Vitellonismo (2004) - full transcript
The presentation of I vitelloni in Venice
took place on August 26, 1953.
Imagine that.
I was in the middle of it,
because this group of vitelloni came.
Really, this group of old young men
made up of Federico Fellini,
Alberto Sordi,
Leopoldo Trieste, Riccardo Fellini,
Franco Fabrizi, Interlenghi.
There was an unusual atmosphere there,
as if it were a school field trip.
They weren't the type of people
who struck you as great men of cinema.
They were like a group
of old university buddies
who got together, with all expenses paid,
in a fun situation.
Being a vitellone
was a contagious state of mind.
Vitellonismo, according to Fellini,
was about wanting to waste time,
to let everything go,
to free your imagination,
to dream, to laugh,
to allow yourself to be foolish
and find a small truth
in that foolishness.
It was something
at which he was unequaled,
unequaled to the point
that it was difficult
to not let yourself go along for the ride.
He was a... young man.
He was like a typical 30-year-old
of that period.
He was very nice, very open-minded,
always a lot of fun.
At one point, we were staying in Viterbo
in a squalid hotel.
And naturally, in the evening, after work,
we'd all get together in one of our rooms
to talk about women, naturally.
This one, that one,
the other one, how, why...
And we'd always have Fellini's brother
stand guard,
and he would warn us
when Masina was coming -.
Giulietta Masina, who was his wife.
"Masina is coming!"
And off we'd go. We would all run away.
Masina didn't want Federico
to be led astray by us.
Imagine Federico led astray!
Federico was cool. He was 30 years old.
It's not as if he needed to be led astray.
But Masina was jealous.
At that moment he had great creative ease,
a great sense of creativity,
even on a personal level.
It was a lot of fun to be with him
because he had a joke about everything...
Observations about events of the day,
reading the newspaper,
the conversations
that we had at the table.
Fellini was a volcano
that later became
more cultured, wiser,
more intelligent, but less...
rich.
Definitely not as funny.
Less cheerful, surely.
His cheerfulness faded with time until,
by the end, he was almost gloomy.
Fellini was made just to be young,
to live those years with that intensity,
with that passion.
At 30, he still wasn't...
I don't mean melancholy,
like in his later years,
because he was agonizing,
always talking about work.
At 30, he was a boy
who received a letter every day
from the producer which said,
"Stop filming. There's no money left."
But instead, he kept right on filming
and finished his movie.
Fellini and I often spoke
about I vitelloni.
We spoke about films in general,
but his favorite was I vitelloni.
I remember that when we began shooting,
he was in a frame of mind
that was very different from the one
he had during The White Sheik.
He was very focused.
We would fool around,
and he wouldn't tell us to stop.
He didn't like to play the director.
We were great friends.
However, I remember he didn't care
about his appearance.
I remember once,
he showed up on the set in his slippers.
He was chasing his own dream.
I could tell that a work of art
was being born.
I even wrote to Tullio Kezich,
"A masterpiece is being born."
Federico had just come from two flops...
The failure of Variety Lights,
filmed with Lattuada,
and his failure in Venice
the year before, in '52,
when I met him -
The failure of The White Sheik.
There was also the consideration
that another flop
would have killed him completely
as so many had predicted.
He didn't seem at all like someone
who was putting his whole life,
his career, in jeopardy.
They were joking around.
And out of this thing, this joking,
an unprecedented success exploded.
It was incredible.
The film received an immediate,
remarkable welcome.
DIRECTED BY
FEDERICO FELLINI
WINNER OF THE LEONE D'ARGENTO
AT THE XIV VENICE FILM FESTIVAL
I vitelloni represents a moment
of departure in his career
from his neorealistic roots.
But in I vitelloni,
he brings his knowledge of neorealism,
of its style,
to the highest level possible for him
and at the same time
distances himself from it.
I believe that what the audience
gets from I vitelloni...
is the height of neorealism
in its most popular form
and is therefore accessible
to a wide audience.
And at the same time,
it shows how we can go beyond neorealism
and open ourselves to a new style
that will later become
Fellini's typical style.
I vitelloni came about
a little bit by chance
and a little bit because of a decision
made just like that, spontaneously,
because Federico, in reality, wanted -.
After The White Sheik, he had planned
and written La strada with Pinelli
and had, in fact, visited the locations
and done Giulietta's screen tests
for the part of Gelsomina.
Then it was held up because this producer,
Pegoraro, got scared.
The subject matter was what it was,
and Pegoraro was going through a bad time
with his company.
So one day he said...
"Look, Fellini,
I don't think I can produce this film.
If you want to, let's do a comedy.
We can do a comedy."
Fellini called in Pinelli and Flaiano,
his usual collaborators,
and he told them,
"Listen, Pegoraro wants us to do a comedy
with him. What should we do?"
And they said, "Let's do a comedy."
"About what?"
"Let's do a story
about some young people."
He remembered some things
about Rimini from that time.
It was, essentially,
a film based on memories...
but they set it in contemporary times.
The film is from the '50s,
the atmosphere is from the '50s,
with the idea, and this is probably true,
that things hadn't changed much.
I think at the heart of it they represent,
in their stability,
their immobility and also their laziness -.
In some way,
they're an extreme contradiction...
Wanting to escape from everything
and everyone,
becoming outsiders even within
the environment that surrounds them
despite the fact
that they are totally immersed in it.
