I have recently watched La Dolche Vita and have read some criticisms that Rome was very exagerrated in the film, that it was quite docile and quiet as compared to the NYC environment that is displayed in the film in the city...
Also I have begun reading the skin by Curzio Malaparte which is about Naples during and after WW2, it is displayed as a hell hole and I am wondering if it is really as bad it is displayed. Curzio paints Naples comparable to the Weimar Republic in which prostitution is everywhere with men, woman and children all participating in the act. Food is scare and poverty is everywhere, Crime is high and the GI troops from the Allies just kind of take advantage of it.
First things first: it's spelled La Dolce Vita (without the H).
This said, while Fellini's film certainly isn't a documentary it is nevertheless true that the area in or around the vie Veneto/Boncompagni (where most of the high-end hotels and cafés were/are concentrated) was home to the Roman jet-set; politicians, journalists, intellectuals, stars and starlettes were all to be found there.
But the rest of the city was much more 'docile' and that district was not representative of the whole city!
As for Malaparte's description of Naples, well... the things he wrote were sadly not the work of fiction. After the end of the hostilities the city was really in shambles; Naples was also hit hard by a typhus epidemic and on top of it, many people had resorted to prostitution in order to get what little relief goods the Allied troops could offer - albeit I think that the participation of men and children may have been exaggerated, or even made up, by the author.