Watching La Dolce Vita made me want to become a reporter. It made me want a lot of things (religious iconography, a trip to Rome, Anita Ekberg's boobs) but mostly, I just wanted to be a writer like Marcello. But a girl. I wanted to discover stories, and travel, and expose the truth. It hasn't really happened, but I still adore the film. Marcello's women are polar opposites- Fellini's representation of the feminine dichotomy that confuses every girl and their idea of what being a woman is (I think. Perhaps it's just me). Busty, blonde, glamorous like Ekberg? Or small, quiet, thoughtful and brunette, like Anouk Aimee?
Anyway. I never knew this, but apparently the origin behind the film is the sack dress. Weird- and here's why:
"The origin behind La Dolce Vita was the sack dress, introduced by the Balenciaga in 1957. In various interviews, Fellini claimed that the film's initial inspiration was in fact this particular style. Brunello Rondi, Fellini's co-screenwriter and long-time collaborator, confirmed this view explaining that "the fashion of women's sack dresses which possessed that sense of luxurious butterflying out around a body that might be physically beautiful but not morally so; these sack dresses struck Fellini because they rendered a woman very gorgeous who could, instead, be a skeleton of squalor and solitude inside."
