I VITELLONI — THE CRITERION COLLECTION

Welcome!

Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does.This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon.

Thanks a lot acorns!

Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!

 

 

Vitelloni means "young large calves." 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 salad 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.

Fellini's formal visual approach to the subject matter give the picture a timeless quality of life captured as art under glass.  

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 neorealist filmmaking that captures a timeless quality of male experience with a palpable personal connection. 

Not Rated. 104 mins.