Griffith and Eisenstein

Notes made from Griffith to Eisenstein and Back-Peter A. Dart

Griffith and Eisenstein stand out in the history of modern motion picture as two giants, both were innovators who advanced the basic form and structure of motion pictures.Both came to films from theatre backgrounds.

Griffith’s influence on Eisenstein and V.I Pudovkin, Lev Kuleshov. But how much has Eisenstein influenced American film form?

Films of 1908 when Griffith began directing motion pictures films were crude: 10 minutes in length one reelers were made cheaply and sold cheaply to mass audience.In six years Griffith mastered the craft He realized Edvin S. Porter had only understood partially the basic storytelling . He shot one individual scene and edited, arranged in context of other shots. Griffith realized he could photograph each part of the scene with the final arrangement in mind, These details could then be arranged successively by which the audience could make their inferences. It involved them as well. In 1908 the scenes were shot as though film was like a stage play transferred into film. The close-up was unheard of. But Griffith began moving his camera for closer shots. He also tried extra shots of the surrounding locale for ‘atmosphere’. In case of dense action like a battle or a chase he used long shots or extremely wide angle shots. He began to move the camera while it shot a scene. Iris mask to block out extraneous details were also used by him. Selection of a scene arrangement of shots keeping in mind tempo pace rhythm and action added to the story telling new richness. Parallel cutting was the next innovation where two scenes one after the other giving an impression both were happening simultaneously. Emotional impact of two scenes was that the sum of parts were greater than the whole scene. Each scene resonated in the minds of the audience and gave emotional impact that was more than a straight story telling of Porter or other film makers before him.

Of his great films Intolerance(1916) had the greatest impact on Russian film makers.

Montage was the result.Montage of parallel scenes progressing where each detail of a scene though unrelated in its progression acquired a depth of its own:dynamic juxtaposition of these parts made them greater than single scene. Emotional, ideological and artistic power arising out of montage was the gift of Soviet film makers.’The school of Griffith before all else is a school of tempo. However he didn’t have the strength to compete with the young Soviet school of montage in the field of expression and of relentlessly affective rhythm.” Sergei Eisenstein

please refer pen portraits#46 for DW Griffith

benny

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Pen Portraits #46

DAVID (WARK) GRIFFITH (American) (1875  -  1948)
Film director.

A stage actor and aspiring playwright who entered the cinema in 1908, Griffith is generally acknowledged as the father of the cinema, the man who invented everything from cross cutting to the close-up. Though rival claims may be pressed – for Louis Feuillade and Benjamin Christenan, among others – the fact remains that Griffith, with his unbounded ambition and taste for grandeur, did more than any one else to make the cinema realise its own potential. His two more famous films ‘Intolerance’ (1916) and ‘Birth of a Nation’ (1915), still stun with their epic scale, fantastic set pieces and almost biblically lofty sentiments. It is a pity that the inspirational claims of these masterworks have tended to overshadow the more endearing merits of the small, unassuming sagas of rural America such as ‘True Heart Susie’. Here, inimitable Griffith preserved an age of lost innocence, a world of white fenced houses and sunlit orchards where ragged youths and demure maidens with rose bud lips dreamed their dreams of pure romance.
benny

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Cinebuff, I’m one

For the notice of cinebuffs.

Any one interested to read on films given below may go to cinebuff.wordpress.com.

The blog is titled A Night at the Movies where I shall cover more films. In this blog exclusively for films I hope to give my appreciation on films that didn’t make in my Movie Lists. Here I hope to give films as fine as any that made to my first choice of 100 best films. 

1.Pepe le Moko-1937

2. A Double Life-1947

3.Ivan the Terrible-1944

4. The 39 steps-1935

5.The American Friend-1977

6.Les Visiteurs du Soir-1942

7. To Be or Not To Be-1942

8. The Godfather Part II-1974

9. Umberto D.-1952

10. The Earrings of Madame de.. 1953

11. The Loves of a Blonde- 1965

12. Ashes and Diamonds-1958

13. Last Holiday-1950

14. Drôle de Drame-1937

Fourteen and still counting,

benny

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Notice

I have started a new blog exclusively for films. A Night at the Movies it is called. I hope to post some 100 films which have a different format than the Movie Lists. I just posted Pepe le Moko.

Those who are interested may check out cinebuff.wordpress.com.

benny

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My Hundred Films

Movie Lists

The following film list is my personal choice. There are quite a few others which I could have included but then I had to stick to the number. b.

