Dolce Vita Confidential: Fellini, Loren, Pucci, Paparazzi and the Swinging High Life of 1950s Rome - Hardcover

The energy of 1950s Rome fizzes in this epic biography of the city at the height of its filmic glory and postwar stylishness. The hub of the book is the Cinecitta studio, where stars from Hollywood and Europe worked and played, but it is beyond that complex where Levy paints his most vivid picture. Rome, as he tells it, was a place of power, sex and death - and the birthplace of the paparazzi that now dominate cultural life. His book is a nostalgic trip with an edgy underbelly - much like Rome itself, then (Jonathan Dean Sunday Times Stage & Screen Book of the Year)

Shawn Levy's fascinating book takes you on a postwar tour of Rome at the birth of celebrity during the boomtime of Cinecittà, the studio responsible for the city's glory days reputation as 'Hollywood on the Tiber' ... Levy has achieved a feat in including so much in one volume - he pours a large bottle of chianti into a digestivo glass ... [A] beautifully written walk on the wild side ... [It] oozes nostalgic glamour (Alex O'Connell The Times Book of the Week)

Something extraordinary in cultural terms happened in Italy in the postwar years, as Levy recounts with enthusiasm and colour ... [He] captures much of the excitement of that time and place in a prose style that is teeming with satisfying gossipy details ... This book would be just the thing to pack if you were intending a Hepburn-ish Roman holiday this summer (Bee Wilson Guardian)

Uproariously readable ... [Levy] tells some terrific, if dreadful, stories about the convergence of noblemen and actresses ... Fans of La Dolce Vita will recognise many scenes from the film in these tales. Levy pulls all the threads of his story together in his discussion of the world-conquering movie. The author of Rat Pack Confidential, he is a master of the group biography, pacing his chapters for maximum suspense and revelation ... The climactic story is a humdinger ... Wickedly readable (John Walsh Sunday Times)

Shawn Levy's absorbing, well-researched book exalts the intoxicating, beguiling dreaminess of Rome in its celluloid heyday (Ian Thomson Times Literary Supplement)

Shawn Levy has composed an exuberant portrait of postwar Rome and the filmmakers, movie stars, fashion designers, journalists and paparazzi whose supreme hunger, energy and creativity transformed it into the most stylish city in the world. He brings an infectious and freewheeling enthusiasm to every page as he reintroduces us to the extravagant romanticism of fast cars, reckless hedonism, and beautiful people behind the resurrection of the Eternal City (Glenn Frankel, author of The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend)

A fantastically gossip-filled but intelligent history of Italy's postwar film-making industry and the culture it spawned (Sunday Times Summer Reads)

[A] zabaglione of a book (Roger Lewis Daily Mail Book of the Week)

A palatable and stimulating engagement with an era that still functions as a powerful marketing tool for Italian exports ... This is an exciting account of a revolution in art and society ... Levy's snapshots of ruthless newshounds and voluble starlets show his flair for scene-setting. He takes us on a joyride through the photoshoots and exposés that gave birth to new, competitive media, and the ideas and freedom generated by democracy ... All roads led to Fellini's masterpiece of decadence, La Dolce Vita. Levy laps up the image that encapsulated an era: the blonde goddess Anita Ekberg lifting her skirts in the ancient well-spring of the Trevi (Lilian Pizzichini The Spectator)

In this ebullient tour of Rome in the 1950s, film critic and celebrity biographer Levy portrays the city as a burgeoning centre of fashion, photography and, especially, movies ... Levy's spirited history is nothing less than a love letter to Rome's luxurious, sensational past (Kirkus Reviews)