Down by Law (Jim Jarmusch, 1986)

At the end of Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train (1989), his young Japanese tourists set out for New Orleans, where the writer-director had been three years earlier to make Down by Law. As he did with Memphis for Mystery Train, Jarmusch imagined the city and wrote his screenplay before he ever set foot in New Orleans, and the resulting film is a kind of fleshing out of his imagination. Jarmusch's New Orleans is a construct of legend and myth, then, not to be taken literally any more than one would a fairy tale -- which is what Jarmusch has called Down by Law.  He imagines New Orleans as a city of musicians, prostitutes, and tourists, and he casts his three central characters in the mode of each: Tom Waits as Zack, an out-of-work disc jockey; John Lurie as Jack, a small-time pimp; and Roberto Benigni as Roberto, or Bob, an Italian wandering the city to soak up American idiom, which he dutifully writes down in his notebook. But if Jarmusch's New Orleans is an imaginary construct, it is grounded in a kind of visual reality, provided at the film's beginning by Robby Müller's camera as it roams the streets of the city, showing the signs of decay it exhibited even before Katrina. And the scenes that establish Zack and Jack are rooted in a sordid poverty, as Zack is kicked out of their apartment by his girlfriend, Laurette (Ellen Barkin), and Jack is lured into a trap in which he is arrested with an underage prostitute he has never met before. (Bob makes a kind of cameo appearance in a scene with Zack, thoroughly stoned and out on the street, who tells him to "buzz off" -- a phrase Bob records in his notebook.) After Zack is tricked into driving a car that has a body in the trunk, he joins Jack in the Orleans Parish Prison, where things look like they can't get any worse. But then Bob joins them in their cell, having been arrested for killing a man with a billiard ball in a pool hall fracas, and the film turns on a dime from a noirish study of the underclass into an off-beat comedy that, among other things, validated Benigni's Italian reputation as a comic genius. Here he's a catalyst, stirring Waits and Lurie into performances that raise their characters from sleazy to endearing. But the real star of the film for me is Müller, whose black-and-white cinematography also elevates the sordid into the beautiful. It becomes a film of textures, from the silken skin of a nude prostitute to the etched graffiti on a prison cell wall to the layer of duckweed on the surface of a bayou. In an interview, Müller has commented on how black-and-white has an effect of subtraction: Color gives you more information than you need, while black-and-white helps you concentrate on particulars. Down by Law has been criticized for its slowness, and Jarmusch certainly lets the tension slack a little, but even when there's nothing much going on, Müller's images keep the pulse of life steady.

Strangers on a Train (Alfred Hitchcock, 1951)

Strangers on a Train and North by Northwest (1959) are the best of Alfred Hitchcock's "wrong man" thrillers, in which the protagonist is suspected of a crime he didn't commit and spends most of the film trying to prove his innocence. They have something else in common: Both involve seduction scenes that take place on a train, except that in the latter film the seduction, of Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) by Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), is conventionally heterosexual. It's the gay subtext that marks Strangers on a Train from the very beginning, when we watch the feet of Guy Haines (Farley Granger) and Bruno Antony (Robert Walker) as they board the train and eventually bump up against each other in the club car. It's Bruno's flamboyance, especially the gleaming white of his brown-and-white spectator shoes, that we notice first, before we see his lobster-patterned tie and the gold tie clasp that proclaims his name. Even the straightest viewer gets it: Bruno is cruising. And he lights upon the handsome athlete, Guy. Bruno is blatant, and he's more than a bit obnoxious, as he invades Guy's space and continues to talk after Guy has signaled that he'd be happy to be left alone with his book. Yet somehow Guy, who on the surface of it seems the kind of man who would brush Bruno aside swiftly, lets himself be talked into having lunch in Bruno's compartment. Only when Bruno makes his shocking tit-for-tat murder proposal does Guy make his exit. I think that Hitchcock is suggesting that Guy is at least intrigued by the possibility of hooking up with another man. Guy's sexuality is brought into question by his marriage to the promiscuous Miriam (Kasey Rogers, then billed as Laura Elliott) and by the obvious motive of political ambition that has led him to the daughter of a senator, Anne Morton (Ruth Roman), who looks older than he does. (Roman was, in fact, three years older than Granger.) Hitchcock goes about as far as he can under the Production Code in making his characters gay, but even this little helps heighten the paranoia that's haunting Guy.  It was 1951, after all, when homosexuality was still considered "deviance" and ferreting it out became an obsession of the FBI and other watchdog groups. That said, Strangers on a Train works even if you prefer to ignore subtext and see Guy and Bruno as a conventional hero and villain. Walker's performance is one of the best in any Hitchcock film, and his failure to be nominated for it by the Academy remains a marked injustice. Strangers received only one nomination, a deserved one: for Robert Burks's cinematography, the first of 12 collaborations with Hitchcock. Also overlooked were editor William H. Ziegler and special effects creator Hans F. Koenekamp, who gave us one of the most exciting scenes in the movies: the runaway merry-go-round. Hitchcock was deservedly proud of the film, having fought with his first choice as screenwriter, Raymond Chandler, who retained credit after he was fired and the script was rewritten, under Hitchcock's guidance, by Czenzi Ormonde and the uncredited Ben Hecht and Alma Reville, who followed an initial adaptation by Whitfield Cook of Patricia Highsmith's novel. Roman's casting is the film's major weakness: The studio forced Hitchcock to cast her, and he made no attempt to turn her into a real actress. She quickly exhausts her limited supply of anxious looks, practically the only ones the screenplay gives her; perhaps only the fear of getting lipstick on her teeth kept her from actually biting her lip. But the film launched what some think was Hitchcock's greatest decade, culminating in the amazing trifecta of Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest, and Psycho (1960).

