La Dolce Vita (1960)

Everybody knows that La Dolce Vita is Fellini’s masterpiece and one of the greatest movies ever made. But is everybody right about that?

This is a movie that has been so lavishly praised that if you don’t like it you can find yourself doubting your own judgment. It must be a great movie - all those critics and film scholars said so.

One thing that can be said for certain is that this is an incredibly depressing nihilistic movie. 

I’m not surprised that Martin Scorsese loves this movie. He saw when it first came out, at the age of 18. And it’s a movie guaranteed to appeal to teenaged aspiring arty intellectuals.

The plot is just a series of incidents in the life of journalist Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni). He doesn’t really like to think of himself as a journalist. He’s actually a writer of serious literature. As the film progresses we come to suspect this is merely a cope. He doesn’t actually write serious literature. He just talks about writing it. The reality is that he’s just another sleazebag journalist.

Marcello has a girlfriend, Emma (Yvonne Furneaux). He treats her very badly but it has to be said that she’s irritating and whiny and needy and incredibly emotionally manipulative.

His first encounter in the movie is with sexy glamorous Sylvia  Rank (Anita Ekberg). He tries to get her into bed but fails. Being a movie star she might not have high moral standards but she does have enough self-respect not to sleep with sleazy second-rate journalists.

He’s equally unsuccessful with the aristocratic Maddalena (Anouk Aimée). She flirts with him and plays emotional games with him but she’s not going to lower herself to sleeping with him. That would be like sleeping with the gardener or one of the footmen.

We start to suspect that Marcello is not a very successful philanderer. He only seems to score with women with zero self-respect.

He runs into an old friend named Steiner (Alain Cuny). Steiner is an intellectual. He’s as shallow and empty as all the other characters but he can make misery and self-pity sound impressive.

Marcello also encounter the Roman proto-counterculture - pseudo-arty misfits trying to shock the bourgeoisie.

And he visits the countryside where he finds that the peasants are still living in the mental world of the Middle Ages.

The aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, the poor, the counter-culture types, the intellectuals  - all stupid and empty-headed. And the journalists and the paparazzi flocking around the rich and famous are the most corrupt and shallow of all.

This was the era of the Italian economic miracle of the 1950s. The economy was booming but Fellini clearly thought that Europe was doomed by rampant materialism and decadence.

La Dolce Vita was considered revolutionary for its lack of interest in any coherent linear narrative. This suited the subject matter - aimless people living in an aimless society, moving fast on a road to nowhere. Unfortunately the movie does not move fast. At almost three hours it is very slow and since every single character is contemptible (either selfish and narcissistic or self-pitying) there’s not much to engage the viewer’s interest. And it’s shot in stark black-and-white. It’s quite an achievement to make one of the world’s most beautiful exciting cities seem ugly and dull but this film manages to do just that. And he makes the picturesque Italian countryside look like a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Anita Ekberg is the one bright spot. She seems to be enjoying herself and her character, Sylvia, might be shallow but she seems almost alive.

And while he might be satirising the shallow hedonistic decadence of the new Europe and he might have been intending to make the decadence seem tawdry and sordid and they might be valid intentions the fact remains that La Dolce Vita is a bit of a slog. There’s also some heavy-handed symbolism.

At the end of the day you have to wonder if the cinematic journey was really worth it. I can see why people were excited by the movie at the time and it is one of those movies that you have to be able to say you’ve seen but it left me cold.

Straw Dogs (1971)

Straw Dogs is Sam Peckinpah’s most controversial film and in its day it was very controversial indeed. Modern audiences are likely to be far more shocked than 70s audiences.

This is a movie that immediately ignited a firestorm of controversy so that even in 1971 many critics and viewers approached it with preconceptions. They expected to be outraged. As a result they totally misunderstood the film and read things into it that are simply not there.

And there is of course Peckinpah’s reputation as an apostle of cinematic violence. In fact the violence in this movie only matters insofar as it has an impact on the emotional states of the characters. And Peckinpah goes out of his way to avoid presenting the violence as being in any way heroic or admirable or justified. This is a very anti-heroic movie. The violence is squalid and nasty and petty and disgusting and absurd. Peckinpah wants us to be horrified and disgusted. It’s not easy to present extreme violence without making it exciting but more than anyone other director who has tried doing this Peckinpah succeeds in making violence very very unattractive.

