The Great Beauty


The Great Beauty is a 2013 art drama film co-written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino. Filming took place in Rome starting on 9 August 2012. It premiered at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival where it was screened in competition for the Palme d'Or. It was shown at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival, the 2013 Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, and at the 2013 Reykjavik European Film Festival.
The film won Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards, as well as the Golden Globe and the BAFTA award in the same category. It is a co-production between the Italian Medusa Film and Indigo Film and the French Babe Films, with support from Banca Popolare di Vicenza, Pathé and France 2 Cinéma. With a production budget of €9.2 million, the film grossed over $24 million worldwide.
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Plot

The film opens with a quote from Louis-Ferdinand Céline's novel Journey to the End of the Night: "Travel is useful; it exercises the imagination. All the rest is disappointment and fatigue. Our journey is entirely imaginary. That is its strength. It goes from life to death. People, animals, cities, things – all are imagined. It's a novel, just a fictitious narrative. Littré says so, and he's never wrong. And besides, in the first place, anyone can do as much. You just have to close your eyes. It's on the other side of life."
Jep Gambardella is a 65-year-old seasoned journalist and theater critic, mostly committed to wandering among the social events of a Rome immersed in the beauty of its history and in the superficiality of its inhabitants today, in a merciless contrast. He also ventured into creative writing in his youth: he is the author of only one work called The Human Apparatus. Despite the appreciation and the many awards he received, Jep has not written other books, not only for his laziness but above all for a creative block from which he cannot escape. The purpose of his existence has been to become a "socialite", but not just any socialite, but "the king of society".
Jep is surrounded by several friends: Romano, a playwright who is perpetually on the lead of a young woman who exploits him; Lello, a mouthy and wealthy toy seller; Viola, a wealthy bourgeois and mother of a son with serious mental problems named Andrea; Stefania, a self-centred radical chic writer; Dadina, the dwarf editor of the newspaper where Jep works.
One morning, he meets the husband of Elisa, a woman who has been Jep's first and probably only love: the man announces that Elisa has died, leaving behind only a diary in which the woman tells of her love for Jep; thus, her husband discovered that he had been a mere surrogate for 35 years, nothing more than "a good companion". Elisa's husband, now afflicted and grieved, will soon find consolation in the affectionate welcome of his foreign maid. After this episode, Jep begins a profound and melancholic reinterpretation of his life and a long meditation on himself and on the world around him. And, above all, he thinks about starting to write again.
During the following days, Jep meets Ramona, a stripper with painful secrets, and Cardinal Bellucci, in whom the passion for cooking is more alive than his Catholic faith; Jep is gradually convinced of the futility and uselessness of his existence. Soon his "vicious circle" also breaks down: Ramona, with whom he had established an innocent and profound relationship, dies of an incurable disease; Romano, disappointed by the deceptive attractiveness of Rome, leaves the city, farewelling only Jep; Stefania, humiliated by Jep, who had revealed her secrets and her lies to her face, left Jep's worldly circle; Viola, on the other hand, after the death of her son, donates all her possessions to the Church and becomes a missionary in Africa.
Just when hopes seem to abandon Jep once and for all, he is saved by a new episode: after a meeting, pushed by Dadina, who wants to get an interview with a "Saint", a Catholic missionary nun in the Third World, Jep goes to Giglio Island to report on the shipwreck of the Costa Concordia. Right here, remembering his first meeting with Elisa in a flashback, a glimmer of hope rekindles in him: his next novel is finally ready to come to light.

