In La Dolce Vita (1960), Marcello Mastroianni played Marcello Rubini, a Rome journalist who drifts through seven days and nights of parties, celebrities and quiet despair. Directed by Federico Fellini, the film became a landmark of modern cinema, and Mastroianni’s face, at once amused and tired, became its enduring image.
Marcello Rubini wants to write a serious novel, but he is drawn back, night after night, into the sweet life of the title. Mastroianni plays him without judgment, letting the audience see both the glamour and the emptiness. The film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and it made its star the emblem of a new Italy, elegant, restless and searching for meaning beneath the surface.