VARIETY LIGHTS Movie Review

Luci del Varieta
Lights of Variety

The first feature film on which Federico Fellini worked as director (it was co-directed with Alberto Lattuada) is the story of a down-and-out troupe of traveling vaudeville players who cling—naively but necessarily—to the dream that someday they will achieve real fame and stardom. The details of their seedy one-night-stands are presented with swift, gentle, comic poignancy, as are their relationships to each other. But the central love story in Variety Lights is that between the performers and their illusions—those they create for their undemanding audiences, and those they must recreate daily for themselves. Those who dismiss the generally delightful Variety Lights do so because it's not one the great Fellini films. Granted. But those who say it would never have been noticed were Fellini's name not on it are wrong; the film stands on its own as a transitional moment between neo-realism and the great Italian comedies that followed, but the fun of seeing in it the early seeds of so many of the poetic, Felliniesque elements that would soon fully blossom is irresistible. Irresistible as well is the cast, which includes a remarkably charismatic young woman whom we would soon see more of: Giulietta Masina.

NEXT STOP … Nights of Cabiria, La Strada, The Iceman Cometh

1951 93m/B IT Giulietta Masina, Peppino de Filippo, Carla Del Poggio. Folco Lulli; D: Federico Fellini, Alberto Lattuada; W: Federico Fellini, Tullio Pinelli, Ennio Flaiano, Alberto Lattuada; C: Otello Martelli; M: Felice Lattuada. VHS HMV, CVC