The Coming of La dolce vita Seminar

Speaker information

Professor Richard Dyer, Professorial Fellow in Film Studies, St. Andrews University. La dolce vita is one of the most famous films ever made, an international and often scandalous hit that gave the world not only the term and idea encapsulated in its title but also 'paparazzi'. It is a film about gossip and news that was itself news and is based in the news stories, fashionable people and actual fashions of its time. This talk looks at this whole process, the real and fictional images of Rome La dolce vita draws on, the way it relates to neo-realism in its use of non-actors, location shooting and episodic structures and the way that it transmutes them into symbol and spectacle. La dolce vita is rooted in the real and yet refuses to present itself as realist, insisting on the way knowledge of the real is always literally mediated.