GrimPrecise I'll tell you why so serious

Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

petra_ste Here's an example of why this movie - admired by Kubrick and Scorsese and following five young deadbeats roaming around a small Italian city - is great.One of our protagonists, Fausto, is fiercely berated by his stern father. Fausto's girlfriend (sort of) is pregnant and the young man - who fancies himself to be a casanova - must marry her to save her honor (and his own family's). Humiliated, he leaves the house and finds his friends waiting for him in the dark street outside. They've heard everything and stand there looking at him, all awkward and sympathetic... and suddenly burst into a colossal laugh.No matter how realistic, most movies have a certain conventional, staged quality to them; few manage to portray small moments as vivid as the little bit of schadenfreude I mentioned above, or as other scenes showing how sad parties get late at night, how creepy a meeting with a near-stranger can be, how much resentment boils beneath the surface even between friends. Each one of the five heroes eventually faces troubles and humiliations, a darker undertone showing through the cracks of the light facade.Featuring an iconic scene with a young Alberto Sordi gesturing obscenely to a group of road workers before his car sputters and stops next to them, to his terrified dismay.9/10

l_rawjalaurence Set in a small suburban town in the early Fifties, I VITELLONI refers to a group of twentysomething men, all jobless, who spend their days loafing around and their nights playing pool, drinking, and roaming the streets picking up available women. They have no prospects in life; nor do they really appear willing to improve themselves. Vannucci (Leopoldo Trieste) a would-be playwright, spends much of his time pretending to work and ogling a neighboring girl.Things change when Fausto Moretti (Franco Fabrizi) has a shotgun wedding to Sandra (Eleonora Ruffo) and returns from honeymoon with a wandering eye. He makes a pass at shop-owner Rubibi's wife (Paola Borboni), and subsequently enjoys a one-night stand with a local "actress." Sandra absconds, forcing Moretti to rethink his life and make decisions.Shot in grainy black-and-white by Carlo Carlini, Otello Martelli, and Luciano Trasatti, Fellini's second feature depicts a dead-end world of cramped buildings, lonely streets and walls festooned with dog-eared posters. The group of young men adumbrate similar groups as depicted in British neo-realist films such as BILLY LIAR (1962) - testosterone-filled, insecure yet perpetually willing to show off in a world dominated by convention. To succeed in life you need to work, get married, and start a family.There are few moments to interrupt the tedium: one of these is the annual carnival, where the good burghers dress up in costumes of various hues and indulge in dancing, drinking, snogging and other revelries. Fellini communicates the desperation of the occasion with a whirling camera that circles the actors, with the music getting faster and faster ("Yes,sir, that's my baby") until it becomes a blur of jangled notes. Time passes: and we see the aftermath of the occasion, with a single trumpeter playing for an exhausted guest unwilling to go home.The film is not without its humorous elements, notably the portrayal of the fastidious Signior Rubini (Enrico Viarisio) walking self- importantly round his shop, stuffed to the brim with loudly ticking clocks and other curios. Yet the overall tone is one of sympathy for the young men, even Fausto - the forename is symbolic - whose infidelity is attributable mostly to boredom. He keeps massaging the sides of his brilliantined hair, in an attempt to render himself attractive to women; but his life is doomed to be a succession of one-night stands.The film is narrated by Moraldo, one of the group of young men (Franco Interlenghi) in tongue-in-cheek style; at the end he says that social order has been restored, but maybe temporarily. No one knows what will happen to the group in the future - save, perhaps, for Moraldo who is forced to leave the small town in search of work, as well as trying to suppress his homosexual feelings towards the young railway worker Guido (Guido Martufi). There is an overall feeling of dissatisfaction, shared by viewers and performers alike.

