By Antonio La Cava
Some movies have marked an epoch, been ahead of their time, giving birth to trends, fashions and habits. When, in 1959, Federico Fellini filmed La Dolce Vita, nobody would have thought that this movie would mark also the debut of the Italian fashion in the world. About the role and the influences that this famous film, La Dolce Vita, played in the fields of fashion and custom, a debate was held on Wednesday 14th March at the University Women’s Club, organised by the British-Italian Society, with Pamela Church Gibson – reader in Cultural and Historical Studies at the University of the Arts, London – who highlighted the main aspects about fashion in the movie, through the screening of some footages.
“In this movie fashion is shown – Gibson says”. Federico Fellini, in fact, expert connoisseur of custom, realised that a change was happening in the Italian society, and this change was embodied by the new character of the photojournalist, “hero of these years in Rome, very absent-minded and illusory”. The character of the photojournalist, even though eventually despised, became very important in the Italian outline in those and the following years. The photojournalist, in fact, looked like the “fast, disconcerting and superficial hero” of a new time in Italy, which many people described as mediocre.
The story of the movie spins around the reporter Marcello Rubini, played by Marcello Mastroianni; for seven days and nights he takes the audience through the dolce vita in Rome, expressed by via Veneto, Roman street made famous all over the world by the magazines. Besides, the photojournalist, who was always on Marcello’s side in the movie, embodied a character able to catch the lives of the stars, as people venerate celebrities.
One of the most relevant things – Gibson says – is that in this film fashion is not limited only to women: men themselves mind their own images. The Vespa – in the opinion of Gibson – is another image, in this movie, linked to the Italian fashion and style. The masterpiece by Fellini had a strong impact not only on the Italian society and culture, but also on the American’s and English’s – for instance on singers world. “If Paris dominated fashion in 1950s – Gibson says – thanks to this movie attention drifts towards Italy”.
This film left a mark, also, from the linguistic point of view: “the word paparazzi was coined with this movie”. In fact the character of Paparazzo, the photographer that works with Marcello, is the origin of the word used in many languages to describe an intrusive photographer.
But in those years La Dolce Vita did not only rise the approval of the foreign critics, but some polemics too (all Italians), that even led somebody to spit on Fellini’s face after one of the first screenings (“guilty of being communist and showing a depraved Italy”) and induced L’Osservatore Romano to rename the movie “the disgusting life”.
In the end, not everybody is able to understand the genius of whom who is ahead of his/her time and can narrate reality with candour!
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