original release and was the highest-grossing foreign language film at the US box office. The film was re-released in North America in 1966 by American International Pictures and earned $1.5 million in rentals. The total gross was $19,516,348.

Profitability Assessment

Insufficient publicly available data to assess profitability.

INDUSTRY IMPACT

PRODUCTION NOTES

▸ Writing

Credit for the creation of Steiner, the intellectual who kills himself after shooting his two children, goes to co-screenwriter Tullio Pinelli. Having gone to school with Italian novelist Cesare Pavese, Pinelli had closely followed the writer's career and felt that his over-intellectualism had become emotionally sterile, leading to his suicide in a Turin hotel in 1950. This idea of a "burnt-out existence" is carried over to Steiner in the party episode where the sounds of nature are not to be experienced first-hand by himself and his guests but in the virtual world of tape recordings.

The “false miracle” alludes to the 1958 investigation discounting the claims of two children to have been visited by the Madonna in a farm at Maratta Alta, near Terni. The "dead sea monster" alludes to the Montesi affair, in which the dead body of 21 year old Wilma Montesi was discovered on a beach in April 1953.

▸ Casting

La Dolce Vita marks the first collaboration between Fellini and Mastroianni. On November 4, 1977 in an interview on The Dick Cavett Show, Mastroianni recalled their first encounter. According to Mastroianni, Fellini told him that the producer wanted Paul Newman for the lead role, but that Fellini considered Newman too beautiful, while Mastroianni was "the face of normal." Mastroianni, somewhat embarrassed, requested to read the script before agreeing to the role:I said, "Well, ok, I would like to read the script please." He [Fellini] said, "Why not? Ennio, come with the script"...I opened the script and there was nothing written...blank pages...then I saw a sketch of the sea and a man swimming with an enormous...[Mastroianni indicates a large phallus]...and around his element there was a dance of mermaids. I became green, red, yellow. I said, "Well, it seems very interesting...Where do I sign? And that's how I met Fellini."

▸ Filming & Locations

Most of the film was shot at the Cinecittà Studios in Rome. Set designer Piero Gherardi created over eighty locations, including the Via Veneto, the dome of Saint Peter's with the staircase leading up to it, and various nightclubs. However, other sequences were shot on location such as the party at the aristocrats' castle filmed in the real Bassano di Sutri palace north of Rome. (Some of the servants, waiters, and guests were played by real aristocrats.) Fellini combined constructed sets with location shots, depending on script requirements—a real location often "gave birth to the modified scene and, consequently, the newly constructed set." The film's last scenes where the monster fish is pulled out of the sea and Marcello waves goodbye to Paola (the teenage "Umbrian angel") were shot on location at Passo Oscuro, a small resort town situated on the Italian coast 30 kilometers from Rome.

Fellini scrapped a major sequence that would have involved the relationship of Marcello with Dolores, an older writer living in a tower, to be played by 1930s Academy Award-winning actress Luise Rainer. If the director's dealings with Rainer "who used to involve Fellini in futile discussion" were problematic, biographer Kezich argues that while rewriting the screenplay, the Dolores character grew "hyperbolic" and Fellini decided to jettison "the entire story line."

The scene in the Trevi Fountain was shot over a week in winter: in March according to the BBC, in late January according to Anita Ekberg. Fellini claimed that Ekberg stood in the cold water in her dress for hours without any trouble while Mastroianni had to wear a wetsuit beneath his clothes - to no avail. It was only after the actor "polished off a bottle of vodka" and "was completely pissed" that Fellini could shoot the scene.

[Filming] Most of the film was shot at the Cinecittà Studios in Rome.

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

Summary: Won 1 Oscar. 11 wins & 12 nominations total

Awards Won: ★ Academy Award for Best Costume Design, Black-and-White — Piero Gherardi (34th Academy Awards) ★ Palme d'Or

Nominations: ○ Academy Award for Best Art Direction, Black and White (34th Academy Awards) ○ Academy Award for Best Director (34th Academy Awards) ○ Academy Award for Best Costume Design, Black-and-White (34th Academy Awards) ○ Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Screenplay (34th Academy Awards)

CRITICAL RECEPTION

Writing for L'Espresso, the Italian novelist Alberto Moravia highlighted the film's variations in tone,

In Filmcritica XI, Italian poet and film director Pier Paolo Pasolini argued that "La dolce vita was too important to be discussed as one would normally discuss a film.

Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, film critic and co-founder of Cahiers du cinéma, felt that

The New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther praised Fellini's

Roger Ebert considered La Dolce Vita as Fellini’s best film, as well as his favorite film of all, and listed it consistently in his top ten films for the Sight & Sound Greatest Films poll every ten years. Ebert's first review for the film, published in October 1961, was nearly the first film review he wrote, before he began his career as a film critic in 1967. The film was a touchstone for Ebert, as his perspective on the movie and his life evolved over time, summarized in his 1997 Great Movie review:

Kevin Thomas of Los Angeles Times wrote

Praising Fellini's direction he wrote

Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a 95% approval score based on 81 reviews, with an average rating of 9.10/10. The consensus states: "An epic, breathtakingly stylish cinematic landmark, La dolce vita remains riveting in spite of—or perhaps because of—its sprawling length". On Metacritic, the film has a 95/100 rating based on 13 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".