This gives I vitelloni
a sense of harmonious melancholy.
Now the beach is deserted,
even on Sundays.
But we'd go there anyway
and stare out to sea.
The world of dreams
was Fellini's greatest inspiration.
And dreams are in I vitelloni, even
the dreams of each individual vitellone.
When the vitellone, or loafer,
sits on the beach
on a cloudy winter day
and looks at the horizon,
and in a moment
of sadness, of melancholy,
he utters this line -
It's Riccardo speaking -.
"If a man were to approach you now
and offer you 10,000 lire,
would you go swimming right now?"
If a guy offered you 10,000 lire,
would you jump in?
I would.
This is the dream
and Fellini's humorous
and sarcastic interpretation of it.
Furthermore, dreams are very important
for the main character in the film.
They all dreamed of an impossible future.
But for Moraldo, one of the vitelloni,
the dream was about to enter his life.
He would find...
a doorway between the real world
and his dream world.
By leaving for Rome,
he would try to access
the reality of the dream.
This film was lucky
because it attracted...
It was born from components of memory,
of autobiography...
Very powerful ones,
because it's the first time that Federico
tells us about his departure from Rimini.
At the end, there's a train leaving,
friends staying behind...
In short, the story of his life.
And instead...
In Roma we see the arrival.
He shoots the arrival many years later...
His arrival in Rome,
his discovery of another city.
So it's an important moment in his life,
something that he felt
very strongly about.
If somebody wanted to very precisely
annotate each situation,
they are mostly real situations,
mostly autobiographical things
or "multi-biographical," as Truffaut said.
That is, you tell the story of many lives.
In I vitelloni, the character of Moraldo
is autobiographical
and represents Fellini himself.
He bears my name
because I was supposed to portray Moraldo.
Fellini wanted me to act.
Later, with Giacosi and the problems
we had during production,
one night they called me and said,
"You have to choose. You're either
an actor or an assistant director."
Federico asked me which I preferred,
and I said, "I'd rather be a director.
I'd rather follow in your footsteps
than be an actor."
When he picked me, I was in a big room,
and he was behind the curtains,
watching me.
I knew that he was watching me.
And he went, "You'll be Moraldo."
There's a story about the protagonist, who
is on the train, when he says good-bye.
When they were working on the dubbing
and he was recording "Good-bye,".
Fellini intervened and said,
"Let me say a 'good-bye'."
And he intervenes
and Fellini himself adds,
"Good-bye, good-bye."
There's a moment
when his voice is distinct,
different from that of Interlenghi.
Good-bye, Moraldo.
Good-bye, Guido.
And what does this mean?
Why is this important?
It demonstrates that the film
is actually autobiographical
in the deepest sense,
not in the ordinary sense
that he spoke about things
that surely, in his youth,
happened to Federico in Florence.
Not autobiographical in that sense,
but autobiographical in the deeper sense.
Meaning that the character is really him,
and he found the strength and courage
to abandon the provinces.
He finds the strength and courage
to abandon the provinces,
but it's not that he runs away
from the provinces.
It's that in order to be able to capture
the real essence of provincial life
and in order to be able to describe it
so that it becomes much more
than mere description...
So that it becomes art, literature,
life, cinema...
You must separate yourself from it.
In my opinion, this also explains why,
when he shot films set in Rimini
like I vitelloni-since we all knew
that it was set in Rimini
even if it was never said...
He went and shot it in another place.
The most emblematic spot in Rimini,
the beach,
was shot in Ostia, for example.
Not only that, but when he makes
a Rimini that really is Rimini...
In Amarcord,
a clearly identifiable Rimini...
He'll reconstruct all of it at Cinecittà.
He won't go and film in Rimini at all.
He'll do it at Cinecittà. Why?
Because Fellini has a very precise idea
that reality...
I say this because it explains even better
what I was saying about I vitelloni,
the culmination of the separation
from neorealism.
To explain what reality is like,
you have to produce it.
Then, one fine day,
when we'd almost forgotten about him...
Hey, guys!
It's Massimo.
- Guys! Fausto's back in town.
- He's really back?
- Yeah, and he's got a mustache!
- Where is he?
Everyone said,
"Fellini is talking about his own life.
He was a vitellone."
Fellini was never a vitellone.
Because Fellini left Rimini
when he was 19.
And so, in this circle
of already mature young men
who were 25 or even 30 -
He was never part of it.
He admired them from a distance,
at the bar,
because they stood there,
elegantly dressed, chasing the girls.
But it was a tribe
which he had no right to be part of.
He earned the right later.
After having made the film,
he was recognized...
as having a history that he didn't have.
The vitelloni themselves
were a perception of his, literally.
He probably didn't even know
what the real vitelloni were like.
He had left Rimini when he was
17 or 18 years old.
The phenomenon of vitellonismo
was his own creation.
He didn't really know them.
The whole thing was made up.
"Vitellone" actually became a word.
You can look it up in the dictionary.
Since he had made up the story,
he felt free to include
anything that struck his creative fancy.
The production was incredible.
A production that, today, could never be.
Now everything's done in two minutes.
Everything...
Thirty pages a day.
Instead, we took our time.
We worked on I vitelloni for four months
because we were following Sordi around
to make sure we didn't lose him.
