La Dolce Vita

By Deane Barker • • tags: italy, movies •

It’s Italian for “the good life” or “the sweet life.” However, it most often refers to a 1960 Italian movie about a photographer living among high society in Rome.

Why I Looked It Up

In House of Gucci:

Long before the days of la dolce vita, Aldo had identified Italy’s capital city as on of the the most popular playgrounds of the world’s elite.

Italy’s capital is Rome, and the quote means that Aldo Gucci saw the value of doing business in Rome before the movie identified it as a glamorous city.

Interestingly, the phrase in the text is in lower case, which means it refers to the general concept of “the high life,” rather than the movie. I did some searching on the early usages of the phrase, and they seem to date from the movie, which means the title of the movie gave birth to a popular phrase (also see Bucket List).

I did a Google NGram search for it, and usage climbs in the late 50s, which just precedes the 1960 movie. This makes me wonder if perhaps the movie was capitalizing on a phrase that emerged organically and independently.

Links to this – Catch 22 December 7, 2023
It came from the novel – it’s a phrase invented by Joseph Heller for his 1962 novel of the same time. It did not exist prior to the novel, and took on a life of its own after the novel as an idiom to describe a frustrating loop where two choices are both prevented by the other. “You mean there’s a...
Links from this – House of Gucci: A True Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed March 20, 2022
Fascinating history of the Gucci family and company, from the patriarch and his humble origins as a leatherworker in rural Italy, down through the generations, including the sensational murder which was the focus of the 2021 movie, and then the current disposition of all the players and the destiny...
Links from this – Bucket List October 25, 2021
A “bucket list” is a list of things you want to do before you die (“kick the bucket”). It’s become an ingrained American idiom, and I’ve also heard it in other parts of the world. I became aware of the term because of the 2007 movie The Bucket List . But surely that film didn’t invent the phrase,...