In the French farce La Cage aux Folles, Ugo Tognazzi and Michel Serrault star as Renato and Albin, a middle-aged gay couple and co-owners of a nightclub, the titular Cage aux Folles, where hysterically effeminate Albin stars as drag act Zaza. The long-suffering Renato once briefly enjoyed a heterosexual relationship and has a 20-year-old son, Laurent. When the latter turns up one day and announces he is to marry the daughter of one M Charrier, deputy leader of the Moral Order party, Renato is initially appalled. However, he comes round and reluctantly agrees to a meeting with the girl's parents, in which he will pose as a high-ranking diplomat, rid the apartment of all its queenly trappings and try to persuade Albin to lie low. The final 20 minutes of the movie, in which this charade of austerity and propriety falls entirely to pieces are among the most aisle-rollingly uproarious ever committed to celluloid.

It was remade by Hollywood as The Birdcage, but this original is far funnier. Although perhaps a little dated and stereotypical in its depiction of gay life there is real sympathy for, and affection conveyed between, Renato and Albin. The scenes with the Charrier family, who, it turns out, have problems of their own, cut an utterly gloomy bourgeois contrast with the screaming flamboyance of the nightclub scenes. The Charrier's unscrupulous chauffeur is one of the film's many treasures, his final "Combien?" provoking the film's crowning guffaw. All this iced with a delicious soundtrack from Ennio Morricone which wafts with the nostalgic scent of late-1970s South of France.

On the DVD: La Cage aux Folles is unfortunately presented in a not terribly good 1:66:1 transfer: much of the crackle and faded colours of the original remain, while the soundtrack is fuzzy in places. The only extra is the original trailer. --David Stubbs

At three brief hours, Fellini's cynical, engrossing social commentary, La Dolce Vita, stands as his timeless masterpiece. A rich, detailed panorama of Rome's modern decadence and sophisticated immorality, the film is episodic in structure but held tightly in focus by the wandering protagonist through whom we witness the sordid action. Marcello Rubini is a tabloid reporter trapped in a shallow high-society existence, as extraordinarily played by Marcello Mastroianni, a man of paradoxical, emotional juxtapositions: cool but tortured, sexy but impotent. He dreams about writing something important but remains seduced by the money and prestige that accompany his shallow position. He romanticises about finding true love but acts unfazed upon finding that his girlfriend has taken an overdose of sleeping pills. Instead, he engages in a ménage à trois, then frolics in a fountain with a giggling American starlet (bombshell Anita Ekberg), and in the film's unforgettably inspired finale, attends a wild orgy that ends, symbolically with its participants finding a rotting sea animal while wandering the beach at dawn.

Fellini saw his film as life affirming (thus its title, "The Sweet Life"), but it's impossible to take him seriously. While Mastroianni drifts from one worldly pleasure to another, be it sex, drink, glamorous parties or rich foods, they are presented, through his detached eyes, as merely momentary distractions. His existence, an endless series of wild evenings and lonely mornings, is ultimately soulless and facile. Because he lacks the courage to change, Mastroianni is left with no alternative but to wearily accept and enjoy this "sweet" life. --Dave McCoy, Amazon.com