I Vinti (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1953)

Fay Compton and Peter Reynolds in I Vinti

Why did they burn Joan of Arc? a character asks in Michelangelo Antonioni's I Vinti. Because she got involved in politics, another replies. It's a response befitting the disengaged youth that are the focus of the three episodes in Antonioni's film, the title of which is often translated as The Vanquished. They are the postwar generation in Europe, deprived of the political fervor that drove their parents' generation into war. But Antonioni has another reason for sniping at politics: It interfered with his efforts to make and distribute the film, which was banned in France until 1963 and never received theatrical distribution in the United Kingdom, even though two of the episodes were filmed in those countries. One of the reasons for the bans was legal: The episodes were based on actual incidents and could have led to prosecution on various grounds. But Antonioni was also forced to change his original plan for the Italian episode, which was to have been about a violent act of political protest, and instead make his protagonist a kind of rebel without a cause: a young man who turns to cigarette smuggling as a reaction against his wealthy parents. The film as released also is weighed down by a didactic prologue explaining that these are stories about the plague of what was then called "juvenile delinquency" -- a heavy-handedness uncharacteristic of Antonioni as artist. The first of the three episodes takes place in France: A group of high school students play hooky, telling their parents that they're going on a class field trip, and instead go to the countryside where, in the ruins of a chateau, a boy who has boasted of how much money he has -- he ostentatiously lights his pipe with a five-dollar bill -- is shot and robbed, only to reveal that the money is fake. The Italian episode features Franco Interlenghi as Claudio, whose venture into cigarette smuggling is busted by the police. On the run, he shoots and kills a guard, but he also takes a fall from which he apparently suffers internal injuries. Rescued by his girlfriend (Anna Maria Ferrero), he returns home, but dies before the police can arrest him. In the English episode, a police reporter (Patrick Barr) for a London newspaper receives a call from a man (Peter Reynolds) who claims to have discovered a body in a park and wants to be paid for his story. Relishing the celebrity his story brings him, he eventually admits to having murdered the woman (Fay Compton), a prostitute, and is sentenced to death. Slight as the three episodes are, they are vivified by sharp writing -- the screenplay is by Antonioni, Giorgio Bassani, Suso Cecchi D'Amico, Diego Fabbri, Roger Nimier, and Turi Vasile -- and by the director's increasing virtuosity in placing his camera. The cinematography is by Enzo Serafin. Granted, what we often watch the early films of great directors for are signs of their future brilliance, and especially in the English section there are some striking foreshadowings of Blow-Up (1966). But making allowances for some of the restrictions under which Antonioni was working, I Vinti is impressive on its own. I was struck by the Hitchcockian humor in the English episode, when the reporter tangles with his unseen but hilariously incompetent switchboard operator. Unfortunately, the version I watched on FilmStruck retains the original dubbing of the French and English sections into Italian, but apparently there are undubbed DVD versions.

