Word: fellinis
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Dates: during 1956-1956
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Vitelloni. One of the best of the Italian movies-a biting but not bitter satire of small-town life, by Federico Fellini, who directed La Strada (TIME...
Vitelloni (API-Jamus). A dying art, like a rotting fruit, may hold the seed of a new birth. In Italy, as the so-called realistic cinema has decayed, a vital new talent has emerged: Federico Fellini. Last summer La Strada (The Road) revealed him to U.S. audiences as an artist of uncertain means but of startling sensibility. Vitelloni, completed in 1953, a year before La Strada, secured Fellini's fame in Europe. It is a finer piece of work than La Strada in every way. Technically, it is an elegant exercise in cinematic diction. Literarily, it is a murderous...
...sharp observation of small-town life in all this has hardly been surpassed on the screen. Moreover, there is a sense of the unpredictable flow of life, even though in Vitelloni it is only the sloshing of stale water in a very small pot, that gives to everything Fellini does a kind of tidal vitality. Fellini sees his people straight and whole, most warmly and naturally loves them and hates them, and takes them as they are. It is one measure of Fellini's superiority to most of his neorealist colleagues in the Italian film industry that he does...
...Fellini's hands, people sometimes seem more important than the screen has made them appear for years; they seem larger, somehow, even the lowliest and most hopelessly lost among them...
...travelling with his characters Mr. Fellini comes upon many striking views of Italiaa countryside, poverty, and carnival life. Although the people are not so varied as the background, the acting is intriguing. Anthony Quinn's strong man suffers only from a slightly oppressive sameness, as he so rarely allows human emotion to intrude upon his personality. Giulietta Masina has a bright-eyed face which, helped by playful makeup, registers joy and sorrow superbly; unfortunately she has few other expressions. Richard Basehart plays the disappointed clown with Puck-like alacrity...