He taught Film Studies at Warwick University (where he was made the first full Professor of Film Studies in the United Kingdom) and currently teaches Film at King’s College London. His work combines an attention to the aesthetics of entertainment with a concern with social representation and his books include Stars, Only Entertainment, The Matter of Images, White, The Culture of Queers, Pastiche, Nino Rota and La dolce vita.
Towards La Dolce Vita
Federico Fellini's ground-breaking 1960 comedy drama La Dolce Vita put Italian cinema firmly on the world stage with its tale of hedonistic excess. The film follows Marcello Rubini, a journalist writing for gossip magazines, over seven days and nights on his journey through the "sweet life" of Rome in a fruitless search for love and happiness. La Dolce Vita won the Palme d'Or at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival and the Oscar for Best Costumes, and remains one of the most critically acclaimed films of all time.
In his lecture below, Professor Dyer examines what La Dolce Vita came out of, including news and gossip stories, Rome films (including popular films about the intertwined lives of small groups of mainly working-class Romans - e.g. Le ragazza di Piazza di Spagna, La notte brava, Via Margutta - and also tourist films such as Roman Holiday and Three Coins in the Fountain) and also the legacy of neo-realism with its emphasis on the use of non-actors, location shooting and episodic structures. He looks at the way that Fellini’s La Dolce Vita is rooted in all these and, through them, the society of its time, while also transforming them into symbol and spectacle.
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