He was in a company with Wanda Osiris,
a theatrical revue.
So we went to Florence
and filmed the carnival scene
inside a little theater in Florence.
Then we went to Viterbo
for all the exteriors.
It's never Rimini.
The sea is Ostia, near Rome.
So it took us four months.
The producer was beside himself.
He wanted us to stop filming
since he had no more money,
or so he said.
So it was an unbelievable production.
It was very, let's say...
It was the cinema of another time,
the kind that lasted,
one that takes time to make.
It wasn't like it is now
where in three days you have to -.
Now you have to shoot eight scenes
in three days.
He didn't impose...
a preconceived character on the actor.
His entire attitude
came from his love of life.
He loved people as they were.
He proved this to me
much more eloquently on I vitelloni.
Fellini, as a director,
is an interesting thing.
Everyone thinks that Fellini the director
would organize everything - preparing,
doing scenes over and over again.
He would tell us how to act. No.
Fellini never told us anything.
Fellini would create
a particular atmosphere,
an atmosphere that was appropriate
to the scene or to the film,
and then he would let us act.
Each of us was free to act as we saw fit.
For example, I played Moraldo,
the character who was the most...
The one who most suspects
that there must be
something more out there
than what he was doing.
Therefore, he's a bit more contemplative.
I always asked,
"Federico, should I be sad?
What should I do,
stick my hands in my pockets?"
And he'd say, "Come on, don't be silly.
It's good, it's fine."
Meaning that we were free.
Just as Sordi was free. As you can see,
he was completely unrestrained.
Every actor was free.
However, when you see it on the screen,
you see that each actor hit the mark
with his character,
because they're all in their element.
They are within the limits.
That's what I mean.
He's a director -
At least he was this way in '52.
I don't know if he became
more demanding later on.
But he was a director
who said very little,
who organized things in such a way
that every actor did his own thing,
but did it well.
Germi, for instance, was the opposite.
Germi had a preconceived idea
of what a character should be,
and he would very laboriously
stitch the actor...
into the character's clothes.
Fellini's system was much more human.
He accepted people as they were.
He couldn't care less
about an actor's box office potential,
his commercial value.
He knew, for instance,
that audiences despised Alberto Sordi.
He knew that the failure
of The White Sheik at the box office
had in large part been caused
by Alberto Sordi.
It failed miserably.
But when he offered me a role
in I vitelloni,
he again brought up Sordi.
He said,
"I know audiences don't like Alberto,
but I need him for this role."
So I said, "Okay. Where do you plan
to shoot it, in Rimini?"
"No," he said.
"No, not in Rimini.
Alberto has a commitment to Wanda Osiris.
He's in a play by Garinei and Giovannini
called Gran baraonda,
and they will be touring various cities.
And we'll follow them around."
"So you're going to build everything
around Sordi, a deadweight!"
Hey, workers.
Obviously, I love the scene where
Alberto makes that gesture to the workers,
the car that breaks down,
these guys that are followed because...
Aside from the fact that it's true -
It really happened to Federico
and his friend Titta Benzi,
who talked about it a number of times,
so it's a scene that is based in reality.
It's a great scene
because it's at a moment when...
he was learning to like the left...
the defense of labor, trade unions,
workers' rights.
To find someone who makes you laugh
by making a gesture -.
And the poor people who -
And this was also...
Aside from telling a personal story,
Federico -.
See how things are put together?
He also has something to tell
which can only be interpreted by Sordi.
Because that was also Sordi's spirit.
Hey, we were only joking!
Once I witnessed something
that was really very curious.
I went along with Alberto Sordi because
he called me once and asked me,
"Can you do me a favor
and come with me to do an interview?
They want to give me
the Umbria Fiction Award in Perugia."
That afternoon -.
The award ceremony was going to be
in the evening.
That afternoon, a meeting was set up
with Sordi and the workers at Perugia.
We walked into this huge room,
and there were a thousand workers.
Alberto Sordi went in,
he looked at them and said, "Workers"...
They weren't offended by the gesture.
They didn't boo and hiss.
No. It was received like a triumph.
So it was the surest way, the truest,
most genuine, most joyful way
to greet some friends from the street
that he had entertained for so long.
It has always stuck with me
how the power of one gesture
that started out as something rude
suddenly became, after many years,
so joyful.
What's going on?
- Try that again, if you dare!
- What did I do? I was asleep.
There's really nothing to that film,
yet every time I watch it,
I notice something new.
For example,
when we go to see the playwright,
when we go to see the guy
who put on that show,
he says, "They steal all my light bulbs!"
It's marvelous.
He's talking about them stealing
light bulbs that cost next to nothing.
"That's why I have this candle."
And then -.
Yes, well, the best parts
were left on the cutting room floor.
Please, have a seat...
For the role played by Majeroni,
the role of the aging homosexual actor...
Fellini originally wanted De Sica.
That was another great moment.
De Sica was filming Stazione Termini.
He was working
with some great American actors.
One night, Federico and I
went to visit him on location.
It was about 1:00 in the morning
and they were all inside a train car.
The director, De Sica, was in makeup.
When we got there,
they gave us a flashlight
so we could make our way
to where the crew was working.
Finally, we waited outside the train car
for De Sica to let Fellini in.
I waited outside.
Fellini was nervous,
with his script under his arm.
I encouraged him, saying,
"Go, put on the pressure."