The English Patient (Anthony Minghella, 1996)

The "prestige motion picture" is a familiar genre: It's typically a movie derived from a distinguished literary source or a biopic about a distinguished historic figure, with a cast full of major actors, but designed not so much to advance the art of film as to attract critical raves and awards -- particularly Oscars. There are plenty of examples among the best-picture Oscar winners: A Man for All Seasons (Fred Zinnemann, 1966), Chariots of Fire (Hugh Hudson, 1981), Gandhi (Richard Attenborough, 1982), Amadeus (Milos Forman, 1984), Out of Africa (Sydney Pollack, 1985), and The Last Emperor (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1987). (The 1980s seemed to be particularly dominated by prestige-seekers.) The trouble is that once the initial attraction of these films has faded, few people seem to remember them fondly or want to watch them again. I'd rather watch The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966) today than sit through A Man for All Seasons, and I would say the same for Atlantic City (Louis Malle, 1981), Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982), Starman (John Carpenter, 1984), Prizzi's Honor (John Huston, 1985), and Moonstruck (Norman Jewison, 1987) when put in competition with the prestige best-picture winners of their respective years. So I watched The English Patient last night to test my theory that prestige movies don't hold up over time. It fits the category precisely: It's based on a Booker Prize-winning novel by Michael Ondaatje; it has a distinguished cast, three of whom were nominated for acting Oscars, including Juliette Binoche, who won; it earned raves from The New Yorker, the New York Times, and Roger Ebert; it raked in 12 Oscar nominations and won nine of them -- picture, supporting actress, director Anthony Minghella, cinematographer John Seale, art direction, costumes, sound, film editor Walter Murch (who also shared in the Oscar for sound), and composer Gabriel Yared. And sure enough, there are films from 1996 that I'd rather watch again than The English Patient, including  Fargo (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen), Lone Star (John Sayles), and Trainspotting (Danny Boyle). But I also have to say that of all the "prestige" best picture winners, The English Patient makes the best case for the genre. It's a good movie, with a mostly well-crafted screenplay by Minghella from a book many thought unfilmable, though it still tries to carry over too much from the novel, such as the character of David Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe), whose function in the film, to provoke Almásy (Ralph Fiennes) into uncovering his story, could have been served equally well by Hana (Binoche). But the performances still seem fresh and committed. Binoche, though designated a supporting actress, carries the film by turning Hana into a kind of central consciousness. I was surprised at how much heat is generated by Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas as Katharine, considering that they are both usually rather icy performers. There are some beautifully staged scenes, like the one in which Kip (Naveen Andrews) "flies" Hana so she can view the frescoes high in a church. And Murch's sound editing gives the film a marvelous sonic texture, starting with the mysterious clinking sounds at the film's beginning, which are then revealed to be the bottles carried by an Arab vendor of potions. Murch's ear and Seale's eye make the film an enduring audiovisual treat.

Jean de Florette / Manon of the Spring (Claude Berri, 1986)

