Product Description

A beautiful ingenue joins a tawdry music hall troupe and quickly becomes its feature attraction in Fellini's stunning debut film (directed in collaboration with neorealist filmmaker Alberto Lattuada). Featuring Giulietta Masina, Fellini's wife and frequent leading lady, Variety Lights introduces the director's affection for the carnivalesque characters that frequent the cinematic landscape of such classics as Nights of Cabiria, La Strada, and La Dolce Vita. Criterion is proud to present Variety Lights in a beautiful digital transfer.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27168 in DVD
• Brand: Image Entertainment
• Released on: 2000-08-22
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: Italian
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 97 minutes

Amazon.com
Federico Fellini codirected this film from his own story about a romance between an ambitious young dancer and the aging manager of a variety theater in Rome. It's a sharply realized first effort, showing that Fellini could work his magic even in 1950. The dancer--played with luscious, complicated innocence by Carla del Poggio--talks her way into Signor Checco's troupe by showing him her legs. The others, including his girlfriend (Giulietta Masina), protest, but Checco takes her into the poverty-stricken group anyway. Soon enough, he is justified: Their sparsely attended shows are suddenly packed with men stomping their feet and whistling for "the Redhead." Checco not-so-secretly wants her himself, and she lets him think he might get her (even while looking for someone else with money.) The film's many lively performances include Giulietta Masina, whose eyes register pluck, resignation, and weariness in a moment as she watches her guy fall in love. Poggio is good, too: When she gets what she wants, her face slides into a quiver of doubt about its value. Self-delusion, arguably the main arrow in Fellini's quiver of themes, gets a subtly layered treatment here, and Fellini, so extravagant later in his career, shows an early talent for, of all things, restraint. --Lyall Bush

Customer Reviews

My favorite neo-realist Fellini film
First thing first, the DVD cover is misleading. Guillietta Masina does not star in Variety Lights. She is a co-star with a fair amount of screen time. It's worth picking up simply for her performance because when she is on screen she shines. Masina plays Melina a woman who is wronged by her man (a reoccurring theme she will revisit in La Strada, Nights of Cabiria and Juliet of the Spirits). Checco, Melina's man, is a delusional womanizing manager of a vaudeville troupe who takes under his wing Liliana, a girl with stars in her eyes who will stop at nothing to achieve her goal. Liliana's "skirt less" number is a highlight for me. What a great song! Checco, much to Melina's chagrin, unsuccessfully tries his hardest to impress Liliana with his so called "connections" and can barely contain his jealously over Liliana's many suitors. Liliana slowly transforms from "innocent" girl to a calculating manipulative shrew who uses Checco to further her ambitious career goals and thinks nothing of squashing his dreams. The changes in Checco and Liliana are so subtle that by the time the inevitable climax is reached I was hard pressed to tell which character I disliked the most. Ultimately, it's the tragically loyal Melina with whom I sympathized. This film is a true testament to Fellini's genius as a filmmaker. Out of all of Fellini's tragic neo-realist films this is my favorite. I passionately loved and hated many of the characters and at times found myself yelling at the television. A must for any Fellini fan.

First Glimpse at Fellini and Masina
Though this was a joint directorial effort, Fellini's style shines through in many ways. A rambling, at times almost incoherent film, it nevertheless remains watchable for the liveliness of its characters and the story of the girl who literally "steals the show." It is also most noteworthy for the performance of the brilliant Giuliette Masina, whose character here is much different from the others she would play in Fellini classics, but her unique talent still shines through. It is worth the film price just to see her in action.

Fellini's fascinating debut.
This is the '1/2' film alluded to in the title of Fellini's masterpiece '8 1/2', Il Maestro's debut, co-directed with the now-forgotten Alberto Lattuada. it tells the story of a troupe of small-time entertainers travelling through the provinces of Italy, playing in poky, leaking theatres to small, abusive audiences, their meagre fees impounded by hotel owners with long memories; they're usually forced to sneak train rides or walk miles between stops.

Against this lively backdrop is a tragicomic romance, part-'A Star is Born', part-'The Blue Angel', between a middle-aged performer and a budding starlet. The former deludes himself about his greatness and influence in order to hide the cruel realities of failure and aging, but when the latter takes him at his word, he throws up the very real security his shambling peripatetic life offers, to promote his ambitious charge, with tragedy lurking around the corner.

This tale has a nasty, misogynistic undertow, with Carla de Poggio's Lily portrayed as cold and almost homicidally calculating, and Peppino de Filippo's besotted loser Checco sentimentalised (although his is the one emotionally truthful performance in the film), but luckily it isn't the film's main interest. Although it's only half his work, many of Fellini's motifs, themes and stylistic trademarks are present - the uneasy co-existence of dusty, small-town Italy with the American-fuelled dreams of theatre and showbiz; the nocturnal, dream-like scenes on empty streets, where the lead meets strangers and has a kind of group epiphany in which reality is enchanted or suspended; the indulgent (though clear-eyed) portrait of flawed, family-like artist life against the soulless commericalism of the nouveau riche; the cinematic momentum in which plot is less important than set-pieces in which accumulated incidents and protracted character interaction achieve a kind of carnivalesque truth.

Fellini would refine these elements later - scenes that should be magical fall a little flat; the characters aren't interesting or comic enough; the blaring music definitely lacks the Nino Rota touch - but the film is fascinating to see Fellini struggling with the limitations of his neo-realist apprenticeship.