I remember that's what I said.
He arrives, and De Sica
welcomes him very cordially.
And Fellini, great writer that he is -.
Besides being a great director
and a great designer.
That great writer with a few strokes,
gives us an unforgettable image
of De Sica,
with his warm, soft hand,
with his mellow and welcoming voice.
He tells De Sica about the part
that he would play.
And he says -
Fellini always jots things down.
"Maybe he even drifted off for a moment,
but he never stopped smiling."
And, in the end, he said,
"But do you mean that this man is"...
"A fairy? Yes," says Fellini, hesitating.
"He's a fairy."
"But he's human, right?
Because there's humanity
even in fairies
that certainly we don't know about
but that certainly exists."
"Of course," says Fellini.
"He's very, very human."
"Well, then, okay. Why not?
Get in touch with my lawyer.
Of course, yes.
But I beg you, make him human,
make him human."
So we can be sorry...
that De Sica wasn't in I vitelloni.
In reality, Achille Majeroni was
an old braggart, if we can say that,
and he really liked Italian cinema.
Italian theater, I meant to say.
Since Fellini understood
that he was someone you couldn't
speak to about this thing, homosexuality,
because he would have been offended
or embarrassed,
he didn't tell him anything.
What amused him most
when we talked about I vitelloni
was the fact that Majeroni...
had never figured out
that he had played the role
of a homosexual.
He was very naïve.
I remember one day I ran into him.
The film was finished
and he was about to leave Rome.
Before he left, he came looking
for Fellini and ran into me.
Fellini and I were often together.
And he said to me,
"Where is that blasted friend of yours
who dared to offer me a dubious role?"
But he wasn't sure of it.
He said, "People tell me it's dubious.
He knows I have a wife.
I'm a serious actor.
I've played Morselli.
And that bastard friend of yours
dares give me
a dubious part."
And I said, "No, what makes you think
he would do a thing like that?"
"Then why do I say to you" -.
He used formal address with me.
He spoke like a man from another century.
"Why do I ask you
to go and read with me by the sea?"
"Because the sea
is very dramatic at night," I said.
"Oh, no," he said.
"One goes to the sea for privacy.
Our going there together
could be interpreted
as something entirely different,
dear Trieste.
Your illustrious friend
has a lot of explaining to do."
What's so funny is that, later,
Fellini said to him, candidly,
"Whoever told you that?
Everybody knows I could never offer you
a homosexual role.
I would have chosen another actor.
There's been some mistake."
"Well, if that's the case,
I can rest assured
that everything is all right."
And Fellini,
who always displayed a remarkable
intelligence about his films,
and therefore a remarkable
critical ability,
made a note saying,
"Fortunately he didn't do it,
because De Sica
had too much human appeal,"
an appeal that was transmitted
to the audience
and which wasn't appropriate
at that point.
The actor that was chosen did a much
better job than De Sica could have done.
In my opinion,
this is another demonstration
of Fellini's remarkable intelligence.
What did you think I meant?
Come back here, Poldo!
Fellini always had
a difficult relationship with critics.
But he was very good at selling himself.
He wasn't just a great artist.
He was also a great communicator,
a great salesman of his ideas
and of his films.
He tried to establish a relationship
with everyone he met.
He always tried to win them over.
He always had a hard time, though,
with the left-wing critics.
The left-wing critics were left behind
with noble but already obsolete models
of neorealism
and welcomed the neorealistic aspects
in I vitelloni
that are certainly there,
and, as I said before,
are brought to great heights
in their popularity.
But they didn't grasp what was new...
The discovery that a reality exists
that goes past the reality of neorealism,
because it's no longer
just the reality of the people.
It's the reality of those
who have been marginalized,
those who don't even belong
to the lowest classes of the population,
but are really marginalized,
social outcasts.
This is the discovery of marginalization
that Fellini will exemplify in three films
which are in fact, Nights of Cabiria,
I'll bidone and La strada.
There's a hint of it in this film.
Everyone asks what the angel means.
I think the angel has great meaning.
It means,
in Federico's head, in his imagination,
there exists a certain logic.
The logic... of poetry.
It's a poetic expression, nothing more.
A poetic statement made by him
and given to the public.
Fellini did some really
extraordinary things.
Although I begin to think
that Federico was right
about a certain something,
a certain fear he had
that showed itself in those years.
He'd say,
"Look, I've got ten years ahead of me."
"What do you mean ten years?"
"Yes, just look
at all the great directors."
And he listed the principal directors.
He said, "Look, their works that count,
their major works...
Even if they did other things later
or before...
But their important work was done in
a ten-year period. That's the yardstick."
So, Fellini -
If you use his rule and you think
that between '52, The White Sheik,
and '63, 8 1/2 -.
And of course, there was Amarcord.
There are so many things
that he did up until the end.
But if you were going to preserve Fellini
for posterity,
you would save this block of films,
clearly.
The genius was Federico. He's a genius.
The highest form of genius.
De Sica is not only a great showman,
but also a great filmmaker.
In terms of directing,
he's a remarkable filmmaker.
And Antonioni, well,
Antonioni is probably the most...
the most... not intellectual,
but the most modern of all.
No one could work the camera
like Antonioni, not even Federico.
But Federico had the ideas,
the jokes and things, those looks.
It was all...
