Federico Fellini’s much-imitated “I Vitelloni,” which begins a one-week revival today at the American Film Institute Silver Theatre, is an alternately wistful and disenchanted social comedy about the feckless behavior of five provincial young men who resist accepting adult responsibilities.
Martin Scorsese acknowledged that he had “I Vitelloni,” originally released in Italy in 1953, in mind while contriving the far more drastic and sinister “Mean Streets” 20 years later. Barry Levinson must have acknowledged the obvious and rather more harmonious debts that his “Diner” (1982) owed to Mr. Fellini’s episodic memoir, keenly attuned to the inertia that can immobilize middle-class loafers and spongers.
The movie — Mr. Fellini’s third directing effort — became his first decisive hit. This 50th anniversary encore recalls why “I Vitelloni” (the literal meaning of the title is “big calves”) justifies abiding fondness and esteem. It observes a setting whose vistas remain haunting, especially when accentuating the nocturnal or wintry, and a gallery of characters whose human frailties remain credible and touching. This was more or less the Fellini approach in the initial phase of his directing career, which culminated emotionally in “La Strada” and “Nights of Cabiria,” the great vehicles for his wife, Giulietta Masina.
“I Vitelloni’s” youthful wastrels are clinging to parental nests as they push 30. The filmmaker was distilling impressions of his seaside hometown, Rimini, which he abandoned at age 18. His writing collaborators, Tullio Pinelli and Ennio Flaiano, added compatible recollections and exaggerations of their own.
Two of the “vitelloni” are played by actors who had principal roles in the second Fellini picture, “The White Sheik,” Alberto Sordi and Leopoldo Trieste. They carry their own first names into the fictional world of “I Vitelloni,” but in retrospect, it’s surprising that more isn’t done in the second half of the movie with Alberto, a brawny mama’s boy who seems to run out of gas as a potential troublemaker or outrageous bellyacher after drinking himself into a stupor during a carnival celebration. Mr. Sordi had been absurdly delightful as the “sheik,” a ham actor struggling to live up to a fan’s adoration. He was also destined to be a major star of Italian movies for a generation.
Mr. Trieste, a memorably woebegone bridegroom in “Sheik,” seems a marginal “vitelloni” until big-time disillusion confronts his character in a late sequence. Leopoldo must endure a hero-worshipping loss, rather like his bride in “Sheik.” An aspiring playwright and poet, Leopoldo is thrilled at the opportunity to read a play manuscript for an aging actor, Sergio Natali, who has fallen back on the vaudeville circuit. In the presence of a living legend, Leopoldo complains, “This town is blind to art. How can an artist feed his demons?” The codger suggests an intimate stroll along the beach. His come-hither insinuations propel Leopoldo to duck out hastily.
Mr. Fellini cast his own brother, Riccardo, as a member of the group. Despite a cherubic and agreeable presence, the other Fellini ends up with the sketchiest role among the five cronies. The director’s ostensible alter ego is the youngest, Moraldo, played by Franco Interlenghi, immortalized several years earlier as one of the ill-fated shoeshine boys in Vittorio DeSica’s “Shoeshine.”
Both Moraldo and Riccardo are seen with girlfriends during the carnival episode, and there’s some obvious untapped strength in the uncredited young actress who plays Moraldo’s impatient date; you suspect she might have a very good idea of how to separate this sweet-natured young man from his dissolute pals.
Not that the filmmakers give her the opportunity. The only character afforded a thorough going-over is Franco Fabrizi’s Fausto. An incorrigible Don Juan and moral coward, he becomes Moraldo’s brother-in-law in the early stages of the plot and persists in betraying his bride, Sandra (Leonora Ruffo).
To their credit, the filmmakers are reluctant to inflict severe self-righteous punishments on these layabouts. Even Fausto demonstrates a becoming sense of shame toward the end, rejecting a liaison that he would normally jump at — and has set the stage for, during an earlier sequence. The prevailing sadder-but-wiser outlook is that the “vitelloni” are overdue to snap out of it. There are certainly decent role models within reach; they range from an ingenuous child, Guido, encountered on his way to an early morning job at the railway station, to the father and employer that Fausto disgraces.
The eloquent final images suggest a wake-up call: Moraldo departs by train as the director intercuts shots of his still slumbering friends, the camera sweeping across them before it returns to the melancholy escapee.
***1/2
TITLE: “I Vitelloni”
RATING: No MPAA Rating (made in Italy in 1953, years before the advent of the rating system; adult subject matter, with occasional sexual allusions and comic vulgarity)
CREDITS: Directed by Federico Fellini. Screenplay by Mr. Fellini, Tullio Pinelli and Ennio Flaiano. Cinematography by Otello Martelli, Luciano Trasatti and Carlo Carlini. Art direction by Mario Chiari. Music by Nino Rota. In Italian with English subtitles
RUNNING TIME: 104 minutes
MAXIMUM RATING: FOUR STARS
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