I Vitelloni - Criterion Collection
by Federico Fellini
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Alberto Sordi, Franco Fabrizi, Franco Interlenghi, Tullio Kezich, Vittorio BoariniDirector: Federico Fellini
Brand: Image Entertainment
Writer: Federico Fellini
Producer: Enrico Sirianni
Producer: Issa Clubb
Producer: Jacques Bar
Producer: Kim Hendrickson
Writer: Ennio Flaiano
Writer: Tullio Pinelli
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: Italian (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 107 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-08-24
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion
Movie Reviews of I Vitelloni - Criterion Collection
Movie Review: "Okay"
Summary: 4 Stars
I decided to start my Fellini collection with this, his first big release, on a definitive DVD version from Criterion. First of all the Criterion edition may be the best available version of the film but it does have problems that were transferred from the original. Most irritating is at scene/camera angle changes where the frame skips or jumps, just as though the original print had been poorly spliced or damaged at a splice. I don't expect Criterion to fill in gaps from missing frames but I do expect them to take the frames that are available and make sure they are registered properly in the correct location for duplication into digital format, so that the frames don't jump when watching the DVD.
Once into the film these problems can be ignored, as the story and characters are somewhat interesting. Having seen several of his later films and knowing this to be a tale of a group of friends in an Italian town, I expected a quirky and amusing comedy. Instead the film struck me as a precursor to those later, great films. It is like a pencil sketch made by an artist prior to them painting a masterpiece. The sketch relays the basic idea of the masterpiece but lacks color, depth, and appropriate detail.
Rather than being a solidly amusing tale Vitelloni seems to play along the border between drama and comedy, never venturing solidly into humor. The only amusing scene that comes to mind is when a famous but over-the-hill actor asks one of the group, a struggling writer, to sit on the pier with him so that the writer can read his play to the actor. The young writer suddenly senses the actor may be interested in more than just the play, and runs off.
As a drama the characters' lives and stories don't seem well enough developed to hold the entire film together. My overall impression is that the film is interesting, especially to a Fellini fan, but likely leaves the average American viewer unfulfilled and unimpressed. Because of this I can only give it four stars when I would happily give his later films six.
Summary of I Vitelloni - Criterion Collection
Five young men linger in post-adolescent limbo dreaming of adventure and escape from their small seacoast town. They while away their time spending the lira doled out by their indulgent families on drink, women, and nights at the local pool hall. Federico Fellini's second solo directorial effort (originally released in the U.S. as The Young and the Passionate) is a semi-autobiographical masterpiece of sharply drawn character sketches: Skirt-chaser Fausto, forced to marry a girl he has impregnated; Alberto, the perpetual child; Leopoldo, a writer, thirsting for fame; and Moraldo, the only member of the group troubled by a moral conscience. An international success and recipient of an Academy Award? nomination for Best Original Screenplay, I Vitelloni compassionately details a year in the life of small-town layabouts struggling to find meaning in their lives.Federico Fellini's breakthrough film, the 1953 I Vitelloni, is one of the cinema's seminal stories about slacker males, and a highly entertaining one at that. Following the unfortunate failure of his comedy The White Sheik, Fellini prepared to shoot La Strada (he would release that early masterpiece in 1954), but decided at the last minute to make an autobiographical feature about mischievous, drifting, 30-ish losers in a small, seaside town. I Vitelloni clicked with international audiences and remains an obvious influence on such later classics as Breaking Away and Diner. But there's nothing like Fellini's almost self-mocking fusion of gritty neo-realism with the audacious, illusionary style he would later be entirely linked. The ensemble comedy follows the ever-diminishing fortunes of five young men who can't define, let alone jump-start, their dreams, particularly the caddish Fausto (Franco Fabrizi), who thinks nothing of molesting the wife of his father-in-law's best friend. --Tom Keogh
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