1.
La Grande Illusion-1937
The Seventh Seal-1956
The Best Years Of Our Lives-1946
Five Easy Pieces-1970
Midnight Cowboy-1969
La Strada-1954
The Passion of Joan of Arc-1928
Greed-1924
Goodbye Mr.Chips-1939
Double Indemnity-1944

2.
The Servant-1963
Stagecoach-1939
The African Queen-1951
Viridiana-1961
Rashomon-1950
The Bicycle Thief-1947
A Streetcar Named Desire-1951
The Grapes Of Wrath-1940
Wild Strawberries-1957
Singin’ In The Rain-1952

3.
The Third Man-1949
The Treasure Of Sierra Madre-1948
All About Eve-1950
Lawrence Of Arabia-1962
On The Waterfront-1954
Sunset Boulevard-1950
Napoleon-1927
À Nous La Liberté-1931
Two Films By Jean Vigo: 1933-34
L’Atlante-
Zéro de Conduite
The  Graduate-1967

4.
Vertigo-1958
Some Like It Hot-1959
Bonnie And Clyde-1967
The Philadelphia Story-1940
Mutiny On The Bounty-1935
It’s A Wonderful Life-1946
Battleship Of Potemkin-1925
Seven Samurai-1954
The Informer-1935
La Dolce Vita-1960
5.

The Wizard Of Oz-1939
The Bridge On The River Kwai-1957
M-1931
Godfather-1972
Pather Panchali-1955
Casablanca-1942
Les Enfants du Paradis-1945
Citizen Kane-1941
Touch of Evil-1958
How Green Was My Valley-1941

6.
Nosferatu-1922
Gone With The Wind-1939
Knife In The Water-1962
The Maltese Falcon-1941
La Symphonie Pastorale-1946
City Lights-1931
Amadeus-1984
Wages Of Fear-1952
My Fair Lady-1964
Great Expectations-1946

7.
Room At The Top-1959
Closely Watched Trains-1966
The Shop On The Main Street-1965
Intimate Lighting, 1965
Los Olvidados-1950
Drifting Clouds- 1996
Metropolis-1927
The Bank Dick-1940
Anne Hall-1977
Jules et Jim-1962

8.
Crime of Monsieur Lange-1936
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest-1975
Kind Hearts And Coronets-1949
Late Spring-1949
Forbidden Games-1952
La Bête Humaine-1938
Poetic Realism
-Le Jour Se Lève-1939
-Le Quai des Brumes-1938
Intolerance-1916
The General-1927
Strike-1925
9.

Dekalog-1988
Aguirre, The Wrath of God-1972
Ballad of a Soldier-1959
Raging Bull-1980
L’Age d’Or-1930
Les Diaboliques-1954
Cries And Whispers-1972
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant-1972
Joyless Street-1925
Pandora’s Box-1929
10.

The Blue Angel -1930
2001: A Space Odyssey- 1968
8½ – 1963
La Règle Du Jeu- 1939
Sunrise- 1927
Il Conformista-1970
L’avventura-1960
The Apartment-1960
Tokyo Story-1953
The Burmese Harp-1956

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I Vitelloni-1953

I Vitelloni or the young bulls is the third cinematic essay of Federico Fellini and it was a mature work as far as it reconstructed the trends of neorealism in his own personal idiom. At a time when critics tended to look at films dealing with postwar Italy from a Marxian point of view he was neither conservative nor reactionary. He was far too individualistic to look at social reality with labels. His mature films showed his heart was fully engaged in the creative process whether it dealt with social issues or his interior life. Here I am concerned with pre-felliniesque films.  I dare to think his training as a wandering caricaturist helped him to be objective and go to the essence leaving the claptrap of ideology to pamphlets. He learned what he required more from Chaplin than Rosselini. The social conscience of Chaplin was clothed in melodrama while his characters showed his own. It is pertinent to remember that his films in the early period are more autobiographical than derived from books of others. Between I vitelloni of 1953 and Amarcord of 1973 we can see certain characterisitics that show Fellini at his best. The first is a group caricature of four layabouts in a stifling beach town. It could well be Rimini from where Fellini escaped for Rome in the Thirties. In that sleepy provincial town the social stagnation that enervate I vitelloni has to do much with the economic distress of the post war Italy. Whereas Amarcord traces the rise of fascism in the way of behavior of a few of the town’s inhabitants. Unlike Chaplin who created the Tramp more as a peg to place his genius, Fellini was more in the tradition of a storyteller. His characters are there to delineate themselves and masks they wear are as such we all wear in the growing pains of finding our feet as and when needed. Alberto lives with his mother as Fausto is under the thumb of his feisty father. Alberto( Alberto Sordi) has no qualms of living off his sister but he makes it a point to show he is the man of the house. Fausto (Franco Fabrizi) on the other hand impregnates his friend’s sister and yet finds excuses for not doing the right thing. All these characters are other selves of Fellini who bear the torch lit by his personal vision. Antonia Shanahan, in senses of cinema, July 2002 writes thus, ‘As a veteran of the scripting team responsible for two exemplars of Italian neorealism, Roma città aperta and Paisà (both Roberto Rossellini, 1945 and ’46), Fellini was interested in moving toward a “cinema of Reconstruction.” After Paisà, he redefined his artistic credo to “looking at reality with an honest eye – but any kind of reality; not just social reality, but also spiritual reality, metaphysical reality, anything man has inside him.” ‘(1)( Federico Fellini, “The Road Beyond Neo-Realism, ” in Fellini, “La Strada”: Federico Fellini, Director, ed. Peter Bondanella and Manuela Gieri,-New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987, p.217.)
Fellini showed his genius in such films as Nights of Cabiria, La Strada and La Dolce Vita.

