It's 50 years since the Fellini film that defined an era. Peter Popham reports For Philip Larkin the annus mirabilis was 1963 when "sexual intercourse began". But Rome was a couple of jumps ahead, and this month Italy is celebrating the start of the "Dolce Vita" years which began, all agree, 50 years ago this month, in November 1958, with an impromptu striptease in a Roman trattoria. La Dolce Vita, "The Sweet Life", was the title of one of Federico Fellini's most seductive films and naturally grew to encompass the liberated era that inspired it.Suddenly everything became possible, to the shock of many at the time. In 1958 Olghina di Robilant was a penniless young Venetian countess struggling to make a living in the Italian capital, and that November her rich friend Peter Howard Vanderbilt agreed to cheer her up by bankrolling a birthday party for Olga - her 24th. Now 74, she remembers Rome as safe, cheap, innocent and puritanical. "There were no crowds, no pushing, no corruption, no unsavoury ambition. The paparazzi, for example, took photos with the agreement of the stars." She threw her party in Rugantino, a trattoria in Trastevere, and one of the guests was the commissar of the local police station.
For Philip Larkin the annus mirabilis was 1963 when "sexual intercourse began". But Rome was a couple of jumps ahead, and this month Italy is celebrating the start of the "Dolce Vita" years which began, all agree, 50 years ago this month, in November 1958, with an impromptu striptease in a Roman trattoria.
La Dolce Vita, "The Sweet Life", was the title of one of Federico Fellini's most seductive films and naturally grew to encompass the liberated era that inspired it.
Suddenly everything became possible, to the shock of many at the time. In 1958 Olghina di Robilant was a penniless young Venetian countess struggling to make a living in the Italian capital, and that November her rich friend Peter Howard Vanderbilt agreed to cheer her up by bankrolling a birthday party for Olga - her 24th.
Now 74, she remembers Rome as safe, cheap, innocent and puritanical. "There were no crowds, no pushing, no corruption, no unsavoury ambition. The paparazzi, for example, took photos with the agreement of the stars." She threw her party in Rugantino, a trattoria in Trastevere, and one of the guests was the commissar of the local police station.
Now 74, she remembers Rome as safe, cheap, innocent and puritanical. "There were no crowds, no pushing, no corruption, no unsavoury ambition. The paparazzi, for example, took photos with the agreement of the stars."
So all the "crowds, no pushing, no corruption, no unsavoury ambition" can trace their roots to an orgy in 1958? Is there any chance that the Countess's memories of Rome as "safe, cheap, innocent and puritanical" are a bit rosy-colored?
Well, then again, maybe not:
Today all the old-timers agree that Rome has gone to the dogs. The crowds and permanent police guard make diving into Trevi Fountain an unattractive proposition. Rugantino's trattoria is now a McDonald's, while Via Veneto, according to Enrico Lucherini, agent to the stars, "is terrible now, full of shoe shops and tourist restaurants charging €15 for a coffee".