All three of them were great masters,
but, in my opinion,
the greatest of all was him.
took place on August 26, 1953.
Imagine that.
I was in the middle of it,
because this group of vitelloni came.
Really, this group of old young men
made up of Federico Fellini,
Alberto Sordi,
Leopoldo Trieste, Riccardo Fellini,
Franco Fabrizi, Interlenghi.
There was an unusual atmosphere there,
as if it were a school field trip.
They weren't the type of people
who struck you as great men of cinema.
They were like a group
of old university buddies
who got together, with all expenses paid,
in a fun situation.
Being a vitellone
was a contagious state of mind.
Vitellonismo, according to Fellini,
was about wanting to waste time,
to let everything go,
to free your imagination,
to dream, to laugh,
to allow yourself to be foolish
and find a small truth
in that foolishness.
It was something
at which he was unequaled,
unequaled to the point
that it was difficult
to not let yourself go along for the ride.
He was a... young man.
He was like a typical 30-year-old
of that period.
He was very nice, very open-minded,
always a lot of fun.
At one point, we were staying in Viterbo
in a squalid hotel.
And naturally, in the evening, after work,
we'd all get together in one of our rooms
to talk about women, naturally.
This one, that one,
the other one, how, why...
And we'd always have Fellini's brother
stand guard,
and he would warn us
when Masina was coming -.
Giulietta Masina, who was his wife.
"Masina is coming!"
And off we'd go. We would all run away.
Masina didn't want Federico
to be led astray by us.
Imagine Federico led astray!
Federico was cool. He was 30 years old.
It's not as if he needed to be led astray.
But Masina was jealous.
At that moment he had great creative ease,
a great sense of creativity,
even on a personal level.
It was a lot of fun to be with him
because he had a joke about everything...
Observations about events of the day,
reading the newspaper,
the conversations
that we had at the table.
Fellini was a volcano
that later became
more cultured, wiser,
more intelligent, but less...
rich.
Definitely not as funny.
Less cheerful, surely.
His cheerfulness faded with time until,
by the end, he was almost gloomy.
Fellini was made just to be young,
to live those years with that intensity,
with that passion.
At 30, he still wasn't...
I don't mean melancholy,
like in his later years,
because he was agonizing,
always talking about work.
At 30, he was a boy
who received a letter every day
from the producer which said,
"Stop filming. There's no money left."
But instead, he kept right on filming
and finished his movie.
Fellini and I often spoke
about I vitelloni.
We spoke about films in general,
but his favorite was I vitelloni.
I remember that when we began shooting,
he was in a frame of mind
that was very different from the one
he had during The White Sheik.
He was very focused.
We would fool around,
and he wouldn't tell us to stop.
He didn't like to play the director.
We were great friends.
However, I remember he didn't care
about his appearance.
I remember once,
he showed up on the set in his slippers.
He was chasing his own dream.
I could tell that a work of art
was being born.
I even wrote to Tullio Kezich,
"A masterpiece is being born."
Federico had just come from two flops...
The failure of Variety Lights,
filmed with Lattuada,
and his failure in Venice
the year before, in '52,
when I met him -
The failure of The White Sheik.
There was also the consideration
that another flop
would have killed him completely
as so many had predicted.
He didn't seem at all like someone
who was putting his whole life,
his career, in jeopardy.
They were joking around.
And out of this thing, this joking,
an unprecedented success exploded.
It was incredible.
The film received an immediate,
remarkable welcome.
DIRECTED BY
FEDERICO FELLINI
WINNER OF THE LEONE D'ARGENTO
AT THE XIV VENICE FILM FESTIVAL
I vitelloni represents a moment
of departure in his career
from his neorealistic roots.
But in I vitelloni,
he brings his knowledge of neorealism,
of its style,
to the highest level possible for him
and at the same time
distances himself from it.
I believe that what the audience
gets from I vitelloni...
is the height of neorealism
in its most popular form
and is therefore accessible
to a wide audience.
And at the same time,
it shows how we can go beyond neorealism
and open ourselves to a new style
that will later become
Fellini's typical style.
I vitelloni came about
a little bit by chance
and a little bit because of a decision
made just like that, spontaneously,
because Federico, in reality, wanted -.
After The White Sheik, he had planned
and written La strada with Pinelli
and had, in fact, visited the locations
and done Giulietta's screen tests
for the part of Gelsomina.
Then it was held up because this producer,
Pegoraro, got scared.
The subject matter was what it was,
and Pegoraro was going through a bad time
with his company.
So one day he said...
"Look, Fellini,
I don't think I can produce this film.
If you want to, let's do a comedy.
We can do a comedy."
Fellini called in Pinelli and Flaiano,
his usual collaborators,
and he told them,
"Listen, Pegoraro wants us to do a comedy
with him. What should we do?"
And they said, "Let's do a comedy."
"About what?"
"Let's do a story
about some young people."
He remembered some things
about Rimini from that time.
It was, essentially,
a film based on memories...
but they set it in contemporary times.
The film is from the '50s,
the atmosphere is from the '50s,
with the idea, and this is probably true,
that things hadn't changed much.
I think at the heart of it they represent,
in their stability,
their immobility and also their laziness -.
In some way,
they're an extreme contradiction...
Wanting to escape from everything
and everyone,
becoming outsiders even within
the environment that surrounds them
despite the fact
that they are totally immersed in it.