I Vitelloni follows the lives of five young vitelloni, or layabouts, and when the film opens the tourist season has come to an end with the choosing of the summer’s Miss Sirene. It begins with the end of summer, the “vitelloni” introduced in a long, narrated tracking-shot (clearly the inspiration for a similar scene in Goodfellas, and much emulated since.) In the ensuing excitement of the locals who predict great things for the newly crowned Miss Sirene, Fellini uses her innocence and trustful nature to show how the stifling provincialism has already claimed one victim. She (Leonora Ruffo) is the sister of one of the ‘vitelloni’. Moraldo has none of the qualities that make Fausto seem the undisputed leader of the group. As the film progresses we see the characters change their positions. Fausto’s supposedly leadership is shallow as he is unable to raise to the demands made on him. He is the first to leave for Rome but he comes back without being able to succeed there. While Sandra adores her husband and is blissfully unaware of his philandering nature. A telling scene in the cinema hall reveals to the viewer what she does not see. At the end of the episode we see her afraid and she may not have caught him out but she knows he has already gone astray. Far more serious is the way Fausto loses his secure job. He is able to lull his wife and his friend into believing a lie but we know that he would put his marriage into jeopardy sooner or later. Fausto has fallen from his position of adoration to one who is need of correction. Here we see Sandra and Moraldo show much more mettle in facing upto the reality. Shedding her starry eyed admiration for a feckless husband she is able to transform her credulity into a resolute strength. In the end she is able to make Fausto toe the line and behave responsibly. Meanwhile the would-be playwright Leopoldo (Leopoldo Trieste) continues to work on plays that are unplayable and Alberto (Alberto Sordi) who has taken on himself to keep the family honor in tact is helpless to stop his sister, Olga (Claude Farell), from eloping with her lover. Ultimately Moraldo breaks free from his self-imposed paralysis and moves on, leading to one of the most poignant farewell sequences in film history.
I Vitelloni was a hit in Italy upon its release, and it established his reputation as a filmmaker of world class. By the way the title became a part of Italian vernacular.
Fellini’s alter ego Moraldo we shall see in La Dolce Vita where he is of course called Marcello Rubini. I Vitelloni includes some of his most subtle filmmaking and most personal material. Loosely structured and oddly narrated, I Vitelloni is also an insightful and accurate representation of Italy in the immediate postwar period, full of references to the massive social changes underway. Fifty years after its release it is seen as a seminal film in Italian cinema.
Similar Movies
American Graffiti (1973, George Lucas)
Mean Streets (1973, Martin Scorsese)
We All Loved Each Other So Much (1975, Ettore Scola)
Basilischi (1963, Lina Wertmüller)
Amici Miei (1975, Mario Monicelli)
The Last Kiss (2001, Gabriele Muccino)
Y Tu Mamá También (2001, Alfonso Cuarón)
After Freedom (2002, Vahe Babaian)
25 Watts (2001, Juan Pablo Rebella, Pablo Stoll)
Movies with the Same Personnel
Ginger and Fred (1986, Federico Fellini)
The White Sheik (1952, Federico Fellini)
Intervista (1987, Federico Fellini)
La Dolce Vita (1960, Federico Fellini)
Fellini’s Roma (1972, Federico Fellini)
Nights of Cabiria (1957, Federico Fellini)
The Flowers of St. Francis (1950, Roberto Rossellini)
Nestore l’ultima corsa (1994, Alberto Sordi)
Ack: brightlights.com-Megan Ratner, all movie- Elbert Ventura
and senses of cinema)

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L’avventura-1960

The Cannes Film Festival, 1960. Over two hours into a new Italian film, a woman runs down the imposing corridor of a baroque hotel in extreme long shot. Spectators shout: “cut, cut!” amid frequent laughter and jeering’.The director and the star of the film runs from the screening room. The director was Michelangelo Antonioni.

