Luci del varietà

What starts off for around the first /25 minutes seeming like it could be a, well, Neo-Realist Showgirls, with in place of a gaudy Vegas show a ragtag bunch of traveling end-of-the-line Vaudeville performers and the Elizabeth Berkley here a doe-eyed young woman named Liliana who sees a performance one night and looks to join up and do anything she can - maybe looking to usurp the Gina Gershon star of the show (here a fiery and beautiful Giulietta Masina as Melina) soon turns much more into Fellini's riff on the Blue Angel. Both of these "this reminds me of" is largely meant as sincere compliments; Variety Lights is a mostly sad, bittersweet comedy of the bad times that come when ambition and the ideals of something greater take over and poison the good-will well for a tight knit group.

But even here the comparisons stop superficially; already here, and I don't know how much or little Latuada contributed as director of if it was a total collaboration, Fellini's "I love them, despite everything, even to an extent the selfish Antonelli" attention and embrace of the Low-Rent Performer and the ideal of what the crowd does to someone in general makes for come captivating viewing. I thought at first the male lead was too one note to latch on to, that he would be only a gruff uptight dickweed, but he deepened as the story got him into more desperate straits and his world turns him into a vulnerable puddle.

There are hints of what may come some day with the more Fellini Unchained productions, like a dinner party that features about forty five absorbingly disgusting seconds of the troupe eating a big dinner with the mastication on another wild plane of existence (the only time this was done without it being obnoxious in a film was The Dark Crystal, and that was because they were Muppets, ok as good a digression ill make this week), and dancing and interactions that feel so much like what we've seen so often in Fellini's films that he knew what he wanted from the beginning as far as freewheeling party sequences. But Variety Lights is a film that is richest as a melodrama that gives a wealth of its time to showing these faces, of the performers in action, the crowd as they know what they don't want and get enthralled by cheap thrills (there goes her skirt!) It's also a kind of absurd tragedy of ego and losing oneself in more misplsced ego.

In other words, a very good start to one career, and a nice little discovery at the same time by the director of Mafioso.

Good first effort from Fellini exemplifying the lust for love in both partner & work.

I just saw this for the first time, after sampling much of Fellini's later work over many years.

The most surprising thing to me was the sense that Variety Lights (VL) foreshadows Fellini's later "indulgent" work. Here, he bathes the viewer with genuinely warm, almost disconnected bits of life in all its spendor. The fine editing makes it all work; I laughed and sighed out loud through much of this movie, and the first 10 minutes hooked me. A little later in his career, Fellini (with help from other fine story people) showcased straight-up storytelling in La Strada and Cabiria. Subsequent to that, he began exploring "story space" in alinear, character-focused ways, from La Dolce Vita and beyond.

The point of all of this is to express my surprise that Fellini appears to have ended his career somewhat as he started it. VL is almost a "throwback" to the directions he took later in abandoning more traditional storytelling methods. Maybe it'd be better to put it this way: When he began diverging from a more conventional narrative style, he was actually taking a step *back* to the style we see in VL. A very good comparison is against his "Fred and Ginger," which explores story space in a studiedly chaotic way, then bowls you over by tying things together with a profoundly touching moment at the end. In "Fred and Ginger," Fellini gracefully brings together his old and new styles. In VL, he seems to bring these together before the new even happened!

The tremendous abilities of the actors and actresses are delightful in VL. Something conspicuous in post 8-1/2 Fellini is the purposeful lack of traditional acting craft; Fellini talked about this repeatedly in interviews. In VL (as in La Strada and Cabiria), Fellini shows that he was perfectly capable of directing actors who are plying their skills.

Because VL seems to cover the strengths of most of Fellini's career, it is a very fine example of the best he could do. Check it out.

Very good after so many years, like an old good wine. Probably the best role of Peppino De Filippo. A beneficial "workout" for a very young Giulietta Masina, before becoming Gelsomina in "La Strada" and Maria 'Cabiria' Ceccarelli in "The Nights of Cabiria", directed by the same huge Fellini. For Fellini, is the first film he directs, together with Alberto Lattuada. The beautiful Carla Del Poggio, Lattuada's wife in real life, stands in the role Liliana 'Lily' Antonelli. All the actors, although not big names of the Italian cinema, are very talented. The music is not signed yet by Nino Rota, but by Felice Lattuada. A very good film, to be seen at any time, again and again. Watch for a very young Vittorio Caprioli in the role of The Night Club Comic.

Variety Lights is Fellini's debut film. The film consists of ideas and motifs that would succeedingly appear in movies like 8 1/2 and The Clowns. However, these traits are still undeveloped but we can see how they would be used as personal metaphors for the director. Running under an hour, the film is shown in black and white with legible subtitles and moving at a smooth pace. The story follows a variety show troupe and an female audience member who is so inspired by one of their performances that she asks to join their group. We are then presented with the rise of the performer's act and how mistakes like having her dress fall off soon attracts the attention of the audience. Soon the variety show begins displaying a more racy repertory all which is fronted by sexy novice. Some images in the film like large behinds and women in bikinis may have been provocative for its time in America --although Italy's standards tended to be more shocking. Nevertheless, as discussed in the documentary Rated X, Fellini's movies was generally restricted to Adult theaters due to subject matter, although much more provocation was soon to come. Variety Lights features Masina, Fellini's wife, in a supporting role as a dancer with few scenes, although she still gives a good performance nevertheless. Masina would soon gather more attention to her acting in succeeding Fellini films like Night of Cabaria and La Strata. However, the focus of this film is directed at De Filippo for his role as the impresario and Poggio as the desperate actress. Veriety Lights is not the best Fellini production but still worth a look.