Plot: Moraldo Rubini (Franco Interlenghi), Alberto (Alberto Sordi), Fausto Moretti (Franco Fabrizi). Leopoldo Vannucci (Leopoldo Trieste) and Riccardo (Riccardo Fellini) live in a small, seaside town in postwar Italy. Though well past their teens, the five men continue to live with their parents and remain unemployed. They hang out at the local coffee bar, commit acts of mischief, get drunk, attend parties and avoid responsibility in any way possible.

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When one thinks of Federico Fellini, one thinks of a visual phantasmagoria, set in a mythical Italy. Yet, before he made La Dolce Vita (1960), 81/2 (1963) or Juliet of the Spirits (1965) Fellini was involved in the birth and development of Italian neo-realism. This was a style he incorporated into all of his films.

While his later movies are much discussed and often shown, Fellini’s early pictures tend to be less well known. I Vitteloni (The Young and the Passionate) (1953), La Strada (The Road) (1954), Il Bidone (The Swindle) (1955) and Nights of Caberia (Nights of Caberia) (1957) are transitory fables. While they remain linked to neo-realist classics like Open City (1945, Robeerto Rossellini) and The Bicycle Thief (1948, Vittorio De Sica), they point the way to Satyicon (1969) and beyond

Martin Scorsese cites I Vitteloni as one of the main inspirations for Mean Streets (1973). The influence of Fellini’s film can also be felt in American Graffiti (1973, George Lucas) Diner (1982, Barry Levinson), and Dazed and Confused (1993, Richard Linklater). I Vitteloni was one of the late Stanley Kubrick’s favorite movies.

In the neighborhood where I grew up, some of us dreamed of moving on to new places and new adventures, Others stayed in Forest Hills, living with their families, hanging out with each other and extending their teenaged lives long past adolescence. In Fellini’s world, these were “I Vittelloni.” Moraldo, Alberto, Fausto, Leopoldo and Riccardo seem vaguely dissatisfied with their meaningless lives but do little to change their situation. After Fausto is forced to marry a girl he made pregnant, he returns to his home town from his honeymoon where he spens more time with his friends than with his young bride. Only Moraldo feels the need to actually leave. His departure becomes a melancholy slipping away, rather than a celebration of possibilities yet to come.

My grandmother was a song writer. I once asked her how she felt about jazz players, like pianist Art Tatum, performing versions of her songs so filled with improvisation that the original tunes became almost unrecognizable. “Just give me one clean chorus,” she said “and then they can go their own way. Just let me hear my tune as I wrote it first.”

In a sense, I Vettolini, La Strada, Il Bidone and Notti di Caberia are Fellini’s “clean chorus.” In his early movies, the director proves his detractors wrong. Yes, he knows how to develop characters. Yes, he knows how to tell a more or less linear story whose beginning, middle and end occur in that order. One has to know the rules in order to break them intelligently.

These early films are like a gifted pianist learning classical music. Once technique is understood and form comprehended, it’s possible to improvise. Only after one knows where the lines are drawn can one understand how best to draw outside them. Before long, Fellini began to approach his films like a jazz musician beginning a new tune. While the melody is ever present; the beauty’s in the riffs.

In Fellini’s case, there was no sharp, demarcation line between the early, more representational movies and the later fireworks display. Instead, there was a gentle melding, a slow morphing from the recognizable to the phantasmagorical. For example, in I Vitellini, the ways in which Fellini chooses to shoot the carnival sequence is far different from the mostly straightforward style of the majority of the picture. With the carnival, we are getting a glimpse into a soon-to-be-explored world.

The characters of I Vitelloni aren’t the grotesques of Fellini’s later films. Occasionally, we glimpse a memorable face, but the director doesn’t allow them to become the focus of the movie. Fellini’s eye is focused on his central characters and on the telling of their tale.