L’Avventura is a film that a viewer may either intensely admire or hate; there can’t be anything in between. Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti), the male lead in this movie is as hollow as Marcello in Il Conformista( Bertolucci). He is an aging architect who has opted out for easy money and has grown up without acquiring any graces that maturity could instill in any. He has brought along his mistress Anna (Lea Massari) and her friend Claudia (Monica Vitti) on a yachting trip to Lisca Bianca, an almost unpopulated volcanic island off the coast of Sicily. Anna is unhappy and bored with Sandro. Her best friend is by her own admission a nouveau riche but she doesn’t fit with jetsetter’s shallow ethics. After napping on the rocks, they awaken to find Anna has gone without a trace. Claudia blames Sandro for her disappearance. But as they search all over the island for Anna they comes closer. Soon they are lovers. But love for one who is emotionally awkward must serve as prelude for many heartaches to come. The firstblow comes too soon as Claudia seeks out Sandro who is late in coming and she finds him in the arms of a prostitute. Sandro has a breakdown on the desolate beach and Claudia forgives silently. Antonioni in this film explores social-sexual relationships and the film is set on a windtossed and barren island. Environment mirroring the emotional states of Sandro and Claudia.
The audience at the Cannes expected to see mystery and drama and instead Antonioni gave them a study in existentialism of their own condition. Naturally the viewer was not amused.
Along with much of Antonioni’s other work, L’avventura is often cited as an early feminist film with strong and richly characterized female protagonists.

Analysis:
Did Antonioni forget to get back to Anna after she mysteriously disappeared on the island? Anna’s disappearance in a traditional film would have occupied the turning point around which rest of the events fall into place. ‘Antonioni is interested less in developing a logical story than in exploring states of feeling and breakdowns in human connection’(Robert Firsching-all movie). Sandro and his emotional barrenness is delineated through the prism of Anna’ disappearance; Here is a man who as Bertrolucci’s character, Marcello wanted to belong to those who are shallow and dissolute. The jetset have no ideology that we associate with Fascism or any other except having a good time. As Roger Ebert characterizes them they are “on the brink of disappearance”- Ebert -Chicago Sun Times, 19 January 1997) Anna’s disappearance must be unfortunate but their emotional depth being negligible they move on to other pursuits of the moment. Antonioni treats her case from Sandro’s own point of view that by association represents theirs as well.
“Without God, the universe may seem to have no ultimate order or rational unifying principle”, writes philosopher Peter K. McInerny of existentialism.
From an existentialist’s point of view man is adrift: before Anna disappears, Antonioni presents a joyless swimming party where the characters seem adrift and on the island, they perambulate and view one another as intrusive elements. With astonishing economy of style and mise-en scene isolation of the individuals as islands is further reinforced.
After Claudia has supplanted Anna in Sandro’s bed her guilt is projected in a scene that cannot fail us as hint of the film-makers intent: he is not telling a straightforward story. In Claudia’s guilt ridden mind the public squares acquires a menacing aspect, entirely composed of men.
Cast
Gabriele Ferzetti     Sandro
Monica Vitti     Claudia
Lea Massari     Anna
Dominique Blanchar     Giulia
Renzo Ricci     Anna’s Father
Dorothy de Poliolo     Gloria Perkins
Esmeralda Ruspoli     Patrizia
James Addams     Corrado
Lelio Luttazzi     Raimondo
Giovanni Petrucci     Young Prince
Jack O’Connell     Old man on the island
Angela Tommasi di Lampedusa     The Princess

Similar Movies
Picnic at Hanging Rock  (1975, Peter Weir)
Red Desert  (1964, Michelangelo Antonioni)
Blow-Up  (1966, Michelangelo Antonioni)
Le Grand Meaulnes  (1967, Jean-Gabriel Albicocco)
La Salamandre  (1971, Alain Tanner)
Under the Sand  (2000, François Ozon)
Climates  (2006, Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
Danzon  (1991, Maria Novaro)
Quiet City  (2007, Aaron Katz)
Paris, Texas  (1983, Wim Wenders)
Movies with the Same Personnel
Blow-Up  (1966, Michelangelo Antonioni)
The Passenger  (1975, Michelangelo Antonioni)
L’eclisse  (1962, Michelangelo Antonioni)
Red Desert  (1964, Michelangelo Antonioni)
Zabriskie Point  (1970, Michelangelo Antonioni)
La Notte  (1961, Michelangelo Antonioni)
Le Amiche  (1955, Michelangelo Antonioni)
Grazie, Zia  (1967, Salvatore Samperi)
Other Related Movies
is followed by:      La Notte  (1961, Michelangelo Antonioni)
is featured in:      My Voyage to Italy  (2001, Martin Scorsese)
influenced:      Climates  (2006, Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
Trivia:
First part of the unofficial “Incommunicability Trilogy” with Notte, La (1961) and Eclisse, L’ (1962). Michelangelo Antonioni didn’t make the three movies as a trilogy, but cinema historians have called it so since then.(imdb)
Compiler:benny

