FELLINI WASN'T ALWAYS crazy, y'know. Long before he passed that point of no return, spitting out bloated, freeform vaudeville shows, he had a little restraint, managing to anchor the fantastical within the depths of Neo-Realism. La Dolce Vita was the culmination of that sensibility – as its characters suffered the ultimate comedown, gradually careening into their own moral void – but it was the much ignored I Vitelloni that laid the groundwork.

Set within a seaside town, the movie carries that vague air of small-town nostalgia, as a group of 20-something spivs idly pass the time. Framed like they just stumbled out of a Wilco photo shoot – all clinging waistcoats and empty grey skies – they wander from the dimly lit pool halls to the dimly lit streets, seemingly no better or worse for having lost their "leader and spiritual guide," Fausto (no relation to Faust), who's married and left for Rome. And as the night gently ravels out into nothingness, what's left is only the sad realisation that "all we can do is go home as usual".

The ambivalence here is easy to locate – the insistence on undercutting almost every moment of (male-centric) pleasure with the cold snare of 'social realities,' seems to find Fellini at his most internally hesitant, cleaved between indulgence and moral obligation. Unfortunately, he often borders on patterning, excising the film of that spontaneity crucial to these losers-just-hanging-out pictures, where in the direct 'highs' and 'lows' of scenes just end up canceling one another out.

This uncertainty of Fellini's is constantly mirrored within the film, the entire act hinged on the scene where Fausto accompanies his wife, Sandra, to the movies; she, very much a homemaker (a function of Neo-realism), is fraught with glee as the screen flickers with prospective items for their home. As Fausto strikes up a match, a lady – in every cinematic sense of the word, with the feathers in her hat and a deep-throated growl – asks for a light, and it's easy to see why he's so taken by her, sneaking out so that he can follow her back to her home. As a representation, she's very much an extension of Rome – that trace of the fantastical, the other, Fausto intimating at its throbbing pulse of abandonment when he returns one day with a gramophone and dances in the streets to the sounds of a mambo. And while Fellini is able to root ample frustration within the cold, impassive tones of small-town drudgery – as a trip to the beach renders it as a kind of wasteland – he imparts as much blame on the spivs themselves, who have congealed into a small mass of inaction.

In fact, the whole film feels a portrayal of men who never really came-of-age, governed by an impulsiveness that they're never able to channel into anything productive. Even when Fausto is assimilated into the workforce, it just feels like further curtailment. Leopoldo aspires to be a great playwright, but presented with the opportunity, he cowers away in fear of being led into the unknown. It's the town's very sense of familiarity that's at once both crippling and comforting.

And in the end, it's hard not to think back to that conversation Fausto has with Sandra, outside the cinema, when he finds out that he's missed the ending of the movie. "Did she die?" he asks. "No, she didn't," she replies. "What, then?" "They got married". Given the choice between tragedy and joy, Fellini opts for the latter, and in the process does what only one of the spivs could – marches forwards.

–David Levinson

Originally published in: Lumière 2.5, April 2004, ISSN 1176-4082

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