There's no good reason why Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring should have been two films rather than one. They were shot together over the course of seven months, but released separately, Manon following Jean after about three months. Shown together as one film, they would total some 230 minutes -- only a bit longer than Ben-Hur (William Wyler, 1959) at 212 minutes or Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962) at 222 minutes. But the length of those films seems consistent with their epic pretensions, whereas Jean/Manon together amount to a domestic melodrama -- an entertaining one, with a beautiful Provençal setting, but far from an epic. Their separate releases feel a bit like a con -- as in economics. Films of that blockbuster length are a drag on the exhibitor, who must schedule fewer showings per day, so it probably made sense to release Jean, which unabashedly announces at the end that it's "part one," to whet an appetite for Manon, whose posters announced it as the second part of Jean de Florette. Voilà! double the box office take. In fact, Manon of the Spring had been filmed before, by Marcel Pagnol in 1952, and it had been a long film, as much as four hours, before being cut by the distributor. Pagnol was so upset by this experience that he turned the screenplay into a novel, L'Eau des Collines, adding the story of Manon's father, Jean, which had been only a backstory in his film. And it's this novel that Claude Berri decided to adapt into his two films. The problem I see, having just watched Berri's films back to back, is that there's not quite enough material for two. Jean de Florette is an overextended prequel, introducing the characters of César Soubeyran (Yves Montand) and his nephew Ugolin (Daniel Auteuil), and their villainous attempt to cut off the water supply to Jean (Gérard Depardieu), the newcomer who inherits the estate they covet. Or perhaps Manon of the Spring is a thinly developed sequel, in which Jean's daughter, Manon (Emmanuelle Béart), avenges her father. If Jean had been trimmed of some of the scenes of Jean raising rabbits and Manon of some of the shots of Manon gamboling with her goats in the hills -- as well as the romantic subplot involving the new village schoolteacher (Hippolyte Girardot) -- both stories could have fitted nicely into one movie. Manon climaxes with a scene in which César learns an uncomfortable truth about Jean's parentage, but Berri and co-screenwriter Gérard Brach drag the film out after that revelation, which should have been left to make its impact. Still, Berri's films have much to recommend them, especially the performances of Montand, Auteuil, and Depardieu (the last is sorely missed in the second film) and the beautiful cinematography of Bruno Nuytten. Jean-Claude Petit's score makes good use of themes from the overture to Giuseppe Verdi's La Forza del Destino.  

Monsieur Verdoux (Charles Chaplin, 1947)

Charles Chaplin and Martha Raye in Monsieur Verdoux

At the end of Monsieur Verdoux, Charles Chaplin, in the title role, walks away toward his execution by guillotine, just as his Little Tramp character used to walk away toward the horizon in his earlier films. It's a richly ironic moment, not just because Chaplin is parodying the endings of his other movies, but also because it would come to symbolize the beginning of the end of his career. He would make three more films, only one of which, Limelight (1952), would attract an audience (mainly in Europe) and earn some critical respect. Of the other two, A King in New York (1957) was not even released in the United States until 1973, and although The Countess From Hong Kong (1967) did get American distribution, it was generally panned even by critics inclined to favor Chaplin and was a major box office flop. Monsieur Verdoux is a key work in its revelation of Chaplin's strengths and weaknesses. His strengths are still there: He was, when he wanted to be, a very funny actor, and there is one scene -- Verdoux and Annabella (Martha Raye) in a rowboat -- that is among the most hilarious sequences ever filmed. His weaknesses stemmed from his desire to be more than funny: to make statements about the way he saw the world. The ending of The Great Dictator (1940) was marred when he shifted from satire to sermon, and the rather muzzy anticapitalism expressed by Verdoux in the final scenes strikes us today as banal. Unfortunately, in 1947 it struck many as worse than that. In the increasingly heated anticommunist fervor of the day it was at least heresy, at worst treason. Monsieur Verdoux was picketed and banned and eventually withdrawn from circulation in the United States, not to be seen here until 1964. It confused most of the critics in 1947 with its shifts in tone and its rather old-fashioned mise-en-scène and cutting, but it had its defenders, chief among them James Agee, who wrote a long, impassioned multipart essay for The Nation defending the film. "I love and revere the film as deeply as any I have ever seen," Agee wrote, "and believe that it is high among the great works of this century." Not many people would go that far today. Monsieur Verdoux has its longueurs and its unfortunate wanderings into Chaplin's particular brand of sentimentality, especially the wheelchair-bound wife and adorable child. It betrays Chaplin's perennial weakness for the pretty girl in his casting of the wooden Marilyn Nash in what seems to have been intended as a key role but which fizzles because it's awkwardly written and performed. Even the title role is inconsistently written and performed: Chaplin's dapper Verdoux suddenly turns into a slapstick clown and just as suddenly back into the suave and sinister serial killer, undercutting the high-minded pseudo-Shavian irony of his final apologia: "As for being a mass killer, does not the world encourage it? Is it not building weapons of destruction for the sole purpose of mass killing? Has it not blown unsuspecting women and little children to pieces? And done it very scientifically? As a mass killer, I am an amateur by comparison." Monsieur Verdoux feels something like a scene from Act IV in the tragicomedy that was Chaplin's life. If the first three acts were about his rise to success, despite controversy over his personal life and his politics, the fourth act finds his artistic instincts failing him and the controversies forcing him into exile. Only in the fifth act does the adulation that once surrounded him revive.

