I Vitelloni

An early Fellini and a wonderful one at that. While it is not my favourite Fellini(my top 5 being Nights of Cabiria, La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, Amarcord and La Strada), it is one of his best and sadly one of his more neglected works. The film does look gorgeous, with rapid yet fluid cinematography and beautiful scenery. Nino Rota's score brings great pathos to every scene it appears in, the script is funny, tense and moving and while familiar in a way the story is engaging. The character studies are just as impressive, these are distinct characters that you do care for. You don't perhaps quite identify with them in the way you do with the titular characters of La Strada and especially Nights of Cabiria, but they are not as detached as some of Fellini's later films like Casanova or Satyricon(my least favourite Fellini but still has its interest points). Fellini's direction is restrained yet quirky and charming, the complete opposite of self-indulgent or dull like him and some of his later films have been criticised for being. The acting is very good indeed, Franco Fabrizi as Fausto especially is superb. All in all, a wonderful film and one of Fellini's better films while not quite among my absolute favourites from him. 9/10 Bethany Cox

I first saw this film as a college student in an Italian Cinema class. I was impressed then, and recently saw it again and was touched anew by these characters.

Then I noted that Martin Scorsese, in his documentary about Italian film on Turner Movies Classics ("My Voyage to Italy") names this film as a huge inspiration for his film "Mean Streets" -- and I felt totally exonerated that I had always placed this film up there with La Strada, 8 1/2, La Dolce Vita, and Amarcord.

Scorsese sets the record straight about how these characters are successfully fleshed out -- including Moraldo, the Fellini autobiographical character. This is a film of simple beauty, and while it may lack the complex allegorical meanings of La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2, the story more than delivers in its straight forward approach to story telling.

Forget Diner (a decent movie), Slackers, Clerks, and any other "slacker/loafer" movie; I Vitelloni transcends the genre -- and it is a true classic.

Rent this film - it will not let you down.

In a small seaside town in Italy, Moraldo Rubini (Franco Interlenghi), Alberto (Alberto Sordi), Fausto Moretti (Franco Fabrizi), Leopoldo Vannucci (Leopoldo Trieste) and Riccardo (Riccardo Fellini) form a group of idle friends that spend their time together doing nothing but drinking, flirting and going to parties. When Fausto's girlfriend Sandra Rubini (Eleonora Ruffo) gets pregnant, he is pressed by his own father to marry her. However, the irresponsible Fausto remains unfaithful to Sandra, cheating her with many women and almost leading his family to a tragedy.

"I Vitelloni" is an Italian melodrama with the signature of Federico Fellini: excellent production, great music score, outstanding interpretations, wonderful cinematography. The story is dated in the present days, it is not my favorite Fellini's film, but it is still a magnificent movie. I am not sure whether the story of this group of "Peter Pans" is autobiographic or not, but it is a good screenplay related to Italian culture of the 50s. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Os Boas Vidas" ("The Bons Vivants")

I Vitelloni was Federico Fellini's third film, and it shows very well how he was maturing in his style, and likewise very well how he was not yet fully mature. His next film would be La Strada, one of the world's great films. I Vitelloni, although many who have had the chance to see it champion it as one of his best, is a tier down from La Strada and his other melodramatic masterpiece, Nights of Cabiria (his other masterpieces, IMO, are La Dolce Vita, 8 ½, and Amarcord of those I've seen, which are all of the ones that are generally considered to be great; I'd also make a case for And the Ship Sails On). The film's flaws are mostly in the script: it is sloppy. There are several great scenes, a couple of the best, especially in a visual aspect, that Fellini ever created, but more often the actions of the characters are difficult to understand. The characters themselves aren't all that well defined - in a scene that has since become common, the five title characters are introduced to us by a narrator, who tells us certain primary traits for each of them. Sadly, we only learn a bit more about most of them. What really harms the film, though, is the fact that a few of these main characters are difficult to distinguish from one another. To make things worse, as time moves on in the film, the characters constantly change the style of their facial hair!

The film is quite episodic, which is actually Fellini's most common way of going about it, but most of the events in his better films seem to bear more weight on the emotions of the films. I Vitelloni is still a very good film, but, given its unavailability, it's unnecessary to knock yourself down searching it out. Perhaps Criterion will release it on DVD soon. Maybe, if it has some good extras, I'll purchase it. 8/10.

I generally don't have a lot of patience for male angst, and especially not when the males in question are angsting over the days of their youth and are resisting taking on the responsibilities that come with adulthood. I wanted to see a truck slam into Barry Levinson's Diner and put an end to the endless pontificating of his disaffected bros.

But something about Federico Fellini's "I Vitelloni" makes the exercise tolerable, and not just tolerable, but emotionally engaging. Maybe it helps that he films his story in a detached, Italian neo-realist style, so we just observe; we're not necessarily asked to condone or even sympathize. It also helps that the setting is post-WWII Europe, and a humble rural village in post-WWII Europe at that. These aren't guys brought up in a world of privilege whining about how hard they have it. These are guys trying to figure out what kinds of lives are available to them in a place that offers few options.

"I Vitelloni" is clearly a very personal film for Fellini, and it's not hard to figure out which character most represents him.

Grade: A