Shawn Levy, you are one brilliant, empathic, mesmerizing writer. I am so glad to have ordered Dolce Vita Confidential. I especially loved the closeness of Fellini and his alter ego, Mastroianni, in La Dolce Vita. I first saw La Dolce Vita in 1962. It remains the one film I have stood in a light drizzle for 2 hours to see. Nino Rota's score still is perfection, like this book. Last night, after (sadly) finishing my reading, I sat down and watched La Dolce Vita. It haunted me in 1962 and haunts me still in 2017. I finally got to Rome for the first time 20 years ago. Of course, I had to go to the Via Veneto - it was just as crowded with chain smoking Romans and tourists - only added were the egoistic young guys standing in the street, oblivious to the crazy Roman drivers in cars and on Vespas on their cell phones now! Three months later, Marcello, the heartthrob with pain behind his eyes, as Fellini's alter ego, was dead. The tribute the author writes of: the shutting off of Trevi Fountain, the covering of it with black cloth and dancing spotlights, was described in such an evocative way by Mr. Levy.
I just started, Ready, Steady Go and am amazed by the same evocation of a city in its special time and place - but with much more "chipper" tone. I lived in Swinging London in the Carnaby Street years and am reliving the excitement of being young and bursting with the energy of the new young who were turning the world on its head.
After this read, I will go on to Paul Neman: A Life. I know it will bring me once again the writing of a most gifted and insightful author. Mille grazie!
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Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2017
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Top reviews from other countries
- Jane WestmacottReviewed in the United Kingdom on August 12, 2024
An Intriguing Read
- GeoffreyReviewed in the United Kingdom on August 10, 2017
Fascinating book about the glamour of postwar Rome
- F.R. JamesonReviewed in the United Kingdom on September 11, 2018
Time to take your literary vespa to Rome
DOLCE VITA CONFIDENTIAL is a book which purports to be the story of Rome in the 1950s when it was the centre of the fashionable world. A city of impossible glamour that most of the world’s cities will never get within a whisker of. (The Last Shaun Levy book I read was about London in The Swinging Sixties, but even then London had the cool without the chic). However, despite its claims, I think - as the title suggests – what Levy is most interested in is detailing the making of Fellini’s LA DOLCE VITA, but putting it into full context of the time.F.R. JamesonTime to take your literary vespa to Rome
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 11, 2018
So, we get the whirl of fashion and tabloid photography that inspired the film, characters sketches of the main players in the film (and the likes of Sophia Loren, who it would be impossible to ignore) and what comes from this is a great conjuring of a long lost beautiful black and white world.
I like Levy’s prose style and its breeziness suits this subject perfectly. I have seen LA DOLCE VITA, but once and more than twenty years ago. (I’ll be honest with you, most of the Italian movies I’ve seen are Spaghetti Westerns or Giallo.) However, this is a book which seems to capture the essence Rome in the fifties, and in doing do makes me want me to ride a scooter, drink an expresso and start watching all the other Italian cultural milestones I haven’t seen but should have.
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