“You are everything… everything! You are the first woman on the first day of creation. You are mother, sister, lover, friend, angel, devil, earth, home.”

What to make of Federico Fellini? Widely recognized as a masterful filmmaker, but with a string of films to his name that would probably have a hard time holding the attention of today’s audience. Fellini excels in the details, in creating busy, festive (and at the same time gloomy) scenes and bizarre, wandering characters. 

Just like the characters - mostly male seducers and the women in their lives - the story doesn’t really clearly go anywhere. This is also the case in the film known as Fellini’s most accessible film: La dolce vita.

In La dolce vita the main character is papparazzi journalist Marcello (played convincingly by Marcello Mastroianni). Marcello is a freeloader and a charming seducer. He’s failed to become a famous writer and is stuck in a profession he seems to have little respect for. 

The parasitic nature of the papparazzi is very evident throughout the film, the press is everywhere to capture and amplify everything that happens. Marcello is thus part of those “hyenas”, but what he is more concerned with are the parties of the elite and his affairs with many attractive women.

Two women who seem to represent opposite worlds are the luscious platinum blonde film star Sylvia (Anita Ekberg) and Marcello’s beautiful, loyal but jealous fiancée Emma (Yvonne Furneaux). Emma adores Marcello and would do anything for him, while Sylvia is mainly concerned with her own sensuality.