There is no hero in this movie. Despite what you may have heard this is not the story of a man pushed beyond endurance who finally overcomes his fears and fights back and becomes a righteous avenger.

David (Dustin Hoffman) and his wife Amy (Susan George) have taken up residence in a farmhouse in a village in Cornwall. David is a mathematician. As an American he is an outsider. Amy was born in the village. This is home to her. This is important.

David is a middle-class intellectual and like so many of that breed he despises anyone who isn’t a middle-class intellectual. He considers the locals to be barely human and they are immediately aware of this. He is also a coward and they are also immediately aware of this. He antagonises the locals. 

Peckinpah saw this movie as the story of a marriage. A failed marriage. Amy loves David but she knows that he despises her as an intellectual inferior. He is petty and vindictive. Amy also knows that he is a coward. The marriage is clearly heading for the rocks.

Right at the start the couple have an encounter with Charlie Venner (Del Henney). Charlie and David hate each on sight. Charlie and Amy have a history. The reason they broke up is one of the many things that Peckinpah keeps deliberately vague.

David has hired four young men from the village to repair the barn. Despite what you may have heard about the movie Amy is not flirtatious.

Then comes the infamous scene in which Charlie and one of the other men take Amy by force. The biggest controversy created by the movie is the allegation that Amy is shown to enjoy it. It’s much more complicated than that. She is already in emotional turmoil and now she is emotionally shattered. Yes, she may feel a momentary physical pleasure but it horrifies her and the whole experience is traumatic and devastating.

And then comes the most important scene in the film. David arrives home and she doesn’t tell him what has happened. This is crucial because it means that none of David’s later actions are motivated by a desire for revenge. She doesn’t tell him because she now feels so estranged from him that she doesn’t see the point. She assumes that if she tells him he will let her down again.

Three minor characters now become important. Henry Niles (David Warner) is suspected of having an unhealthy interest in the young village girls. Once again Peckinpah keeps things deliberately vague. Is Henry dangerous or just odd?

Tom Hedden (Peter Vaughan) is a drunken aggressive braggart. His daughter Janice (Sally Thomsett, a couple of years away from major TV stardom) is an incorrigible flirt. Janice and Henry Niles have gone off together and now no-one knows where they are. Tom reacts as if Janice is a mere child but clearly she isn’t. It would appear to be a case of an over-protective father refusing to admit that his daughter is no longer a child and pushing her into an act of rebellion.

In this movie the social breakdown is almost complete. Those whose duty it is to protect the vulnerable are ineffectual. The forces of law and order, represented by the magistrate Major Scott (T.P. McKenna) are impotent. Fathers fail their daughters, husbands fail their wives.

The story of Henry Niles will intersect with that of David and Amy.

Then comes the climax - the pitched battle at the farmhouse. But there’s nothing heroic about it. It’s just a mob of drunken louts led by Tom Heddon battling a crazy man. David does fight and fights viciously but Peckinpah undercuts any admiration we may feel for him. He is not a weakling who suddenly discovers reserves of courage and nobility. It’s just that his anger that has been festering inside him for years suddenly explodes. It’s a battle that is more farcical than heroic.

It’s worth pointing out that Peckinpah stated that he saw David as the villain of the movie. I have never been a fan of Dustin Hoffman but I must admit that in this movie he is perfect. He gets David’s twitchiness, his tendency to flinch at even the smallest hit of conflict, and he gets across his pettiness and his cruelty towards Amy. Susan George is even more impressive.

Peter Vaughan is outrageous but effective. David Warner has the right mix of creepiness and vulnerability. Sally Thomsett is excellent in what is actually a rather tricky and ambiguous role.

Mention must be made of the frenetic editing. A single very brief scene can include literally hundreds of cuts. Images succeed each other at dizzying speed. There are also wild camera angles and in almost every way Peckinpah is totally reinventing the language of cinema. This is a technically revolutionary film.

Straw Dogs is one of Peckinpah’s two best movies, the other being Junior Bonner. Both tend to be unjustly overshadowed by his more famous films. Straw Dogs is very highly recommended