This gives I vitelloni
a sense of harmonious melancholy.
Now the beach is deserted,
even on Sundays.
But we'd go there anyway
and stare out to sea.
The world of dreams
was Fellini's greatest inspiration.
And dreams are in I vitelloni, even
the dreams of each individual vitellone.
When the vitellone, or loafer,
sits on the beach
on a cloudy winter day
and looks at the horizon,
and in a moment
of sadness, of melancholy,
he utters this line -
It's Riccardo speaking -.
"If a man were to approach you now
and offer you 10,000 lire,
would you go swimming right now?"
If a guy offered you 10,000 lire,
would you jump in?
I would.
This is the dream
and Fellini's humorous
and sarcastic interpretation of it.
Furthermore, dreams are very important
for the main character in the film.
They all dreamed of an impossible future.
But for Moraldo, one of the vitelloni,
the dream was about to enter his life.
He would find...
a doorway between the real world
and his dream world.
By leaving for Rome,
he would try to access
the reality of the dream.
This film was lucky
because it attracted...
It was born from components of memory,
of autobiography...
Very powerful ones,
because it's the first time that Federico
tells us about his departure from Rimini.
At the end, there's a train leaving,
friends staying behind...
In short, the story of his life.
And instead...
In Roma we see the arrival.
He shoots the arrival many years later...
His arrival in Rome,
his discovery of another city.
So it's an important moment in his life,
something that he felt
very strongly about.
If somebody wanted to very precisely
annotate each situation,
they are mostly real situations,
mostly autobiographical things
or "multi-biographical," as Truffaut said.
That is, you tell the story of many lives.
In I vitelloni, the character of Moraldo
is autobiographical
and represents Fellini himself.
He bears my name
because I was supposed to portray Moraldo.
Fellini wanted me to act.
Later, with Giacosi and the problems
we had during production,
one night they called me and said,
"You have to choose. You're either
an actor or an assistant director."
Federico asked me which I preferred,
and I said, "I'd rather be a director.
I'd rather follow in your footsteps
than be an actor."
When he picked me, I was in a big room,
and he was behind the curtains,
watching me.
I knew that he was watching me.
And he went, "You'll be Moraldo."
There's a story about the protagonist, who
is on the train, when he says good-bye.
When they were working on the dubbing
and he was recording "Good-bye,".
Fellini intervened and said,
"Let me say a 'good-bye'."
And he intervenes
and Fellini himself adds,
"Good-bye, good-bye."
There's a moment
when his voice is distinct,
different from that of Interlenghi.
Good-bye, Moraldo.
Good-bye, Guido.
And what does this mean?
Why is this important?
It demonstrates that the film
is actually autobiographical
in the deepest sense,
not in the ordinary sense
that he spoke about things
that surely, in his youth,
happened to Federico in Florence.
Not autobiographical in that sense,
but autobiographical in the deeper sense.
Meaning that the character is really him,
and he found the strength and courage
to abandon the provinces.
He finds the strength and courage
to abandon the provinces,
but it's not that he runs away
from the provinces.
It's that in order to be able to capture
the real essence of provincial life
and in order to be able to describe it
so that it becomes much more
than mere description...
So that it becomes art, literature,
life, cinema...
You must separate yourself from it.
In my opinion, this also explains why,
when he shot films set in Rimini
like I vitelloni-since we all knew
that it was set in Rimini
even if it was never said...
He went and shot it in another place.
The most emblematic spot in Rimini,
the beach,
was shot in Ostia, for example.
Not only that, but when he makes
a Rimini that really is Rimini...
In Amarcord,
a clearly identifiable Rimini...
He'll reconstruct all of it at Cinecittà.
He won't go and film in Rimini at all.
He'll do it at Cinecittà. Why?
Because Fellini has a very precise idea
that reality...
I say this because it explains even better
what I was saying about I vitelloni,
the culmination of the separation
from neorealism.
To explain what reality is like,
you have to produce it.
Then, one fine day,
when we'd almost forgotten about him...
Hey, guys!
It's Massimo.
- Guys! Fausto's back in town.
- He's really back?
- Yeah, and he's got a mustache!
- Where is he?
Everyone said,
"Fellini is talking about his own life.
He was a vitellone."
Fellini was never a vitellone.
Because Fellini left Rimini
when he was 19.
And so, in this circle
of already mature young men
who were 25 or even 30 -
He was never part of it.
He admired them from a distance,
at the bar,
because they stood there,
elegantly dressed, chasing the girls.
But it was a tribe
which he had no right to be part of.
He earned the right later.
After having made the film,
he was recognized...
as having a history that he didn't have.
The vitelloni themselves
were a perception of his, literally.
He probably didn't even know
what the real vitelloni were like.
He had left Rimini when he was
17 or 18 years old.
The phenomenon of vitellonismo
was his own creation.
He didn't really know them.
The whole thing was made up.
"Vitellone" actually became a word.
You can look it up in the dictionary.
Since he had made up the story,
he felt free to include
anything that struck his creative fancy.
The production was incredible.
A production that, today, could never be.
Now everything's done in two minutes.
Everything...
Thirty pages a day.
Instead, we took our time.
We worked on I vitelloni for four months
because we were following Sordi around
to make sure we didn't lose him.
He was in a company with Wanda Osiris,
a theatrical revue.