Drunken Angel (Akira Kurosawa, 1948)

Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura in Drunken Angel

Sanada: Takashi Shimura
Matsunaga: Toshiro Mifune
Okada: Reizaburo Yamamoto
Nanae: Michiyo Kogure
Miyo: Chieko Nakakita
Gin: Noriko Sengoko
Singer: Shizuko Kasagi
Takahama: Eitaro Shindo
Oyabun: Masao Shimizu

Director: Akira Kurosawa
Screenplay: Keinosuke Uekasa, Akira Kurosawa
Cinematography: Takeo Ito
Production design: Takashi Matsuyama
Film editing: Akikazu Kono
Music: Fumio Hayasaka 

Drunken Angel has been called Akira Kurosawa's Stagecoach, because just as John Ford established a fruitful director-actor team with John Wayne in his 1939 Western, in this movie Kurosawa launched a brilliant collaboration with Toshiro Mifune that lasted for 16 films. But to my mind, just as important, Drunken Angel marked the first teaming of Mifune with the great character actor Takashi Shimura. Kurosawa immediately saw the potential of the team, in which Shimura's low-key steadfastness serves as a foil for Mifune's volatility. He reteamed them in 1949 for two films, The Quiet Duel and Stray Dog, but their most memorable work together would come in Seven Samurai (1954), in which Shimura's wise and wily Kambei Shimada plays off beautifully against Mifune's madly unpredictable Kikuchiyo. In Drunken Angel, Shimura has the title role: an alcoholic doctor laboring in the slums of a postwar Japanese city. His clinic fronts a festering lake of sewage and his clientele comes largely from the neighboring nightclubs and brothels. Mifune plays Matsunaga, a swaggering young gangster with tuberculosis, who comes to Dr. Sanada hoping for a cure that won't put a crimp in his lifestyle. The screenplay by Kurosawa and Keinosuke Uekusa makes both characters into complex figures: Sanada's bitterness about his poverty and lack of status feeds his alcoholism, but he persists in trying to help his patients, even when, like Matsunaga, they resist his efforts, sometimes violently. Still, there's a bond between the two men in a recognition that they are both caught in traps they didn't make. What makes Drunken Angel more than just a clever reworking of film noir tropes -- another instance of Kurosawa's fascination with American movies -- is that it's a veiled commentary on the wounded Japan, in which the militaristic violence has been turned inward. Yesterday's soldier has become today's yakuza, still carrying on about honor and saving face. Kurosawa's film delivers an incisive criticism of some of the root problems facing his country. Made during the American occupation, when censorship was at its strictest, especially in depicting violence, Kurosawa nevertheless stages some vivid and intense fight scenes, using Mifune's physicality to great effect. That much of it occurs against a background of Western-style pop music only heightens its boldness.  

The Man Who Knew Too Much (Alfred Hitchcock, 1956)

It's not hard to see why Alfred Hitchcock would want to remake his 1934 film version of The Man Who Knew Too Much. It has good bones: a murder, a kidnapping, a political assassination plot, attractive international locations, colorful villainy, mistaken identifications, and innocents put in jeopardy by sheer accident. But he kind of blew it the first time with pallid protagonists (Leslie Banks and Edna Best), tedious comic byplay involving a sinister dentist, a wacky sun-worshiping cult, and a confusingly staged climactic shootout. Today it's best remembered for Peter Lorre's delicious villainy in his first English-language role. For the remake, Hitchcock supposedly told screenwriter John Michael Hayes not to watch the original or to read its screenplay by Charles Bennett and D.B. Wyndham-Lewis, but to follow his own retelling of the story. The result is a more supple narrative, and the stars, Doris Day and James Stewart, are a definite improvement over Best and Banks. Hayes has made them a rather edgy couple: She's an internationally known musical star who has gone into retirement to marry him, a Midwestern surgeon. He seems to be a bit resentful of her celebrity, and she seems to be a little disappointed at having to settle down in Indianapolis. He's given to outbursts of temper that she sometimes has to quell before he does something rash. Their marital tension never results in an out-and-out fight, but it makes for some uneasy moments. In some respects they verge on '50s stereotypes of male and female roles: He pulls out his medical expertise and administers a sedative to her before telling her that their son has been kidnapped, a rather extreme form of mansplaining. In the 1934 film, Best played an award-winning sharpshooter who fires the shot that kills the villain, while Day is given a softer task: She helps locate their kidnapped son by singing (and singing and singing) "Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)," the film's Oscar-winning song. The remake is 45 minutes longer than the original, and it seems a little overextended. Still, the performances are good, and Robert Burks's Technicolor cinematography and the Marrakesh location of the first part of the film give the remake a definite edge, as does Bernard Herrmann's score. Herrmann makes his only on-camera appearance conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in the "Storm Cloud Cantata" at the Royal Albert Hall, in the pivotal scene that was carried over from the 1934 version.

