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Rating: Debut of Fellini as a director, assisted by Lattuada, Variety Lights is a 1951 film starring Peppino De Filippo, Giulietta Masina, Carla Del Poggio.
Variety Lights is the story of a ragtag variety company led by Checco Dalmonte (De Filippo). With him is his girlfriend Melina (Giulietta Masina).
We are in the immediate post-war period, Italy is trying to restart but there are still many difficulties, and hunger is widespread. This mediocre theater company, performing in modest variety and revue theaters, is no exception.
The beginning is electrifying. We witness the company’s show featuring a not very impactful comedian, Checco, singing his outdated songs (the little duck) with little belief in them himself.
Sloppy and plump dancers, a limping fakir who almost looks homeless, and so on. Everything is shown without filters, right in your face, memorable are the close-ups of the "artists" who, while performing, wear a plastic smile but can’t take it anymore and clearly feel that the audience doesn't appreciate them much.
But among the audience, enthralled, is the young and beautiful Liliana (Carla del Poggio) willing to do anything to get on that stage.
Liliana will follow the company in its wandering and will seduce Checco, who will immediately succumb to the young woman’s beauty and brazenness, ending up falling for her...
A more than good debut for the young Federico Fellini as a director, the master's hand is already steady, well poised, and already has some calluses...
Although the main characters are essentially two, Checco and Liliana, the film benefits from an extraordinary cast, including a young but already talented Franca Valeri in the unlikely role of a Hungarian dance teacher. We can thus talk about an ensemble film in which multiple details typical of Fellini's cinematography emerge.
The fakir and his traveling goose, the chubby and crude singer, the melodic Neapolitan, the confused and alcoholic old manager.
We will also meet street artists, a black man and his trumpet, a Brazilian with an angelic voice and her guitar.
Fragments of a dream in a weird, quirky caravanserai.
As we said, hunger. Hunger and cynicism, fake piety, a bitter but faithful portrait of that world and era, the echoes of Italian neorealism cinema by De Sica and Visconti are still sharp, but with Fellini, one senses a change, a deeper, that is, psychological, analysis of the human soul.
The film was not successful and marked the end of the collaboration between Fellini and Lattuada.
It is not a masterpiece, but its viewing is recommended, even just to understand who we are and where we come from.
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