“La Dolce Vita,” September 26

Friday, September 26, 7:30 p.m.

Rozz-Tox, 2108 Third Avenue, Rock Island IL

Continuing its 2025 garden-cinema series with a Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or winner and one of the most celebrated international titles of all time, Federico Fellini's 1960 masterowkr La Dolce Vita enjoys an outdoor screening at Rock Island venue Rozz-Tox on September 26, its numerous examples of cultural impact including its news-photographer character Paparazzo, who became the origin of the word paparazzi.

A satirical comedy drama directed by Fellini and co-written by the filmmaker, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, and Brunello Rondi, La Dolce Vita stars Marcello Mastroianni as Marcello Rubini, a tabloid journalist who, over seven days and nights, journeys through the "sweet life" of Rome in a fruitless search for love and happiness. The screenplay can be divided into a prologue, seven major episodes interrupted by an intermezzo, and an epilogue, according to the most common interpretation. Released in Italy in February of 1960, the work was both an immediate critical success and worldwide commercial hit, despite censorship in some regions. La Dolce Vita won the Palme d'Or at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Costume Design, and was also nominated for three additional Oscars, including Best Directing and Original Screenplay. Its success proved a watershed moment for Italian cinema and European cinema-at-large, and the movie has come to be regarded as a masterpiece of Italian cinema, as well as one of the greatest films ever made. In 2008, La Dolce Vita was included on the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage’s 100 Italian films to be saved, a list of 100 films that "have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978."

Roger Ebert considered La Dolce Vita Fellini’s best film, as well as his favorite film of all, and listed it consistently in his top 10 for the Sight & Sound Greatest Films poll every decade. Ebert's first review for the film, published in October of 1961, was nearly the first film review he wrote, before he began his career as a film critic in 1967.The film was a touchstone for Ebert, as his perspective on the movie and his life evolved over time, summarized in his 1997 review: "Movies do not change, but their viewers do. When I saw La Dolce Vita in 1960, I was an adolescent for whom 'the sweet life' represented everything I dreamed of: sin, exotic European glamour, the weary romance of the cynical newspaperman. When I saw it again, around 1970, I was living in a version of Marcello's world; Chicago's North Avenue was not the Via Veneto, but at 3 a.m. the denizens were just as colorful, and I was about Marcello's age. When I saw the movie around 1980, Marcello was the same age, but I was 10 years older, had stopped drinking, and saw him not as a role model but as a victim, condemned to an endless search for happiness that could never be found, not that way. By 1991, when I analyzed the film a frame at a time at the University of Colorado, Marcello seemed younger still, and while I had once admired and then criticized him, now I pitied and loved him. And when I saw the movie right after Mastroianni died [in 1996], I thought that Fellini and Marcello had taken a moment of discovery and made it immortal."

For the September 19 screening of La Dolce Vita, guests are advised to bring blankets or lawn chairs and not bring their own food or drink, as the service window will be open. The 7:30 p.m. screening of the film for ages 17 and older will be held in the back garden, weather permitting, admission to the event is free, and more information is available by calling (309)200-0978 and visiting RozzTox.com.