Where Is My Friend's House? (Abbas Kiarostami, 1987)

Babek Ahmed Poor in Where Is My Friend's House?

I think Dickens would have liked Abbas Kiarostami's Where Is My Friend's House?* It deals with one of Dickens's great subjects: the anomalous place of children in an adult world that often doesn't even hear or see them or recognize them as human beings with their own problems and concerns. It's the story of 8-year-old Ahmed (Babek Ahmed Poor), who goes to school in the village of Koker. One day the teacher berates the boy who sits next to Ahmed, Mohamed Reda (Ahmed Ahmed Poor), because he has done his homework on a piece of paper and not in the prescribed notebook. It's the third time Mohamed Reda has done this, the teacher scolds, and the next time he'll be expelled. We can see Ahmed wincing at the treatment of Mohamed Reda, and after school he helps the boy when he stumbles and drops his schoolbooks. When he gets home, Ahmed discovers that he has accidentally picked up Mohamed Reda's notebook and is horrified that this means the boy will be expelled. He tells his mother that he needs to take the notebook to his friend, but she's preoccupied with doing the wash and tending to the baby, so she tells him to do his homework first and then to pick up the bread for dinner. Perplexed, Ahmed tries to do his homework but his mother keeps interrupting him to help with the baby or to carry the washbasin, constantly dismissing his insistence that it's important that he deliver the notebook. Finally, he seizes the opportunity to leave, but he knows only that Mohamed Reda lives in the neighboring village of Poshteh, which is over the hill from Koker. So he races up the zigzag trail that takes him over the steep hill and down through the olive grove that lies outside the village. He knows Mohamed Reda's family name is Nematzadeh, but there are lots of Nematzadehs in Poshteh, and he doesn't know which branch of the family is his friend's. Finally, he gets a lead and is told that Mr. Nematzadeh and his son have just set off for Koker. So he races back over the hill, only to be delayed in his search by his own grandfather (Rafia Difai), who sends Ahmed off to fetch his cigarettes. While Ahmed is running this errand, the grandfather expounds his theories of child-rearing to a friend: His own father, the grandfather says, would give him some money and a beating every other week, whether he deserved it or not. Sometimes, he admits, his father would forget the money, but he always remembered the beating. This, the grandfather proclaims, taught him the discipline and obedience that children today like Ahmed don't learn. Meanwhile, Ahmed, who is struggling to fulfill what he sees as his duty to his friend and his family, has learned that the boy who accompanied Mr. Nematzadeh was not Mohamed Reda, and that the man has just started back for Poshteh, riding on a donkey. So Ahmed makes another trip over the hill, keeping Nematzadeh in sight and following him into the labyrinthine streets and alleys of Poshteh, only to discover that he has the wrong branch of the family after all. Eventually, after another misadventure, a despondent Ahmed returns home, finishes his own homework, and copies it into Mohamed Reda's notebook, which results in a well-earned happy ending. It's an excellent movie for children, but beside that, Kiarostami's screenplay, direction, and editing, and his empathy with the people and landscape of Northern Iran bring everything together into a fable about miscommunication and the difficulties of growing up. It's not as ambitious or complex as some of Kiarostami's later films, but it has their depth of feeling and brilliance of execution.

*The Persian title has been translated several different ways: IMDb, for example, calls it Where Is the Friend's Home? I prefer "my friend's house" as more colloquial, and because it avoids the real-estate-agent coziness that tries to pretend that every house is a home.

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.