A character pigging out*

“The most revolting film I have ever seen”

– Mary Whitehouse, via

Four hedonistic gourmands throw a party of the flesh, of meat, of lust, and death.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for July is, for unknown reasons, mostly not date-related and follows some sort of vacation narrative.

Additionally, IMDb writes that “director Pietro Germi filmed a close-up of the front page of a newspaper announcing Yuri Gagarin's flight around the earth on April 12th 1961.”

Books, or art, in commemoration of Savonarola's 1497 Florentine falò delle vanità (bonfire of the vanities).

“I used to spend afternoons reading in bed. Tommaso would call and find me there. He could have kissed me. I wouldn't have resisted, out of boredom. But he was satisfied to watch me as I read. All those purposeless books.”

– Lidia

A lavish #CocktailParty in celebration of the launch of a novel is bookended by tragedy, in the loss of a befriended writer and the unraveling of another writer and his wife's marriage.

“Whoever dies for the country hasn't lived in vain. I, on the contrary, will live for the country because I'm not that stupid.”

– George A. Custer

Various characters lose their shoes in Fellini's hedonistic La dolce vita, most famously Anita Ekberg after entering a freezing Fontana di Trevi with paparazzo Marcello Mastroianni.

“I like lots of things. But there are three things I like most: love, love, and love.”

– Sylvia