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81/2-1963

8½ ( written Otto e mezzo in Italian) is a 1963 film written and directed by Italian director Federico Fellini.
8½ is highly autobiographical: Fellini would have preferred to externalize his creative processes that underpin his professional life by making the central character a writer. According to screenwriter Tullio Pinelli, in the original script, Guido was a writer who could not finish his novel. Since Mastrionni had just finished La notte, for Antonioni, Fellini changed the character into a movie director.( He seems to have joked, “How am I going to ask Marcello to play a writer again? He’ll end up believing he’s one and he’ll write a novel.”) The character of Guido carries much of the state of mind of a film director whose creative flow has temporarily hit a hiatus. Many critics consider it the best movie about making movies.
It came number three on the 2002 Sight & Sound Director’s Poll (beaten only by Citizen Kane and The Godfather Parts 1 and 2.) The film was shot in black-and-white by influential and innovative cinematographer Gianni di Venanzo, and features a soundtrack by Nino Rota.

Title:
The working title for 8½ was La bella confusione (The Beautiful Confusion). 81/2 refers to the number of films he had done up to date. Besides six full length features he had part in two short segments and colloboration with another director that in his eyes made only two and a half films. The feature films are given below.
Lo sceicco bianco (The White Sheik)- 1952, I vitelloni (Vitelloni) in 1953, La strada (The Road) in 1954, Il bidone (The Swindle) in 1955, Le notti di Cabiria (Nights of Cabiria) in 1957, and La dolce vita (The Sweet Life) in 1960.

His two short segments included: the segment “Un Agenzia Matrimoniale” (“Marriage Agency”) in the 1953 film L’amore in città (Love in the City) and the segment “Le Tentazioni del Dottor Antonio” from the 1962 film Boccaccio ’70. His collaboration, with Alberto Lattuada, was Luci del varietà (Variety Lights) in 1950.

Theme
“A director makes only one movie in his life. Then he breaks it into pieces and makes it again,” The quote is from Jean Renoir and it may well apply in the case of the central character of this film. Guido Anselmi as a director has a vision unique to himself as much as it is part of his life experience; while directing a film it must also compete with the every day details of  the man, the production schedule, budget – and his personal problems with his wife and his mistress are all part of the equation. With such myriad facets attendant on his creative control over the film at any given point of time, how does he derive personal satisfaction? When does  happiness come in for an artist who is also a human being ? Fellini offers no solutions but the film is valid for any creative artist. This is the crux of this movie.

Overview:
Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) acts as a film director who hasn’t come to grips with a film material on hand. To him it is an ill-defined film that is on surface science fiction but also it could be autobiographical.  His artistic difficulties are confounded by his own marital problems. He is as a result suffering from “director’s block.” As with many temperamental artists he lets his work adrift, retreats into his messy private life and goes to a nightclub clairvoyant who makes him recall his childhood. He fantazises and the imagery of his interior world are clues to man’s sex drive and for his thirst for power. He has fantasies about keeping a harem of women at bay with a whip, or about being hounded to death by desperate producers and a hostile press. Fellini resorts to a technique that has now come to be known as ‘Felleniesque’ where narrative logic is somewhat twisted pretzel-like where reality coalesces into dreams, surrealistic touches of memory and there is no telling where his private world ends and reality takes hold. An artist be it a fashion designer or a film director lives in parallel worlds and he bridges them alike. In Guido, Fellini presents, his alter ego a psychological portrait that must explain in part very familiar to him. His directorial chair must have substituted the couch in a shrink’s office. Guido never makes his film while Fellini could finish his and move on to other projects, perhaps all the more stronger for his self analytical work.
Produced by     Angelo Rizzoli
Written by     Ennio Flaiano
Tullio Pinelli
Federico Fellini
Brunello Rondi
Starring
* Marcello Mastroianni as Guido Anselmi
* Claudia Cardinale as Claudia
* Anouk Aimée as Luisa Anselmi
* Sandra Milo as Carla
* Rossella Falk as Rossella
* Barbara Steele as Gloria Morin
* Madeleine LeBeau as Madeleine
* Caterina Boratto as La signora misteriosa
* Eddra Gale as La Saraghina
* Guido Alberti as Pace
* Mario Conocchia as Conocchia
Bruno Agostini as Il segretario di produzione
* Cesarino Miceli Picardi as Cesarino
* Jean Rougeul as Carini
* Mario Pisu as Mario Mezzabotta
Music by     Nino Rota
Cinematography     Gianni Di Venanzo
Editing by     Leo Cattozzo
Release date(s)     February 14, 1963
Running time     138 minutes
As with most Italian films of this period the sound was entirely dubbed in afterwards; following a technique dear to Fellini many lines of the dialogue were written only during post-production, while the actors on the set mouthed random lines. This film marks the first time actress Claudia Cardinale was allowed to dub her own dialogue — previously her voice was thought to be too throaty and, coupled with her Tunisian accent, was considered undesirable.
Technical details

