Fellini's La Dolce Vita is a great bas-relief of the day-dreams and the ideals of an age—the rootless hedonism, the sensationalised religion, the spiritual nostalgias and an erotism which is blatant and obsessive because it is rootless….

If ever erotism and social context were inseparable, it is in La Dolce Vita. The film itself is massive yet disjointed, its structure recalls the tumbled slabs of a Roman temple. One feels Fellini chose the images that he fancied; because he is a poet, and, more important, a poet who does not disdain to use images which have common currency, these images are solid and relevant. Still, their import has to be felt rather than restricted by a literal exegisis (art always suggests more than it says), which is why everybody can understand it except most critics. (p. 17)

Raymond Durgnat, "Some Mad Love and the Sweet Life" (© copyright Raymond...