Music

No.TitleAlbumArtistsComposer
1"I lie" 1-01Torino VocalensembleDavid Lang
2Far l'amore2-01Bob Sinclar & Raffaella Carrà
3More than scarlet2-02Decoder Ring
4Mueve la colita2–17El Gato D.J.
5My heart's in the highlands1-03Else Torp,
Christopher Bowers-Broadbent		Arvo Pärt
6Que no se acabe el mambo2–14La Banda Gorda
7The Lamb1-07The choir of the Temple Church
directed by Stephen Layton		John Tavener
text by William Blake
8Parade2-06Tape
9III. Lento—Cantabile-semplice
from Symphony No. 3		1–10London Sinfonietta, Dawn Upshaw
directed by David Zinman		Henryk Górecki
10World to come IV1-02Maya BeiserDavid Lang
11Moody–ESG
12Take my breath away2-03Gui Boratto
13The beatitudes1-05Kronos QuartetVladimir Martynov
14Forever2-08Antonello VendittiMaurizio Fabrizio
15Pancho–
16There must be an angel
(playing with my heart)		–Lorraine BowenAnnie Lennox, David A. Stewart
17 Water from the same source2–10Rachel's-
18II. Adagio
from Symphony in C major		1-08film: Leopold Stokowski and his Symphony Orchestra
album: New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
conducted by Donald Johanos		Georges Bizet
19Dies irae
from Requiem for my Friend		1-06Elżbieta Towarnicka, Dariusz Paradowski, Piotr Lykowski, Piotr Kusiewicz, Grzegorz Zychowicz and Jan SzypowskiZbigniew Preisner
20Everything trying2–05Damien Jurado
21Discoteca2–16Exchpoptrue
22We no speak americano2–15Studio Allstars
23Ti ruberò2–12Monica Cetti
24Trois mouvements perpétuels–Peter Beijersbergen van HenegouwenFrancis Poulenc
25Beata viscera1–11Vox ClamantisMagister Perotinus
–Time1-04Lele Marchitelli
–River flows1-09Lele Marchitelli
–Brain waves2-04Lele Marchitelli
–Color my world2-07Lele Marchitelli
–Surge of excitement2-09Lele Marchitelli
–Settembre non comincia2–11Lele Marchitelli
–Trumeau2–13Lele Marchitelli
–Ramona2–18Los Paraguayos and Luis Alberto del ParanáLele Marchitelli

Reception

Italian Criticism

Philippe Ridet, Rome correspondent for Le Monde, criticized the film in Internazionale while supporting the perspectives of journalists from La Stampa, Raffaella Silipo and Gianni Riotta:
Ridet's perspective was countered in an article by Tiziano Peccia for the Brazilian academic journal O Olho da História. The article, dedicated to beauty, followed the death of Umberto Eco:
Tiziano Peccia, "Critica e critiche alla grande bellezza," O Olho da História, Issue 22
It has been observed that while international film criticism has generally judged Sorrentino's film positively, Italian critics have been divided with harsh judgments:
Or, on the contrary, with great appreciation:
This contrast of opinions has been interpreted in various ways, but in negative evaluations, it seems to reconnect with the recurring notion of the director's presumed arrogance and ambition to propose his vision, almost as if it were a sequel to La dolce vita by Federico Fellini, which instead resonates with the imagination of international audiences who appreciate this portrayal.

Critical response

The film has a 91% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 135 reviews, with a weighted average rating of 8/10. The website's critical consensus states, "Dazzlingly ambitious, beautifully filmed, and thoroughly enthralling, The Great Beauty offers virtuoso filmmaking from writer/director Paolo Sorrentino." The film holds a score of 86/100 on Metacritic based on 34 reviews, signifying "universal acclaim".
Robbie Collin at The Daily Telegraph awarded Sorrentino's film the maximum five stars and described it as "a shimmering coup de cinema". He likened it to Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City and Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita in its ambition to record a period of Roman history on film. "Rossellini covered the Nazi occupation of 1944; Fellini the seductive, empty hedonism of the years that followed. Sorrentino's plan is to do the same for the Berlusconi era," he wrote. Deborah Young of The Hollywood Reporter stated "Sorrentino's vision of moral chaos and disorder, spiritual and emotional emptiness at this moment in time is even darker than Fellini's." Critics have also identified other purposefully explicit film homages: to Roma, 8½, Scola's Splendor, Michelangelo Antonioni's La notte. Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar named the film as one of the twelve best films of 2013, placing it second in his list. In 2016, the film was ranked among the 100 greatest films since 2000 in an international critics poll by 177 critics around the world. It is currently director Paolo Sorrentino's second highest rated film on Rotten Tomatoes. In 2025, it was one of the films voted for the "Readers' Choice" edition of The New York Times list of "The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century," finishing at number 220.

Film critics' top lists

Various critics named the film as one of the best of 2013.
Peter Bradshaw also named the film as one of the 20 best films of the 21st Century in the Guardian.