After La Dolce Vita Marcello Mastroianni is a man’s man and an actor of the truest form who roams the desert hills palms up and facing the Italian badlands, lamenting over the crying woman dressed in black, kneeling to the ground with her child like some old Sicilian tragedy.
Marcello, brother of Brando.
The other, overseas pilgrim who feels the pain of being a man and living as a man, who themselves cry over weeping mothers and for lost children.
They’ve been through it and back again and only appear to turn their back to society, for in the end they will never give up on the world because it is true that they have always and will forever love it, because they understand it. They are wise and they are bitter because they know that there is no greater and more appropriate way to live life on earth than as a child.
What Sylvia and La Dolce Vita would have looked like if they were in color, well, it all probably would be some kind of drag. Black and white keeps things tight and together and poignant. But color swung round at just the right time.
Ren Michael 