Вителлони Vitelloni

1953 Italian comedy drama film directed by Federico Fellini

I vitelloni (, literally "The bullocks" Romagnol slang for "The slackers" or "The layabouts") is a 1953 Italian comedy drama film directed by Federico Fellini from a screenplay written by himself, Ennio Flaiano and Tullio Pinelli. It stars Franco Interlenghi, Alberto Sordi, Franco Fabrizi, Leopoldo Trieste, and Riccardo Fellini (the director's brother) as five young Italian men at crucial turning points in their small town lives. Recognized as a pivotal work in the director's artistic evolution, the film has distinct autobiographical elements that mirror important societal changes in 1950s Italy. Recipient of both the Venice Film Festival Silver Lion in 1953, and an Academy Award nomination for Best Writing in 1958, the film was also Fellini's first commercial success.

As summer draws to a close, a violent downpour interrupts a beach side beauty pageant in a provincial town on the Adriatic coast. Sandra Rubini, crowned "Miss Mermaid 1953", suddenly grows upset and faints: rumours fly that she's expecting a baby by inveterate skirt chaser Fausto Moretti. Under pressure from Francesco, his respectable father, Fausto agrees to a shotgun wedding. After the sparsely attended middle class ceremony, the newlyweds leave town on their honeymoon. Unemployed and living off their parents, Fausto's twenty something friends kill time shuffling from empty cafés to seedy pool halls to aimless walks across desolate windswept beaches. During the interim, they perform childish pranks. Taunting honest road workers from the safety of a luxury car they never earned, they're given a sound thrashing when it breaks down. Moraldo, Sandra's brother and the youngest of the five vitelloni, uncomfortably observes Fausto's womanizing as he ponders his own existence, dreaming of ways to escape to the big city. Riccardo, the baritone, nourishes unrealistic ambitions to sing and act. Alberto, the daydreamer, is supported by his mother and self reliant sister, Olga. Vulnerable and close to his mother, he's unhappy that Olga is secretly dating a married man. Leopoldo, the aspiring dramatist, writes a play that he discusses with Sergio Natali, an eccentric stage actor he hopes will perform in it. Back from his honeymoon and settled in with Sandra, Fausto is forced to accept a job as a stockroom assistant in a religious articles shop owned by Michele Curti, a friend of his father in law's. Incorrigible, Fausto pursues other women even in his wife's presence. At the annual masquerade ball, Fausto is bedazzled by the mature beauty of Giulia Curti, his employer's wife. Alberto, in drag and half drunk, executes a surrealistic dance across the ballroom floor with a goofy carnival head made of papier mâché. Returning home at dawn, Alberto is devastated to find his sister running off for good with her married lover. Fausto's naive attempt to seduce Giulia results in his being humiliated and then fired by her husband. In revenge, he steals the statue of an angel in gold paint from his former employer, enlisting the loyal Moraldo to help him first attempt to sell it to a convent and then sell it to a monk. Suspicious, both turn down the offers. Fausto ends up leaving the statue with a simple minded peasant who sets the angel on a mound outside his hovel, caressing it. One evening after a variety show, Leopoldo agrees to accompany old Sergio for a walk along the seashore to discuss the merits of his play but when the actor propositions him, he takes to his heels in horror. Learning of Fausto's one night stand with a variety performer, Sandra runs away from home, taking the baby with her. Riccardo, Alberto, Leopoldo, and Moraldo all join in Fausto's desperate search to trace his wife and child. When they find her at the home of Fausto's father, Francesco pulls off his belt in a rage and finally whips his son. Later, and reconciled for the present, Fausto and Sandra walk home happily and with optimism about their life together. Resolved to abandon the provincial monotony of his dead end town, Moraldo boards the train for anyplace else (Rome), imagining his vitelloni friends sleeping and dreaming their lives away.

Having completed an early version of La Strada with co screenwriter Tullio Pinelli in 1952, Fellini offered their "modern fairy tale" For Hollis Alpert, it was Pinelli brain storming with Fellini and Flaiano who came up "with a notion the other two liked: the pleasures and frustrations of growing up in a provincial town". Under Fellini's supervision, all three together rapidly wrote the script, pooling their adolescent memories while inventing new ones.

Distributors interested in the script demanded a title change: incomprehensible to a general audience, I vitelloni was a liability to an already risky venture. Fellini adamantly refused to change it, having chosen the film's title after "being called a vitellone by an elderly woman expressing disapproval of one of his pranks". In a 1971 letter, co screenwriter Ennio Flaiano offered a fuller meaning of the word: "The term vitellone was used in my day to define a young man from a modest family, perhaps a student – but one who had either already gone beyond the programmed schedule for his coursework, or one who did nothing all the time  I believe the term is a corruption of the word vudellone, the large intestine, or a person who eats a lot. It was a way of describing the family son who only ate but never 'produced' – like an intestine, waiting to be filled."

One of Fellini's most imitated films, I Vitelloni inspired European directors Juan Antonio Bardem, Marco Ferreri, and Lina Wertmüller, and influenced Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973), George Lucas's American Graffiti (1973), and Joel Schumacher's St. Elmo's Fire (1985), among many others according to Kezich. In a 1963 edition of Cinema magazine, acclaimed director Stanley Kubrick cited the film as one of his top 10 favourite films.