This fea­ture is the sec­ond in our sum­mer series, La Dolce Vita: A Cel­e­bra­tion of Ital­ian Screen Style, in part­ner­ship with Disaronno.

Not once dur­ing Pao­lo Sorrentino’s sprawl­ing urban sym­pho­ny, The Great Beau­ty, does Jep Gam­bardel­la (Toni Servil­lo) ever hop in a car. Walk­ing is the man’s only means of trav­el – an occu­pa­tion and a spir­i­tu­al imper­a­tive. Bedecked with an end­less col­lec­tion of blaz­ers, pock­et squares and two-toned brogues, the 65-year-old one-time nov­el­ist-turned-occa­sion­al reporter saun­ters into the film as a flâneur, strolling aim­less­ly around Rome in a state of height­ened recep­tiv­i­ty to all the stim­uli of its streets. 

“The world reveals itself to those who trav­el on foot,” Wern­er Her­zog once mused, and so it is for Servillo’s pro­fes­sion­al wan­der­er, who doesn’t seem to live in so much as com­mune with the city. No walk is ever wast­ed, every cor­ner hides some­thing strange: a nun pick­ing oranges from a tree; a child whis­per­ing from inside the crypt of a Renais­sance tem­ple; a giraffe in the Baths of Caracalla. 

Sor­renti­no trades a tourist-friend­ly trav­el­ogue for a more dis­qui­et­ing, entranc­ing jour­ney, and that’s his pri­ma­ry achieve­ment. The Great Beau­ty makes a famil­iar place seem new and sur­re­al; it’s that rare film that’s sus­cep­ti­ble to the mag­ic of things that often go unnoticed. 

Like Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, whose 1960 film La Dolce Vita stands as The Great Beauty’s undis­put­ed touch­stone, Sor­renti­no was not born in the Ital­ian cap­i­tal but moved there in his youth, and he immor­talis­es it with the look of an out­sider stunned by all its rich­es and mys­ter­ies. This is his fifth fea­ture lensed by Luca Bigazzi, who here traf­fics in the same ele­gant crane and dol­ly shots that marked their ear­li­er collaborations. 

But where the sin­u­ous cam­era move­ment in 2008’s Il Divo and 2011’s This Must Be the Place might some­times reg­is­ter as osten­ta­tious, in The Great Beau­ty form is entire­ly in ser­vice of the sto­ry. As the cam­era glides in and out of church­es, palaz­zos and rooftops, Sor­renti­no con­jures a mag­pie curios­i­ty for the world that dove­tails with Jep’s own jour­ney: a man who grad­u­al­ly awakes to the splen­dour that sur­rounds him, and turns it into a source of creation.

Still, Sorrentino’s love for Rome is not rev­er­en­tial. Through­out the film there are moments – a man wash­ing his face on the mon­u­men­tal foun­tain on the Jan­icu­lum hill, a woman read­ing a news­pa­per hud­dled next to a stat­ue – that seemed designed to demys­ti­fy its cen­turies-old archi­tec­ture. Enthralled by the city as he unmis­tak­ably is, Sor­renti­no cap­tures it not as an inert back­drop, but a place that exists in sym­bio­sis with its residents. 

For a work haunt­ed by death – one that opens with a fatal case of Stend­hal Syn­drome – The Great Beau­ty accrues a life-affirm­ing pow­er. If there’s any­thing tru­ly deca­dent in Sorrentino’s uni­verse that’s not Rome and its weath­ered mon­u­ments, but the fatu­ous, navel-gaz­ing aris­to­crats Jep frit­ters time with. It stands to rea­son that his wardrobe – replete with the fedo­ras and bright­ly coloured jack­ets of a mid-cen­tu­ry dandy – should set him apart from the more som­bre out­fits of those around him. 

Like every­thing else in this spell-bind­ing film, Daniela Ciancio’s cos­tumes aren’t beau­ti­ful for beauty’s sake, but sug­gests a vital­i­ty that befits the sto­ry of a rebirth. Their old-fash­ioned charm is in keep­ing with Sorrentino’s grand design. The Great Beau­ty isn’t a mere ele­gy for lost time; it’s a trib­ute to an ancient, more open way of trav­el­ling through and look­ing at the world.

To find out more about Disaronno’s 500-year anniver­sary* cel­e­bra­tions, vis­it dis​aron​no​.com, and join us at Regent Street Cin­e­ma on July 4 and 5 for spe­cial free screen­ings of The Great Beau­ty and La Notte, with com­pli­men­ta­ry cock­tails from Disaronno.

*1525: The leg­end of Dis­aron­no begins.