I VITELLONI is For The Boys

Praising a Fellini masterwork ahead of its time

If you’re familiar with the term “Felliniesque,” apart from its debatable use by Vin Diesel (called out by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) to describe his producing process on the Fast series, you probably know it as something related to a carnivalesque sensibility. Thanks to films like La Dolce Vita and 8 ½, the Italian maestro’s name became synonymous with the fantastical or surreal for midcentury moviegoers.

One work by Fellini that doesn’t always get the same label – nor the love – is his 1953 film I Vitelloni (available on both Max and the Criterion Channel). It’s his international breakout, although the film would quickly be eclipsed by the Oscar-winning La Strada just the next year. This tale of the titular five playful pals (“vitelloni” translates roughly from Italian slang to “slackers” or “layabouts”) in a sleepy seaside town in Italy is just wild and crazy in its own way.

Namely, the value of I Vitelloni is that I’d argue that this is the progenitor of the contemporary prolonged adolescence comedy. Everything from American Graffiti to Animal House, Diner to Dazed and Confused, and American Pie to Knocked Up operates in the shadow of Fellini. Consider it the Citizen Kane of “boys will be boys” clownery – and seven decades after its release, it still brought down the house at a recent screening I attended at New York City’s Film Forum.