In his review of La Dolce Vita, Roger Ebert makes an affectionate and gentle description of his relation to the film’s main character, Marcello, throughout the countless viewings over the years:

“Movies do not change, but their viewers do. When I saw “La Dolce Vita” in 1960, I was an adolescent for whom “the sweet life” represented everything I dreamed of: sin, exotic European glamour, the weary romance of the cynical newspaperman. When I saw it again, around 1970, I was living in a version of Marcello’s world; Chicago’s North Avenue was not the Via Veneto, but at 3 a.m. the denizens were just as colorful, and I was about Marcello’s age.

When I saw the movie around 1980, Marcello was the same age, but I was 10 years older, had stopped drinking, and saw him not as a role model but as a victim, condemned to an endless search for happiness that could never be found, not that way. By 1991, when I analyzed the film a frame at a time at the University of Colorado, Marcello seemed younger still, and while I had once admired and then criticized him, now I pitied and loved him. And when I saw the movie right after Mastroianni died, I thought that Fellini and Marcello had taken a moment of discovery and made it immortal. There may be no such thing as the sweet life. But it is necessary to find that out for yourself.”

I can’t help but make the same sort of comparison, now, on my third viewing. If my memory’s aftertaste was always tied to Anita Ekberg’s spinning allure, this time I seem to be transfixed by Marcello’s tired gaze, at the party’s end, on the beach. Films are a great self-reflection tool.