To this end, the camerawork of Otello Martelli rarely calls attention to itself. Martelli, who also shot Fellini’s Variety Lights (1950), La Strada (The Road) (1954), Il Bidone (The Swindle) (1955), Nights of Caberia (1957) and La Dolce Vita (The Sweet Life) (1960) made the journey from neo-realism to Fellini-world along with the director. Yet,, it was left to cinematographers Giuseppe Rotunno and Tonino Dell Colli to illustrate Fellini’s later work. With La Dolce Vita, Martelli provided his successors a pretty good map.

Rolando Bennedetti, who edited I Vitellini, had worked with Fellini on Lo Sceicco biancho (The White Sheik) (1952). The two films remained Bennedetti’s only work with the director. For the most part, the editor keeps his cutting invisible; retaining the style of more conventional movies. As with the cinematography, there are moments, like the carnival, in which expressionism takes over. When we suddenly find ourselves gazing at the festivities from a great height, the effect is made more startling by the visual minimalism that preceded it.

It’s sometimes hard to differentiate between Moraldo, Alberto, Fausto, Leopoldo and Riccardo of I Vitelloni. Though they are each given dominant characteristics, the personalities of the friends tend to blend in one’s mind. I think that was entirely intentional on the part of Fellini. The film’s focus is less on each individual than it on the group identity all five have together developed. Only when an event occurs, such as Fausto’s marriage which temporarily removes him from the collective, do we begin to “know” him. It’s typical of Fellini’s sense of playful irony that the person we come to understand best is the one who finds the courage to leave.

On a certain level, I Vitelloni is a story of goodbyes. Throughout the film, various characters leave the town to journey into a wider world. Yet for four of the friends, the future holds nothing more than the life they’ve always known. Perched on the edge of a boundless sea, the town they grew up in has become their world and they won’t escape its borders. Alberto, Fausto, Leopoldo and Riccardo are trapped by the limits of their vision; forever doomed to the half-glimpsed idea that they could’ve done more.

Jp ‘06 (John Kaufman)

I Vitelloni is available in a beautifully restored Criterion DVD. Long the gold standard for home viewing, the extra cost of a Criterion release is usually well worth the investment.

Besides I Vitelloni, Criterion has released Fellini’s The White Sheik (1952), La Strada (1954) and Nights of Caberia (1957) from his earlier work. Fellini’s warmly nostalgic Amacord (1974) has also been given the full, Criterion treatment. 8 1/2 (1963) and Juliet of the Spirits (1965) remain necessary viewing for anyone who claims serious interest in the movies. And the Ship Sails On (1984) is representative of the mellower, later Fellini whose eye for eccentricity remained undimmed.

http://www.criterionco.com/asp/

Directed by Federico Fellini (1920-1993)

1950- Luci del varieta (Variety Lights) 1942- Lo Sceicco bianco (The White Sheik) 1953- I Vitteloni (The Young and the Passionate), L’Amore in citti (Love in the City) (”Un Ahenzia matrimoniale”) 1954- La Strada (The Road) 1955- Il; Bidone (The Swindle) 1957- Notti di Caberia (Nights of Caberia) 1960- La Dolce Vita (The Sweet Life) 1962 Boccaccio ’70 (:”La tentazioni del dotter Antonio”) (“The Temptation of Dr. Antonio) 1963-8 ½ 1965- Guiletta degli spiriti (Juliet of the Spirits) 1968- Histoires extraordinares (“Toby Dammit”) 1969- Block-notes di un regidta (Fellini; A Director’s Notebook) (TV), Satyricon 1971 I Clowns (The Clowns) (TV) 1962- Roma (Fellini’s Roma) 1973- Amacord 1976- Il Casanova di Federico Fellini (Fellini’s Casanova) 1979- Prova d’orchestra (Fellini’s Orchestra Rehearsal) 1980- La Citta delle donne (City of Women) 1983- E la nave va (And The Ship Sails On) 1986- Ginger e Fred (Ginger and Fred) 1987 Intervista (Fellini’s Intervista) 1990- La Voce della luna (The Voice of the Moon)