I recently saw La Dolce Vita for the second time, my first viewing being 10 years ago as a high school student. It's a masterful movie, but just as Fellini was both exasperated and bored with the decadent culture it portrays, I as the viewer couldn't help growing numb when being led into yet another soulless party, even while I was appreciating Fellini's ability to perfectly capture the prolonged intoxication of the empty "sweet life."

Incidentally, La Dolce Vita was the subject of one of Roger Ebert's first movie reviews, published in The Daily Illini when he was a sophomore at UIUC. While it's a positive review, he clearly isn't under the impression that it's a "great" movie. Almost forty years later, and after many viewings including a frame-by-frame analysis, Ebert reviewed it again as part of his Great Movies series. In this second review it's clear that he believes it to be one of the greatest movies of all time, especially after his own disillusionment with "the sweet life" of Chicago in the 1970's. (A profile I linked to last year touches on this phase of his life.) Also worth a read is this analysis from the blog of the Brattle Theater in Cambridge, MA (my former place of residence) by someone who believes it to be the greatest film of all time.

I've never been much of a partier, but I happen to live in Las Vegas, one of the biggest party towns in the country. It seems to me that a modern reimagining of this film, set in Vegas or in hipster L.A, could be interesting in the hands of the right director. It wouldn't be a remake exactly, nor would it attempt to emulate Fellini, but it would capture whatever's behind the endless party pictures you find on Flickr or lastnightsparty.com. And no, Swingers isn't what I have in mind. There are some scenes in Boogie Nights that I think come very close to the mood I'm thinking of, but not in any way that I can identify with. Can anyone think of a contemporary movie out there that comes close to capturing the mood of La Dolce Vita, all while maintining its sense of morality?