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Italy between the war and modernism is the allegory, couched by Federico Fellini in half-affectionate, half-acerbic nostalgia. The "fatted calves" are a gang of twentysomething Adriatic blokes, perpetually snappy in suits but already too old for idling and clowning. Fatuous Don Juan (Franco Fabrizi), bulbous momma's boy (Alberto Sordi), passionately talentless playwright (Leopoldo Trieste) and thoughtful loner (Franco Interlenghi) are introduced in a gently zigzagging tracking shot outside a boardwalk restaurant, where a modest beauty pageant signals the end of summer. Sudden raindrops send everybody indoors, band music complements the howling storm, "it's beautiful, like the end of the world." Their time-wasting routines in pool halls and deserted piazzas are punctuated by tragicomic vignettes with symbolic punchlines, like the giant papier-mâché noggin dragged by the spent reveler or the angelic statuette caressed by the village idiot. At the center is the rake's progress enacted by Fabrizi, forced into domesticity but unable to resist leaving his pregnant wife (Leonora Ruffo) waiting while he comes on to some Italian version of Marie Windsor. Elsewhere, Trieste voices the stranded poet's lament ("At midnight this town goes dark! How can an artist feed his demons?") to the sagging theatrical hambone (Achille Majeroni), who readily responds with a theremin-scored seduction. The stifling immobility of a community that can only lose itself once a year behind carnival masks and under a rain of confetti, where macho rule tries to reassert itself with a belt and still winds up looking like Sordi in drag, soused and slumped on a chair. Capra circa It's a Wonderful Life is the stylistic model, the lad in the train is Fellini himself, of course, yearning for the sea and the moon and waving goodbye to the province of neo-realism. With Riccardo Fellini, Jean Brochard, Claude Farell, Carlo Romano, and Lida Baarová. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |