Welcome to Tried and Failed, about those movies you've tried to watch on multiple occasions but never made it all the way through. Our inaugural post is the movie that inspired the whole series: La Dolce Vita, considered one of the all-time greats, and a Fellini masterpiece.
I confess, I still have yet to see a Fellini film, and that's probably because this one bores me so thoroughly everytime I try to watch it. I know it's meant to be one of the most beautiful films ever created, I know it invented the word paparazzo, I know I am an utter, utter failure as a film buff, but I've given it five tries, and have never made it past the first 30 minutes.
Marcello Mastroianni plays a skirt-chasing man about town, leaping from woman to woman without the joie de vivre that can make womanizing compelling to watch on screen (See Don Draper). One of his more famous pickup lines: "You are the first woman on the first day of creation. You are mother, sister, lover, friend, angel, devil, earth, home."
Horrible.
Marcello is pretentious and transparent, and thinks very highly of himself while we are given no indication why. Maybe this changes later in the movie, but I don't really care. La Dolce Vita is forever landed on the reject pile.
I've seen several Fellini films (this one, 8 1/2, La Strada, Amaracord, and Nights of Cabiria) and the only one I would recommend is the last one.
ReplyDeleteThe movie that took me three tries, in three different decades, to watch from beginning to end without shutting it off was Annie Hall. I know from other comments on your blog that you liked it, so I will not go into detail on my dislike for it.