8½ was filmed in the spherical cinematographic process, using 35-millimeter film, and was exhibited with an aspect ratio of 1.78:1.

(ack:wikipedia)

In Retro
Four years after completing 8½, life imitated art. Fellini’s producer, Dino De Laurentiis, had invested in an expensive replica of Cologne Cathedral and other huge sets that had been built in Cinecittà for Fellini’s film Il viaggio di G. Mastorna. Fellini then informed De Laurentiis that he would not finish the film. De Laurentiis was furious, much like the producer in 8½.

Similar Movies
Alex in Wonderland  (1970, Paul Mazursky)
Stardust Memories  (1980, Woody Allen)
All That Jazz  (1979, Bob Fosse)
First Name: Carmen  (1983, Jean-Luc Godard)
Intervista  (1987, Federico Fellini)
Der Stand der Dinge  (1982, Wim Wenders)
I Dreamt I Woke Up  (1991, John Boorman)
Projection Privee  (1973, Francois Leterrier)
Adaptation  (2002, Spike Jonze)
Irma Vep  (1996, Olivier Assayas)
Movies with the Same Personnel
La Dolce Vita  (1960, Federico Fellini)
Juliet of the Spirits  (1965, Federico Fellini)
Intervista  (1987, Federico Fellini)
Fellini’s Roma  (1972, Federico Fellini)
Ginger and Fred  (1986, Federico Fellini)
City of Women  (1980, Federico Fellini)
Nights of Cabiria  (1957, Federico Fellini)
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow  (1963, Vittorio De Sica)
Other Related Movies
is featured in:      Fellini: I’m a Born Liar  (2003, Damian Pettigrew)
My Voyage to Italy  (2001, Martin Scorsese)
8 1/2 Women  (1999, Peter Greenaway)
is related to:      And the Ship Sails on  (1983, Federico Fellini)
Memorable Quotes:
Guido: Accept me as I am. Only then can we discover each other.
—-
Writer: It’s better to destroy than create what’s unnecessary.
—-
Guido: Enough of symbolism and these escapist themes of purity and innocence.
Guido: I thought my ideas were so clear. I wanted to make an honest film. No lies whatsoever. I thought I had something so simple to say. Something useful to everybody. A film that could help bury forever all those dead things we carry within ourselves. Instead, I’m the one without the courage to bury anything at all. When did I go wrong? I really have nothing to say, but I want to say it all the same.
—-
Guido: My Dears… Happiness consists of being able to tell the truth without hurting anyone.
—-
Guido: All the confusion of my life… has been a reflection of myself! Myself as I am, not as I’d like to be.
—-
Guido: The truth is: I do not know… I seek… I have not yet found. Only with this in mind can I feel alive and look at you without shame.
—-
Claudia: I don’t understand. He meets a girl that can give him a new life and he pushes her away?
Guido: Because he no longer believes in it.
Claudia: Because he doesn’t know how to love.
—-
Guido: Because it isn’t true that a woman can change a man.
Claudia: Because he doesn’t know how to love.
Guido: And above all because I don’t feel like telling another pile of lies.
Claudia: Because he doesn’t know how to love.
—-
Writer: You see, what stands out at a first reading is the lack of a central issue or a philosophical stance. That makes the film a chain of gratuitous episodes which may even be amusing in their ambivalent realism. You wonder, what is the director really trying to do? Make us think? Scare us? That ploy betrays a basic lack of poetic inspiration.
—-
Pace, il produttore: Why piece together the tatters of your life – the vague memories, the faces… the people you never knew how to love?
—-
Guido: Could you walk out on everything and start all over again? Could you choose one single thing, and be faithful to it? Could you make it the one thing that gives your life meaning… just because you believe in it? Could you do that?”
Claudia: I don’t know… could you?”
Guido: No, the character I’m thinking of couldn’t. He wants to possess and devour everything. He can’t pass anything up. He’s afraid he’ll miss something. He’s drained.
Claudia: That’s how the film ends?
Guido: No, that’s how it begins. Then he meets a girl at the springs. She gives him water to heal him. She’s beautiful… young, yet ancient… child, yet already a woman… authentic, complete. It’s obvious that she could be his salvation.
[Looks over at Claudia]
Guido: You’ll wear white… with long hair, just as you do now.

