Mind rot can take hold of a vulnerable brain my age so easily, enhancing and accelerating its natural degeneration. This frightens me. It is for this reason that I am cautious about my exposure to television, a device second only to the iPhone and Blackberry type devices in its insidious ability to rot the mind when abused. Notwithstanding my fear, over the last couple of evenings, I have turned on the television here at the farmhouse. The dish is scheduled to shut down in six days. So there is that outer limit to my exposure.
Goddamn, what an entertaining film! It is impossible to categorize this film, so funny in parts, so outré in other parts, and so dark in still others. My favorite actor of all time is Marcello Mastroianni, although to this day I am not sure that I am pronouncing his name correctly. The man was lethally handsome in his youth and remained so into his later years. Yet, he specialized in these roles in which he is befuddled and frustrated by the women around him. Of course he was never better than when he was working with Federico Fellini. And what a batch a women surround him in this film!
First, there is his volatile girlfriend Emma, played by Yvonne Furneaux. It is fair to say that her performance has been underrated historically. Anouk Aimée plays the promiscous Maddalena, the bored socialite. Fanny the French dancer played by Magali Noël is a dandy character. Nico, the gal who sang with the Velvet Underground, even makes an appearance. Then there is Anita Ekberg, an actress who holds a special place in my life. She plays the witless American starlet come to Rome. We tend to associate her with this film because her image is slathered all over the posters, but actually, her part of the film at the beginning is a smaller one than I remembered.
In 1956 when I was nine years old I saw Anita Ekberg for the first time in the old movie theater in the little town near here. The film was a forgettable, unintentional farce called Zarak starring Victor Mature--in the same category with The Conqueror starring John Wayne as Genghis Kahn, the funniest film not intended to be funny of all time. Of course Zarak did not seem funny in 1956. In any event Anita Ekberg in Zarak brought on my true sexual awakening. She flipped my switch to the “On” position then and there. It was those preternaturally spectacular breasts of course.
Later in life my primary visual focus shifted from female breasts to the female rear end for reasons that are beyond the scope of this treatise. In any event I suppose I should say that it is Anita Ekberg's breasts that hold the special place in my life, second in importance only to those at which I suckled as a babe. Watching La Dolce Vita again last evening was therefore a sentimental journey in that regard, also.
I'll tell you this. I am resolved not to let so much time pass again before I take another look at La Dolce Vita. There is so much in it that I still have not seen it all. And it is in black and white, thank God.
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Rennis
Linnnn
La Gringita
roberto luigi
Dr. Strangemom
pob2006
Salon.com
Comments
Interesting thoughts on mind rot. : )
Today I guess she would be considered fat.
:-) / r
Kind of like talking with/listening to a rare but interesting stranger in a pub with added breasts in a nearby seat that you know are real and won't implode and ruin your meal.
"Press sink please FRed(tm)."
Saluti
sounds like I can watch it with only a portion of the brain rot
since it has not been colorized by the Turner people.
Thanks for helping me fill 174 minutes with amusement
rated with love
OMoM