So we went to Florence
and filmed the carnival scene
inside a little theater in Florence.
Then we went to Viterbo
for all the exteriors.
It's never Rimini.
The sea is Ostia, near Rome.
So it took us four months.
The producer was beside himself.
He wanted us to stop filming
since he had no more money,
or so he said.
So it was an unbelievable production.
It was very, let's say...
It was the cinema of another time,
the kind that lasted,
one that takes time to make.
It wasn't like it is now
where in three days you have to -.
Now you have to shoot eight scenes
in three days.
He didn't impose...
a preconceived character on the actor.
His entire attitude
came from his love of life.
He loved people as they were.
He proved this to me
much more eloquently on I vitelloni.
Fellini, as a director,
is an interesting thing.
Everyone thinks that Fellini the director
would organize everything - preparing,
doing scenes over and over again.
He would tell us how to act. No.
Fellini never told us anything.
Fellini would create
a particular atmosphere,
an atmosphere that was appropriate
to the scene or to the film,
and then he would let us act.
Each of us was free to act as we saw fit.
For example, I played Moraldo,
the character who was the most...
The one who most suspects
that there must be
something more out there
than what he was doing.
Therefore, he's a bit more contemplative.
I always asked,
"Federico, should I be sad?
What should I do,
stick my hands in my pockets?"
And he'd say, "Come on, don't be silly.
It's good, it's fine."
Meaning that we were free.
Just as Sordi was free. As you can see,
he was completely unrestrained.
Every actor was free.
However, when you see it on the screen,
you see that each actor hit the mark
with his character,
because they're all in their element.
They are within the limits.
That's what I mean.
He's a director -
At least he was this way in '52.
I don't know if he became
more demanding later on.
But he was a director
who said very little,
who organized things in such a way
that every actor did his own thing,
but did it well.
Germi, for instance, was the opposite.
Germi had a preconceived idea
of what a character should be,
and he would very laboriously
stitch the actor...
into the character's clothes.
Fellini's system was much more human.
He accepted people as they were.
He couldn't care less
about an actor's box office potential,
his commercial value.
He knew, for instance,
that audiences despised Alberto Sordi.
He knew that the failure
of The White Sheik at the box office
had in large part been caused
by Alberto Sordi.
It failed miserably.
But when he offered me a role
in I vitelloni,
he again brought up Sordi.
He said,
"I know audiences don't like Alberto,
but I need him for this role."
So I said, "Okay. Where do you plan
to shoot it, in Rimini?"
"No," he said.
"No, not in Rimini.
Alberto has a commitment to Wanda Osiris.
He's in a play by Garinei and Giovannini
called Gran baraonda,
and they will be touring various cities.
And we'll follow them around."
"So you're going to build everything
around Sordi, a deadweight!"
Hey, workers.
Obviously, I love the scene where
Alberto makes that gesture to the workers,
the car that breaks down,
these guys that are followed because...
Aside from the fact that it's true -
It really happened to Federico
and his friend Titta Benzi,
who talked about it a number of times,
so it's a scene that is based in reality.
It's a great scene
because it's at a moment when...
he was learning to like the left...
the defense of labor, trade unions,
workers' rights.
To find someone who makes you laugh
by making a gesture -.
And the poor people who -
And this was also...
Aside from telling a personal story,
Federico -.
See how things are put together?
He also has something to tell
which can only be interpreted by Sordi.
Because that was also Sordi's spirit.
Hey, we were only joking!
Once I witnessed something
that was really very curious.
I went along with Alberto Sordi because
he called me once and asked me,
"Can you do me a favor
and come with me to do an interview?
They want to give me
the Umbria Fiction Award in Perugia."
That afternoon -.
The award ceremony was going to be
in the evening.
That afternoon, a meeting was set up
with Sordi and the workers at Perugia.
We walked into this huge room,
and there were a thousand workers.
Alberto Sordi went in,
he looked at them and said, "Workers"...
They weren't offended by the gesture.
They didn't boo and hiss.
No. It was received like a triumph.
So it was the surest way, the truest,
most genuine, most joyful way
to greet some friends from the street
that he had entertained for so long.
It has always stuck with me
how the power of one gesture
that started out as something rude
suddenly became, after many years,
so joyful.
What's going on?
- Try that again, if you dare!
- What did I do? I was asleep.
There's really nothing to that film,
yet every time I watch it,
I notice something new.
For example,
when we go to see the playwright,
when we go to see the guy
who put on that show,
he says, "They steal all my light bulbs!"
It's marvelous.
He's talking about them stealing
light bulbs that cost next to nothing.
"That's why I have this candle."
And then -.
Yes, well, the best parts
were left on the cutting room floor.
Please, have a seat...
For the role played by Majeroni,
the role of the aging homosexual actor...
Fellini originally wanted De Sica.
That was another great moment.
De Sica was filming Stazione Termini.
He was working
with some great American actors.
One night, Federico and I
went to visit him on location.
It was about 1:00 in the morning
and they were all inside a train car.
The director, De Sica, was in makeup.
When we got there,
they gave us a flashlight
so we could make our way
to where the crew was working.
Finally, we waited outside the train car
for De Sica to let Fellini in.
I waited outside.
Fellini was nervous,
with his script under his arm.
I encouraged him, saying,
"Go, put on the pressure."
I remember that's what I said.
