I Vitellioni (Classic Film Pick)

Before Federico Fellini began deconstructing narrative structure with "8 ½"  he made nine traditional narrative films of which "I Vitelloni" (1953) was the third. Fellini draws on the days of his youth by returning to his hometown of Rimini to play a kind of trick on the friends he left behind by making a movie about their rudderless ways of passing time. A group of four Italian men in their late '20s, and still living at home, dream of escaping their provincial '50s era Italian seacoast town. As the indolent men drink, carouse and lay about in a daze of postwar ennui we see the war's stark effects on the men's moral barometers. "I Vitelloni" is a visually and emotionally eloquent example of neo-realist filmmaking that captures a timeless quality of male experience in a very specific and pure way. Vitelloni means "young large calves."
(A+) (Five Stars)