I Vitelloni

Awarded the Silver Lion at Venice, I Vitelloni was Fellini';s first "coronation", and Georges Sadoul saw in it "the great satirist that neo-realism lacked" (Les Lettres françaises; 1954). After the war, the term "vitelloni" was used to describe unemployed young people who spent their days in bars, flirting with girls and behaving like eternal adolescents before going home to their parents. Although the city in which the action takes place is not mentioned, Rimini, where Fellini grew up, springs to mind and he recreates its, and his, youthful world with a sarcastic and melancholy eye. The narrative is built around five complementary characters and short stories inspired by the memories of the filmmaker and his co-writers. His heroes are on the fringes of society and inevitably fail, but Fellini does not judge them. It could have been him. Italo Calvino wrote of Fellini’s work: "The film we had the illusion of only being spectators of is the story of our lives". (Autobiography of a Spectator)