He arrives, and De Sica
welcomes him very cordially.
And Fellini, great writer that he is -.
Besides being a great director
and a great designer.
That great writer with a few strokes,
gives us an unforgettable image
of De Sica,
with his warm, soft hand,
with his mellow and welcoming voice.
He tells De Sica about the part
that he would play.
And he says -
Fellini always jots things down.
"Maybe he even drifted off for a moment,
but he never stopped smiling."
And, in the end, he said,
"But do you mean that this man is"...
"A fairy? Yes," says Fellini, hesitating.
"He's a fairy."
"But he's human, right?
Because there's humanity
even in fairies
that certainly we don't know about
but that certainly exists."
"Of course," says Fellini.
"He's very, very human."
"Well, then, okay. Why not?
Get in touch with my lawyer.
Of course, yes.
But I beg you, make him human,
make him human."
So we can be sorry...
that De Sica wasn't in I vitelloni.
In reality, Achille Majeroni was
an old braggart, if we can say that,
and he really liked Italian cinema.
Italian theater, I meant to say.
Since Fellini understood
that he was someone you couldn't
speak to about this thing, homosexuality,
because he would have been offended
or embarrassed,
he didn't tell him anything.
What amused him most
when we talked about I vitelloni
was the fact that Majeroni...
had never figured out
that he had played the role
of a homosexual.
He was very naïve.
I remember one day I ran into him.
The film was finished
and he was about to leave Rome.
Before he left, he came looking
for Fellini and ran into me.
Fellini and I were often together.
And he said to me,
"Where is that blasted friend of yours
who dared to offer me a dubious role?"
But he wasn't sure of it.
He said, "People tell me it's dubious.
He knows I have a wife.
I'm a serious actor.
I've played Morselli.
And that bastard friend of yours
dares give me
a dubious part."
And I said, "No, what makes you think
he would do a thing like that?"
"Then why do I say to you" -.
He used formal address with me.
He spoke like a man from another century.
"Why do I ask you
to go and read with me by the sea?"
"Because the sea
is very dramatic at night," I said.
"Oh, no," he said.
"One goes to the sea for privacy.
Our going there together
could be interpreted
as something entirely different,
dear Trieste.
Your illustrious friend
has a lot of explaining to do."
What's so funny is that, later,
Fellini said to him, candidly,
"Whoever told you that?
Everybody knows I could never offer you
a homosexual role.
I would have chosen another actor.
There's been some mistake."
"Well, if that's the case,
I can rest assured
that everything is all right."
And Fellini,
who always displayed a remarkable
intelligence about his films,
and therefore a remarkable
critical ability,
made a note saying,
"Fortunately he didn't do it,
because De Sica
had too much human appeal,"
an appeal that was transmitted
to the audience
and which wasn't appropriate
at that point.
The actor that was chosen did a much
better job than De Sica could have done.
In my opinion,
this is another demonstration
of Fellini's remarkable intelligence.
What did you think I meant?
Come back here, Poldo!
Fellini always had
a difficult relationship with critics.
But he was very good at selling himself.
He wasn't just a great artist.
He was also a great communicator,
a great salesman of his ideas
and of his films.
He tried to establish a relationship
with everyone he met.
He always tried to win them over.
He always had a hard time, though,
with the left-wing critics.
The left-wing critics were left behind
with noble but already obsolete models
of neorealism
and welcomed the neorealistic aspects
in I vitelloni
that are certainly there,
and, as I said before,
are brought to great heights
in their popularity.
But they didn't grasp what was new...
The discovery that a reality exists
that goes past the reality of neorealism,
because it's no longer
just the reality of the people.
It's the reality of those
who have been marginalized,
those who don't even belong
to the lowest classes of the population,
but are really marginalized,
social outcasts.
This is the discovery of marginalization
that Fellini will exemplify in three films
which are in fact, Nights of Cabiria,
I'll bidone and La strada.
There's a hint of it in this film.
Everyone asks what the angel means.
I think the angel has great meaning.
It means,
in Federico's head, in his imagination,
there exists a certain logic.
The logic... of poetry.
It's a poetic expression, nothing more.
A poetic statement made by him
and given to the public.
Fellini did some really
extraordinary things.
Although I begin to think
that Federico was right
about a certain something,
a certain fear he had
that showed itself in those years.
He'd say,
"Look, I've got ten years ahead of me."
"What do you mean ten years?"
"Yes, just look
at all the great directors."
And he listed the principal directors.
He said, "Look, their works that count,
their major works...
Even if they did other things later
or before...
But their important work was done in
a ten-year period. That's the yardstick."
So, Fellini -
If you use his rule and you think
that between '52, The White Sheik,
and '63, 8 1/2 -.
And of course, there was Amarcord.
There are so many things
that he did up until the end.
But if you were going to preserve Fellini
for posterity,
you would save this block of films,
clearly.
The genius was Federico. He's a genius.
The highest form of genius.
De Sica is not only a great showman,
but also a great filmmaker.
In terms of directing,
he's a remarkable filmmaker.
And Antonioni, well,
Antonioni is probably the most...
the most... not intellectual,
but the most modern of all.
No one could work the camera
like Antonioni, not even Federico.
But Federico had the ideas,
the jokes and things, those looks.
It was all...
All three of them were great masters,
but, in my opinion,
the greatest of all was him.