Brunello Rondi to work with Federico Fellini as artistic director on "La Strada" (1954) and "Nights of Cabiria" (1957). His most prized collaborations were on the film scripts of "La Dolce Vita" (1960), "8½" (1963), "Juliet of the Spirits" (1964), "Orchestra Rehearsal" (1978), and "City of Women" (1980), all co-written and directed by Fellini. On the writing of "La Dolce Vita", Rondi helped build up the character of Steiner, the intellectual who kills his wife and children. As a Fellini intimate, Rondi also played a crucial role in the early stages of "8½". In a letter dated October 1960, Fellini outlined his
La Dolce Vita the angelic Paola; they are framed by a prologue (Jesus over Rome) and epilogue (the monster fish) giving the film its innovative and symmetrically symbolic structure. The evocations are: seven deadly sins, seven sacraments, seven virtues, seven days of creation. Other critics disagree, Peter Bondanella argues that "any critic of "La Dolce Vita" not mesmerized by the magic number seven will find it almost impossible to organize the numerous sequences on a strictly numerological basis". The critic Robert Richardson suggests that the originality of "La Dolce Vita" lies in a new form of film narrative that mines "an aesthetic of