The Great Beauty · reception & legacy

How The Great Beauty has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

Left Cannes 2013 empty-handed and got a notably chillier reception in Italy — where critics sniffed 'Fellini pastiche' — than abroad, where it swept the Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe for foreign-language film. A decade on it's settled in as the defining Italian film of the 2010s, the Fellini comparison now worn as a badge rather than an insult.

What's debated

The forever-debate: is it a profound heir to La Dolce Vita or two hours of gorgeous, hollow imitation — 'style over substance' gets typed under this film as much as any of the decade.

Its footprint

The opening rooftop party — Bob Sinclar's Raffaella Carrà remix blasting over dancing Romans — is one of the most rewatched, referenced sequences of the 2010s, and Jep's line that his party trains 'are the best in Rome because they go nowhere' is endlessly quoted. Toni Servillo in that yellow jacket, cigarette in hand, is basically the film's logo.

Where it stands

A canon climber: BBC's 2016 critics' poll ranked it among the century's greatest films, and on Letterboxd it's a four-star staple — the 'you must see this' entry point to modern Italian cinema.

Named by the director

Influences Paolo Sorrentino has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.

• Federico Fellini — Sorrentino has openly acknowledged Fellini as the film's presiding spirit, embracing rather than dodging the comparison to his portraits of Rome.
• La Dolce Vita (1960) — Sorrentino acknowledged it as the inevitable reference point — another writer adrift in Roman high society — while insisting his Rome was a different, decayed one.
• La Terrazza (1980) — Sorrentino cited Ettore Scola's satire of chattering Roman intellectuals at a party as a key model for the film's salon scenes.