Trivia:

* Fellini attached a note to himself below the camera’s eyepiece which read, “Ricordati che è un film comico.-Remember, this is a comedy.”

* Was the basis for the Broadway Musical “Nine”, which won the Tony for best musical in 1982 and for best musical revival in 2003.

* At one point, Fellini wanted to cast Laurence Olivier in the lead role.

In 2002, named by “Positif” (France) as one of the 50 best films of the last 50 years (critics’ choice: #3)

for films check out the author at cinebuff.wordpress.com

Compiler:benny

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La Dolce Vita-1960

The quote
“Don’t be like me… I’m too serious to be a dilettante and too much a dabbler to be a professional. Even the most miserable life is better than a sheltered existence in an organized society where everything is calculated and perfected.” is at the core of the movie. Perhaps it shall explain the episodic nature of La Dolce Vita: under its very entertaining surface is the tragic decline of journalist/novelist Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni) in terms of his art and personal life. The decline must come in degrees and human life,- its success or failure , is not seamless as one might think.

Marcello and a swarm of photographers sit around on the Via Veneto all hours of the night, waiting for celebrity news to happen. The emptiness of contemporary Roman life is well drawn whether out in the streets or in the intellectual set of Streiner. Marcello’s vain search for fulfillment is the movie’s great tragedy. He dreams of becoming a serious writer, but hasn’t the courage to pursue it. He is too busy trying to become part of the ‘sweet life’. A lot of his time is spent in the arms of beautiful, bored society women such as Maddalena (Anouk Aimée), despite his engagement to the overly-possessive Emma (Yvonne Furneaux).
When Steiner murders his children and commits suicide in desperation, Marcello is left directionless. The following scene when the photographers are scurrying around the mother as she is informed that her children have been murdered is one of the most chilling and (unfortunately) prophetic scenes and it anticipates the degrading, voyeuristic nature of the modern news media.
At the film’s conclusion, the defeated Marcello ends up on a beach the morning after a drunken orgy. He collapses in the sand with a self-mocking laugh. The ultimate sadness of the movie is apparent when he glimpses the innocent Paola in the distance, calling to him (he cannot hear over the roar of the sea). Marcello waves to her in recognition, but then is forced to turn away, ashamed with himself. He wanders back to his crowd of shallow party people to go on the same old way.
La Dolce Vita is a modern parable. Fellini cinematically loads it with irony and brittleness of la dolce vita. Whenever a movie of this high calibre and of gradations is handled by a Fellini or Antonioni one may be pardoned if the reviewer looks for comparison from Dante. The Italian humanism that Divine Comedy has inculcated, ever since Dante is hard to resist. The protagonist is somewhat like Dante and the high society of a decadent post-war Rome could be hell.
Dante had Beatrice, Paola (Valeria Ciangottini) as she is called here, whom Fellini introduces toward the middle and also at the end. She appears first as a fresh-faced girl in the café, conjuring up visions of a nuova vita of what could be. She represents a simpler life away from the city and the over-complications of modern existence. Marcello is impressed with her innocence and gaiety but has his daily grind to attend to.
The modern Beatrice appears once again and waves to Marcello on the beach in the film’s final scene: she is telling something he is never able to hear, so he waves once, and turns back to the empty, inebriated crowd as they speculate about the unknowability of nature, embodied by a monstrous, bloated fish.
Marcello is the modern, urban human, trapped in an absurd universe. He has chosen a miserable life because of his livelihood and in the process inflicts misery on those who mean most to him. If he slowly becomes trapped in his free amoral lifestyle how far is he responsible? Interesting question,- and Fellini analyses the society neither with contempt or with affection.
LA DOLCE VITA’s visual style is poetic, some of its characters are more than compelling and hard to forget, and its musical score by Nino Rota is as always memorable. Fellini is known for his free directorial style and never being bound by written word. Spontaneity therefore is at premium and he builds film in series of ideas like a Seurat’s painting, letting them acquire an increased significance in the way they are juxtaposed:
The film’s opening scene shows of a giant image of Christ being airlifted and in a series of shots leisurely lingering over the ruins and burgeoning townships and blocks of apartments we follow the crew of reporters in another chopper: they are more keen to ogle at the sunbathers thus introducing the basic dichotomy: lust for life where religion has its part and also for sins of the flesh. Either way it is shallow and impersonal. The most memorable sequence features Anita Ekberg as an impossibly beautiful Hollywood starlet at the fountain of Trevi. Sylvia (Ekberg),has descended on Rome on a promotional stop for her new movie. The press junket soon turns into a drunken nighttime party. After an enormously entertaining dance sequence (it’s a wonderful moment when you realise you have been seduced into this sweet life), Marcello and Sylvia escape to wander the deserted streets of Rome. She, seeming to epitomise the profane love in contrast to Paola the sacred love. When Marcello takes her back to the hotel her drunken husband knocks him down, a scene that brings the paparazzi, colleagues of Marcello all scurrying around to get their best shot.
Marcello soon becomes disenchanted by his spiritually empty life and looks to the intellectual family man Steiner as a role mode. Steiner is the key figure in the film. The young reporter sees the older man as a perfected, idealized version of himself. He longs to emulate Steiner and is convinced this man knows how to live life fully. There is irony aplenty in the entire Steiner narrative. When Marcello brings his wife to the Steiner party, they meet a few interesting, but mostly insufferable pretentious ‘intellectual’ types. Steiner himself associates with these people, yet does not truly seem to be one of them. He feels trapped by his own pretentious circle of intellectuals. When Marcello tell him how much he envies and admires him, Steiner replies the quote I cited at the outset.
Steiner’s subsequent suicide confirms the deep suspicion growing within the protagonist that all of existence, as he himself has known it thus far, is fundamentally absurd and meaningless. For this reason the film is existential in its outlook.

