Fellini

Nice article on Fellini. It is a book review of a new Fellini biography. It has this nice quote by Pauline Kael on La Dolce Vita:

[La Dolce Vita was] like poking your head into a sack of fertilizer and then becoming indignant that you're covered with excrement. The aim, the scale, the pretensions, the message are too big for the subject matter: tabloid sensationalism and upper-class apathy and corruption. Fellini is shocked and horrified--like the indignant housewives who can't get enough details of Elizabeth Taylor's newest outrage, and think she should be banned from the screen. I don't think he's simply exploiting the incidents and crimes and orgies of modern Rome in the manner of a Hollywood biblical spectacle, but La Dolce Vita is a sort of Ben-Hur for the more, but not very much more, sophisticated.

I have seen four films by Fellini -- La Strada, Nights of Cabiria, La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2 -- I liked them all (in that order). Somehow my enthusiasm for him dimmed after some time and I never got around to seeing I Vitelloni and Amarcord which I have read are good too.

Also this short note on La Dolce Vita from Village Voice.