felixoteiza I only watched IV to see Leonora Ruffo again, years ago, without knowing I'd be getting the best of Fellini as a bonus. Now, I'm not an expert, but I disagree with the idea that in IV he paid his dues to Neo-Realism, so he would be taken seriously by the cinema elite. To me, IV is the most surrealistic film he ever did. The melodrama here is just a wrapping. These people are not real, they are only memories; ghostly shadows of past existences living in some kind of Purgatory. All this is happening only in Fellini/Moraldo's subconscious mind. How do I know that? Think Marx. Marx would have scratched his head watching this. Where's the economy here, what kind of activity these people live off?--he would have asked. We see clerks and shopkeepers, but no real economic activity as such going on; no production or exchange of goods. This isn't the real world--he would have concluded. Now, in some Westerns or adventure flicks this economic anchor is given by cattle driving cowboys (Open Range) or by gold prospectors (Treasure of S.M.) but in metaphoric works such as High Noon that element is mostly absent. That is a way of recognizing a subjective theme, the first hint an artist gives that he's not really dealing with physicality but with abstractions. These guys are just projections of Fellini's identity onto the world, even if he probably never acted like a Fausto or an Alberto when young. What IV implies is that he could have acted like any of them; or that he thought he could, or wanted, to act like them. That's something people who interpret dreams say also: when for ex. you dream of courageous Uncle Joe, isn't about him you're really dreaming but about your own courageous side, using UJ as a reference. These guys are simple archetypes which Fellini-Moraldo wanted, feared, expected, to become one day. So, no melodrama here, no tribute to Neo-Realism; this is a Fellini as matured in its surrealism as he ever was. The true nature of these guys as archetypes is further proved by the fact that they may have served as models for characters in later films (and I would add to the list The 70's Show, with Kelso as Fausto; Eric as Moraldo, Fez as clueless Poldo and Hayden as a rather disenchanted Alberto.) Consider too that you don't evoke characters in dreams to make them work as laborers, clerks, but to make them act out your fantasies and fears, etc. Fausto et al may have been slackers, as Moraldo remembers, but even in that case they are brought here as simple references; to expose the lazy, idle, days of his own youth. There's also the kid.For some time I wondered why Fellini would have included the Guido subplot. Then it struck me: the kid is Moraldo himself, the child he leaves behind when he goes away. See how comfortable Guido feels there, wondering why (adult) Moraldo would want to leave--and notice how he manifests himself right when Moraldo sees his sister finally married and his own departure as imminent. That's called decoupling. What gives it away anyway is the camera angle in their first scene, by virtue of which the boy doesn't appear as coming from the distance but instead as descending upon Moraldo, like an angel. And see how warmly they greet each other, as if they had been friends forever. Also, nobody but Moraldo sees or hear him until the end. The train conductor ignores him when closing the door; yet minutes later, with Moraldo gone, another conductor--or the same--strokes his hair. It's obvious: both can't be seen at the same time, as they are different aspects of the same individual.Fellini never ceased to amaze me with his capacity to get masterpiece bits out of the most ordinary things in life--like the incident prone car trip here, for ex. Great acting by all here, you can't really single out any particular performance. And I can't finish without mentioning the deeply nostalgic, beautifully moody, Rota score. The strong accord of the beginning, jump starting the movie, always makes me jump on my seat. 10/10.

bobsgrock Neorealism originated in Italy, so it makes sense that it feels so real in these types of movies. Here, Fellini continues in the same vein as The White Sheik. Here, he deals with young newlyweds as well as a group of friends who want to leave their seemingly meaningless lives in a small Italian town, but can't seem to muster the courage or strength.As with The White Sheik, a love story is central, here it is that of Fausto and Sandra. But, we also get a glimpse into the life of Sandra's brother, Moraldo and their friends Alberto, Leopoldo and Riccardo. This is somewhat of a sad movie, but it is counterbalanced by the simplicity of Fellini's storytelling. It is obvious that he admires these people, even when they do incredibly stupid and selfish things. The film is mostly told through the eyes of Moraldo, a loner who is the one out the group most likely to leave. He walks the streets at night for reasons not really known. Come to think of it, a lot of things are not really known. Yet, I think Fellini intended that to be the case. We don't know much, so we take it on a whim. Because of that, it is all the more powerful and meaningful as a story of men trying to establish themselves in a world where that is practically impossible.