A look at the darkness beneath the seductive lifestyles of Rome’s rich and glamorous, La dolce vita follows a notorious celebrity journalist (a sublimely cool Marcello Mastroianni) during a hectic week spent on the peripheries of the spotlight. This mordant picture was an incisive commentary on the deepening decadence of contemporary Europe, and it provided a prescient glimpse of just how gossip – and fame – obsessed our society would become.