The Rocket From Calabuch (Luis García Berlanga, 1956)

Valentina Cortese and Edmund Gwenn in The Rocket From Calabuch

Cast: Edmund Gwenn, Franco Fabrizi, Valentina Cortese, Juan Calvo, José Isbert, Félix Fernández. Screenplay: Leonardo Martín, Florentino Soria, Ennio Flaiano, Luis García Berlanga. Cinematography: Francisco Sempere. Film editing: Pepita Orduna. Music: Guido Guerrini, Angelo Francesco Lavagnino.

In his last film role, Edmund Gwenn plays an atomic scientist who hides out in a small Spanish town, fleeing the demands made on him by the American military. But his cover gets blown when he helps the villagers in their annual fireworks competition with another town. It's the usual droll, loving comedy from one of its masters, Luis García Berlanga.

Il Bidone (Federico Fellini, 1955)

Il Bidone (Federico Fellini, 1955)

Cast: Broderick Crawford, Richard Basehart, Franco Fabrizi, Giulietta Masina, Sue Ellen Blake, Irene Cefaro, Alberto De Amicis, Lorella De Luca. Screenplay: Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli. Cinematography: Otello Martelli. Production design: Dario Cecchi. Film editing: Mario Serandrei, Giuseppe Vari. Music: Nino Rota.

Le Amiche (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1955)

Yvonne Furneaux, Eleanora Rossi Drago, Anna Maria Pancani, and Valentina Cortese in Le Amiche

Clelia: Eleanora Rossi Drago
Lorenzo: Gabriele Ferzetti
Cesare Pedoni: Franco Fabrizi
Nene: Valentina Cortese
Momina: Yvonne Furneaux
Rosetta: Madeleine Fischer
Mariella: Anna Maria Pancani
Tony: Luciano Volpato
Clelia's Employer: Maria Gambarelli
Carlo: Ettore Mani

Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
Screenplay: Suso Cecchi D'Amico, Michelangelo Antonioni, Alba De Cespedes
Based on a novel by Cesare Pavese
Cinematography: Gianni Di Venanzo
Production design: Gianni Polidori
Film editing: Eraldo Da Roma
Music: Giovanni Fusco

The usual rap on Michelangelo Antonioni's films by those who dislike them is that nothing happens, when in fact all sorts of things happen, from mysterious disappearances to murder. What sets Antonioni's films apart is that things happen almost randomly, without the usual dramatic buildup, and that the way his characters react to the things they witness or that happen to them is not usually the way we would react to them. So Le Amiche starts with an attempted suicide to which the sophisticated women who form the circle of "girlfriends" of the film's title react with a kind of detachment and indifference, even though the woman who tried (perhaps not very hard) to kill herself was one of them. Even Clelia, the outsider who will soon become part of the little circle and who discovers the unconscious Rosetta, seems to take the occurrence in her stride. The next on the scene is the brittle, cynical Momina, who knows Rosetta and accepts her suicide attempt as something like a part of the routine. And so we, along with Clelia, are thrust into a group of people in whom something essential seems to have atrophied, producing several fractured marriages and dead-end affairs. Clelia has come to Turin, the city where she grew up, to supervise the opening of a dress shop, part of a chain headed by the designer for whom she works. So it's the world of fashion superimposed on a place Clelia knew in the immediate postwar years as a grimy working-class city, and her point of view on the lives of the girlfriends is a special one. Partly in reaction against these wealthy women and their ineffectual men, Clelia takes up with Carlo, a supervisor on the construction of the shop, who shares her lower-class roots in the city. But you can't, as they say, go home again. The film is full of Antonioniesque touches that anticipate his major works of the 1960s. There's a visit to the beach where the behavior of the girlfriends and their men evokes some of the behavior that precedes the disappearance of Anna in L'Avventura (1960), and there's a breathtaking cut from the suicidal Rosetta walking away into the darkness to a high-angle shot of her white-shrouded body on the pier after she succeeds in killing herself. Antonioni antagonists will find nothing in Le Amiche to counter their charges of "arty ennui," but those of us who appreciate his work, even if we have to struggle sometimes, think this earlier film is almost the equal of his later work.

I Vitelloni (Federico Fellini, 1953)

Franco Fabrizi, Franco Interlenghi, Leopoldo Trieste, Riccardo Fellini, and Alberto Sordi in I Vitelloni

Moraldo Rubini: Franco Interlenghi
Alberto: Alberto Sordi
Fausto Moretti: Franco Fabrizi
Leopoldo Vannucci: Leopoldo Trieste
Riccardo: Riccardo Fellini
Sandra Rubini: Leonora Ruffo
Francesco Moretti: Jean Brochard
Sergio Natali: Achille Majeroni
Guido: Guido Martufi

Director: Federico Fellini
Screenplay: Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli
Cinematography: Carlo Carlini, Otello Martelli, Luciano Trasati
Production design: Mario Chiari
Film editing: Rolando Benedetti
Music: Nino Rota

The international success of I Vitelloni launched Federico Fellini's directing career after the comparative failures of Variety Lights (1951), which he co-directed with Alberto Lattuada, and The White Sheik (1952), his first solo directing effort. It also earned him an Oscar nomination for screenwriting, which he shared with Ennio Flaiano and Tullio Pinelli. It's certainly one of his most endearing early films, made before his familiar mannerisms set in -- though there are glimpses of those in the tawdry theatrical sequence with the grotesque aging actor played by Achille Majeroni (a part that Fellini tried to persuade Vittorio De Sica to play). But somehow it has taken me several viewings over the years to fully appreciate it. I think that's because Fellini's greatest films have a strong central character -- usually played by Giulietta Masini or Marcello Mastroianni -- to hold the narrative together. I Vitelloni is by definition and title an ensemble picture, but it's also the first of Fellini's excursions into himself, concluding with the Fellini surrogate, Moraldo Rubini boarding a train that will take him away from the idlers of his provincial home town -- and presumably to Rome, where he will become the jaded Marcello Rubini of La Dolce Vita (1960) and the blocked director Guido Anselmi of 8 1/2 (1963). The problem is that the character of Moraldo isn't written strongly enough or given enough substance by the actor: Franco Interlenghi, who was discovered by Roberto Rossellini and cast in Shoeshine (1946), had a long career in films and TV in Italy, but the part in I Vitelloni demands someone with more charisma -- a young Mastroianni, in short. Moraldo is overshadowed by the womanizing Fausto and by the comic figures of Alberto and Leopoldo. The scenes that should develop Moraldo as a central figure don't quite work, particularly the early-morning encounters with Guido, a boy on his way to work at the railroad station -- a sharp counterpoint to the idling vitelloni. "Are you happy?" Moraldo asks the boy. "Why not?" he replies. The exchange seems designed to undercut the frenetic strivings and complaints of the vitelloni, who chafe against the boredom and provinciality of the town, but don't seem to be able to muster enough resolve to do something about it, instead continuing to pursue phantoms of creative or sexual success. The trouble with the Moraldo-Guido scenes is that they come out of nowhere narratively -- and even have oddly uncomfortable (and probably unintended) hints of pedophilia on Moraldo's part. Nor do they satisfactorily set up the film's ending: Moraldo departs and we see Guido walking along the train tracks, the former facing up to the uncertain future, the latter heading comfortably back into his routine. Still, it's a film held together by the score by Fellini's great collaborator Nino Rota, and filled with the boundless energy that often rescued Fellini from his worst impulses.