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Saturday, December 1, 2018

LUCI DEL VARIETÀ / VARIETY LIGHTS (1950)

After a score of writing credits over a decade, Federico Fellini finally took to the director’s chair, sharing writing & directing duties with the more experienced Alberto Lattuada. Yet in story, character & most especially tone, it’s already all Fellini; and like so much early Fellini, wonderfully human & inventive. The story isn’t particularly fresh: Third-rate vaudeville troupe adds pretty young thing to their line-up and watch helplessly as her ambition & sheer star wattage upset relationships & a well-established pecking order. Eventually, she’ll move onward & upward, while the old declining pros regroup just in time for their manager to spot another fresh young thing and close the narrative circle. But in atmosphere; in eccentric, but believable characterizations; in its view of a fast changing Italian society; it’s freshly felt, witty & emotionally involving; and technically immaculate. Was there ever a more natural moviemaker? Fellini’s wife, Giulietta Masina, is just about perfect as the temporarily spurned wife of the manager, while Lattauda (no slouch himself*) also brings relatives onto the payroll in producer/brother Bianca and composer/father Felice Lattuada. Fellini’s composer-for-life, Nino Rota, will show on his next, THE WHITE SHEIK/’52.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Since Fellini gets all the attention, why not try Lattuada? At his best in MAFIOSA/’62.

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