I Vitelloni is quiet, assured, and bursting with atmosphere. The characters are careless jerks, sure, but you can’t help but like them anyway. The existential ennui they face is all too familiar. I Vitelloni captures the bittersweet aimlessness of fast-fading youth in a way that makes it seem both nostalgic and frightening. To be stuck in limbo like that for an indefinite amount of time in such a small town, regardless of how sweet and sleepy it is... it’s hard to imagine a more unfulfilling existence.I Vitelloni is everything I hoped my second Fellini would be: sweet, ironic, and nostalgic at once. It’s not much like La Dolce Vita in that the sense of wonder and hope hasn’t yet been snatched from its characters, but it does feel like an early chapter of the same story. Perhaps Marcello from that film was once one of the loafers hanging around his sleepy town, trying to get up the courage to leave. Perhaps he, too, watched his town grow smaller and smaller as he looked out from his train window, and thought that he’d finally be happy once he left.
