La dolce sette

There are many theories about Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” and the number seven.

They say Fellini used the seven deadly sins as a rough outline, that he set it on the seven hills of Rome and that it takes place over seven days and nights. A headlong rush into the heady air of Rome’s Via Veneto, its swank nightclubs and seedy gigolos, the perfume of fame and the stink of money.

Marcello is a sleek, cynical journalist. He flows through the film like a worn ghost, moving up and down through space and society, descending into subterranean nightclubs, hospitals and crypts, ascending to the basilica dome and into the sky-high apartment of his intellectual friend, the writer Steiner.

Marcello envies and admires Steiner, who is wealthy and married to a beautiful wife with two perfect children. Steiner is generous and supportive of Marcello, and urges him to find time to write his novel.

At a party for the literati, Steiner tells Marcello his truth.

“Sometimes at night the darkness and silence weighs upon me. Peace frightens me – perhaps I fear it most of all. I feel it is only a facade hiding the face of hell. I think, ‘What is in store for my children tomorrow?’ ‘The world will be wonderful,’ they say. But from whose viewpoint? If one phone call could announce the end of everything?

We need to live in a state of suspended animation like a work of art, in a state of enchantment. We have to succeed in loving so greatly that we live outside of time, detached … detached.”