Fellini’s La Dolce Vita was made in 1959 and released in 1960. It is the ultimate cinematic portrait of a milieu, in this instance Rome in the 1950s. Some historical perspective: Rome became the international celebrity capital in the 1950s because Italy’s post-war exchange controls meant that a large proportion of Hollywood profits had to stay in Italy to finance films. Production was cheap (no Screen Actor’s Guild), the technicians were able, and the facilities of Cinecittà Studios were more than adequate for large-scale spectacles such as Quo Vadis (1950) and Ben-Hur (1959). So Hollywood’s stars ended up in Rome for long periods of time. Thus La Dolce Vita, a lifestyle of money, sex and indulgence was a natural outgrowth of post-war boom. Fellini as a true artist rises above moral issues to tell a story through a series of images and leaves the audience to make their own interpretations.
This was also a great age of domestic Italian cinema: De Sica, Rossellini, Visconti, Monicelli, and of course Fellini, who was responsible for such films as La Strada (1954) and Nights of Cabiria (1957). La Dolce Vita was the last of his neo-realist films.

Director:
Federico Fellini
Writers:
Federico Fellini (story) &
Ennio Flaiano (story) …
(more)
Release Date:
19 April 1961 (USA) more
Won Oscar. Another 6 wins & 7 nominations more
Cast (in credits order) (verified as complete)
Marcello Mastroianni … Marcello Rubini

Anita Ekberg … Sylvia

Anouk Aimée … Maddalena (as Anouk Aimee)
Yvonne Furneaux … Emma
Magali Noël … Fanny (as Magali Noel)
Alain Cuny … Steiner
Annibale Ninchi … Marcello’s father
Walter Santesso … Paparazzo
Valeria Ciangottini … Paola
Riccardo Garrone … Riccardo
Ida Galli … Debuttante of the Year
Audrey McDonald … Jane (as Audey McDonald)
Polidor … Clown
Alain Dijon … Frankie Stout
Enzo Cerusico … Newspaper photographer
Giulio Paradisi … Newspaper photographer
Enzo Doria … Newspaper photographer
Enrico Glori … Nadia’s Admirer
Adriana Moneta … Ninni
Massimo Busetti … Lying Child of The Miracle
Mino Doro … Nadia’s lover
Giulio Girola … Police Commissioner
Laura Betti … Laura
Nico … Herself (as Nico Otzak)
Domino … Transvestite dancer
Carlo Musto … Transvestite
Lex Barker … Robert
Jacques Sernas … Matinee Idol
Nadia Gray … Nadia

Quotes:
Marcello Rubini: You are the first woman on the first day of creation. You are mother, sister, lover, friend, angel, devil, earth, home.
Steiner: Don’t be like me. Salvation doesn’t lie within four walls. I’m too serious to be a dilettante and too much a dabbler to be a professional. Even the most miserable life is better than a sheltered existence in an organized society where everything is calculated and perfected.
Transvestite: By 1965 there’ll be total depravity. How squalid everything will be.
Marcello Rubini: [to Emma] A man who agrees to live like this is a finished man, he’s nothing but a worm! I don’t believe in your aggressive, sticky, maternal love! I don’t want it, I have no use for it! This isn’t love, it’s brutalization!
Steiner: We must get beyond passions, like a great work of art. In such miraculous harmony. We should love each other outside of time… detached.

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