Out of my fave European cinematic auteurs, Fellini is the most balanced, his films typically a perfect melange of bitter and sweet.* I Vitelloni is no exception. It's not up to the maestro level achieved in La Strada or Nights of Cabiria, but this humorous sad tale of five lazy-ass small-town boys still stagnant in their thirties hit home (for unknown reasons).
What an ending; [possible spoiler alert]the train-station departure is of course a film cliche of the first order, but the innovative Fellini manages a beautifully touching technical twist.
Always good to head back to Italy after so much time with the intellectually frosty Scandinavians, the existential and overly analytical Germans, and the cooly detached French.
*Balance is not necessarily a good thing to my taste. I still like bleak, joyless Bergman best, just as I adore painfully hot food. Extremes are good.
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