La Dolce Vita

The sweet life is not that sweet. From the beginning scene in which a statue of Jesus dangles from a helicopter on its way to the Vatican to the end in which a dead enormous stingray is pulled up by nets and observed by party goers on their way home, La Dolce Vita is a spectacle of the pursuit of a pleasure that never really seems to get found. Marcello, the journalist/publicity agent who realizes that he's not living up to his creative potential, has a new girl every night (although, as Ebert points out, it's never even clear that he has sex with them).

(Previously 8 1/2 here.)