La Dolce Vita describe intrusive photographers. As to the origin of the character's name itself, Fellini scholar Peter Bondanella argues that although "it is indeed an Italian family name, the word is probably a corruption of the word "papataceo", a large and bothersome mosquito. Ennio Flaiano, the film's co-screenwriter and creator of Paparazzo, reports that he took the name from a character in a novel by George Gissing." Gissing's character, Signor Paparazzo, is found in his travel book, "By the Ionian Sea" (1901). Marcello is a journalist in Rome during the late 1950s who covers tabloid news of movie stars, religious visions and
La vita agra a current which spread at the beginning of the Italian economic miracle, such as Paolo Volponi's "Memoriale" and Giovanni Arpino's "Una nuvola d'ira". He praised the all-encompassing language that succeeds masterfully in expressing and representing the industrial reality in a more complex way, even if he saw some weaknesses connected to the book's uncontainable autobiography that is limited, in his opinion, to a "private anarchist protest". The novel was also made into a 1964 film of the same name, directed by Carlo Lizzani and starring Ugo Tognazzi and Giovanna Ralli. La vita agra La vita agra, known in English-speaking countries