La Dolce Vita (The Sweet Life) is a sort of collection of mini-stories that revolve around the journalist Marcello. When he is only a journalist, he lives with simple pleasures, has a simple girlfriend named Emma, and pursues news stories with the same vigor and style as his fellow journalists. Eventually, however, he delves into a much wealthier lifestyle full of excitement, alcohol, sex and a lot of scandals. The bigger picture here was more than just Marcello's adventures though. It was a reflection on how monetary wealth doesn't always mean a happy life. A lot of the rich people were living the sweet life, but weren't necessarily happy. For example, Steiner's suicide and the murder of his children shows how unhappy he truly was. Essentially, the message in the movie was fame and fortune lead to sadness and corruption (of both society and the individual mind). Nino Rota's film score did the whole movie justice too...I've always been a fan of his music, especially his score for The Godfather. La Dolce Vita was long, but went by fast enough to paint the bigger picture for the audience. I can definitely see why the church banned it. Jesus wasn't the helicopter-flying type of guy...but what a great way to start this film! It set the premise up for the party environment!

Last Year at Marienbad

Last Year at Marienbad is a film structured around themes and visuals more than plot. I had some discomfort with how rigid and formal the characters were. I found it interesting that all of the characters used vous instead of tu, which indicates a high level of politeness. However, since the characters lacked depth and development, it seemed fitting that they were so polite. I really like some of the camera techniques though. In one of the first scenes where it is revealed that 'M' might have a relationship with 'A', the camera reflects this perfectly by having 'X' sitting on the left side of the screen, 'M' and 'A' on the right side, and a chair in between them. Costumes also played an interesting role in the film. Since it was black and white, the characters were wearing either dark clothing or light clothing. It seemed like at moments in which 'A' was trying to plea innocence, she had a white dress on. However, as soon as she decided to engage in 'X's plot, she was back in a black dress. All of the men wore only black too.

In general, I couldn't really pull much more away from this film due to it's lack of plot and character development. It was still visually intriguing!

Vertigo

Vertigo is the first Alfred Hitchcock film I've seen. That being said, it lived up to everything I'd ever heard about Hitchcock's film style. I really like the way vertigo, in and of itself, was a theme. When John is experiencing vertigo, his sensation of dizziness and fear is conveyed through the camera using 'trombone shots', where a combination of zoom, focus, and tracking creates a distorting effect. When John's vertigo strikes, it is usually at a time in the movie when things are spinning out of control, or there is a heightened level of stress for him. Just before Madeleine's first alleged death, John didn't make it to the top of the stairs due to vertigo. He suffered from it the next time he went up the stairs as well, but made it to the top, showing that he could conquer the condition. When he revealed to Judy that he knew about the scheme she was part of, John also redeemed himself in the sense that he wasn't going to be the victim of a murderer's plot. Then, as Judy falls to her death, John looks down at her body, only without the trombone shot.
Early on in the movie, John learns that the only way he might be able to shake the vertigo would be to experience another shocking event. Judy's death seems shocking enough...well, maybe a shock to him. It was well foreshadowed, so it wasn't too much of a shocker to me, although I still experienced the temporary emotion of "did that really happen!?", since I had hoped that it wouldn't! The movie ends with us looking at John while he looks down at Judy without any vertigo. I like the ending because it brought closure to the plot...the true underlying plot was for John to try to cure himself of vertigo, not to find a lover. He succeeded, which by some standards warrants a happy ending...which it was, depending on how much you were rooting for the relationship between John and Madeleine...or how much you were against it.