After an uneventful provincial childhood during which he developed a talent as a cartoonist, Fellini at age 19 moved to Rome, where he contributed cartoons, gags, and stories to the humour magazine Marc’Aurelio. During World War II, Fellini worked as a scriptwriter for the radio program Cico e Pallina, starring Giulietta Masina, the actress who became Fellini’s wife in 1943 and who went on to star in several of the director’s greatest films during the course of their 50-year marriage. In 1944 Fellini met director Roberto Rossellini, who engaged him as one of a team of writers who created Roma, Città Aperta (1945; Open City or Rome, Open City), often cited as the seminal film of the Italian Neorealist movement. Fellini’s contribution to the screenplay earned him his first Oscar nomination.
Fellini quickly became one of Italy’s most successful screenwriters. Although he wrote a number of important scripts for such directors as Pietro Germi (Il Cammino Della Speranza [1950; The Path of Hope]), Alberto Lattuada (Senza Pietá [1948; Without Pity]), and Luigi Comencini (Persiane Chiuse [1951; Drawn Shutters]), his scripts for Rossellini are most important to the history of the Italian cinema. These include Paisà (1946; Paisan), perhaps the purest example of Italian Neorealism; Il Miracolo (1948; The Miracle, an episode of the film L’Amore), a controversial work on the meaning of sainthood; and Europa ’51 (1952; The Greatest Love), one of the first films in postwar Italy that began to move beyond the documentary realism of the Neorealist period toward an examination of psychological problems and Existentialist themes.
Fellini made his debut as director in collaboration with Lattuada on Luci Del Varietà (1951; Variety Lights). This was the first in a series of works dealing with provincial life and was followed by Lo Sceicco Bianco (1951; The White Sheik) and I Vitelloni (1953; Spivs or The Young and the Passionate), his first critically and commercially successful work. This film, a bitterly sarcastic look at the idle ‘mama’s boys’ of the provinces, is still considered by some critics to be Fellini’s masterpiece.
Fellini’s next films formed a trilogy that dealt with salvation and the fate of innocence in a cruel and unsentimental world. One of Fellini’s best-known works, the heavily symbolic La Strada (1954; The Road), stars Anthony Quinn as a cruel, animalistic circus strongman and Masina as the pathetic waif who loves him. The film was shot on location in the desolate countryside between Viterbo and Abruzzo, with the great empty spaces reflecting the virtual inhumanity of the relationship between the principal characters. Although it was criticized by the left-wing press in Italy, the film was highly praised abroad, winning an Academy Award for best foreign film. Il Bidone (1955; The Swindle), which starred Broderick Crawford in a role intended for Humphrey Bogart, was a rather unpleasant tale of petty swindlers who disguise themselves as priests in order to rob the peasantry. Garnering a second foreign film Oscar for Fellini was the more successful Le Notti Di Cabiria (1957; The Nights of Cabiria), again starring Masina, this time as a simple, eternally optimistic Roman prostitute. Although not usually considered among Fellini’s greatest works, Le Notti Di Cabiria (upon which the Broadway musical comedy Sweet Charity was based) remains a critical favourite and one of Fellini’s most immediately likable films.
The biggest hit from the most popular Italian filmmaker of all time, La dolce vita rocketed Federico Fellini to international mainstream success—ironically, by offering a damning critique of the culture of stardom. A look at the darkness beneath the seductive lifestyles of Rome’s rich and glamorous, the film follows a notorious celebrity journalist (a sublimely cool Marcello Mastroianni) during a hectic week spent on the peripheries of the spotlight. This mordant picture was an incisive commentary on the deepening decadence of contemporary Europe, and it provided a prescient glimpse of just how gossip- and fame-obsessed our society would become.
La Dolce Vita introduced the world not only to the Italian fashion, style and elegance, but also to the profession of unscrupulous, unlicensed celebrity photographer. Marcello Mastroianni plays journalist Marcello Rubini, a tabloid columnist who aspires to be a more serious writer, but knows he will never be, because, like society, he is fascinated by the decadent hedonistic pursuits which are seemingly everywhere.
As the classiq website explains “Piero Gherardi, self-taught in art and architecture, created the overall look of La Dolce Vita. He was costume and set designer, as well as art director. This is a stylish film as a whole, as Gherardi placed equal emphasis on the costumes for both female and male leads. Every scene in La Dolce Vita strikes you as a beautifully styled photograph and the film still guides sartorial aspirations around the globe.”
In discussing the fashion look of the film “the clothes are again key elements in the construction of cinematic identities. The film may be stylish overall, but it really belongs to Marcello Mastroianni. His character is underpinned by a unique, individual style. His sexually alluring masculinity is established in the very first scene and the character of Marcello Rubini was instrumental in creating what we recognize as the “Latin Lover”. In tailored slim suits with single-breasted jackets and slim ties or fitted tuxedo and bow-tie, crisp shirts with peeking French cuffs, large cuff-links and Persol dark sunglasses (worn indoors and at night – Mastroianni practically invented that – they became more than an elegant and cool accessory, they were an anti-conversation piece, having the ability to shut people out), he stands apart from the paparazzi dressed in wide-cut tweed suits or sweaters and slacks. In his formal clothing, he stands in the shadow, detached and observant.”
Mastroianni looks dapper, yet nonchalant and casual from the very beginning to the very end of the film. Dressed to perfection, without looking overly styled, Marcello Rubini, or, better said, Marcello Mastroianni is the quintessential example of the sartorial Italian, the personification of proverbial Italian masculine style.”
The women’s style in the film is also important. In particular Anouk Aimée, as wealthy playgirl Maddalena, is Mastroianni’s equal in terms of both elegance and moral depravity. “We only see her in two little black dresses and a V-neck sweater over a white top, but these are more than enough to make a style statement. The first dress is knee-length, the other one is a sequined evening gown with a low-cut back, long sleeves and side-slit skirt – iconic. Her sophisticated wardrobe epitomises 1950s glamour and early 1960s chic. Her fabulous cat-eye shades, which she wears even at night (“Everything is wrong tonight”… “I’d like to hide, but never manage it … Rome is such a bore … I need an entirely new life.”), inspired Tom Ford create his retro-looking cat’s eye sunglasses which he called “Anouk”. Anouk Aimée drifts through La Dolce Vita with the hauteur of a feline.”
For more see here: http://classiq.me/style-in-film-la-dolce-vita
