Federico Fellini and Alberto Lattuada

Variety Lights

Variety Lights

Made in collaboration with Alberto Lattuada, Federico Fellini’s directorial debut unfolds amid the colorful backdrop of a traveling vaudeville troupe whose quixotic impresario (Peppino De Filippo) is tempted away from his faithful mistress (Giulietta Masina) by the charms of an ambitious young dancer (Carla Del Poggio). Though the details of what the division of duties was between the two directors are unclear, this lively backstage capriccio is unmistakably Felliniesque in its whimsical fascination with the heightened reality, carnivalesque characters, and exotic allure of the world of show business. In the first of her celebrated collaborations with her director husband, Giulietta Masina displays the spirited vulnerability that would soon become an archetype of cinematic emotiveness.

Film Info

  • Italy
  • 1950
  • 97 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.37:1
  • Italian
  • Spine #81

Special Features

  • Restored digital transfer
  • New and improved English subtitles

    Cover by Olga Krigman

Purchase Options

Collector's Sets

Collector's Set

Essential Fellini

Essential Fellini

Blu-ray Box Set

15 Discs

$199.96

Special Features

  • Restored digital transfer
  • New and improved English subtitles

    Cover by Olga Krigman
Variety Lights
Cast
Peppino De Filippo
Checco Dal Monte
Carla Del Poggio
Liliana Antonelli
Giulietta Masina
Melina Amour
John Kitzmiller
Johnny
Dante Maggio
Remo
Checco Durante
Theater owner
Gina Mascetti
Valeria del Sole
Credits
Director
Federico Fellini
Director
Alberto Lattuada
Cinematography
Otello Martelli
Music
Felice Lattuada
Editing
Mario Bonotti
Sets
Aldo Buzzi
Costume design
Aldo Buzzi
Screenplay
Federico Fellini
Screenplay
Alberto Lattuada
Screenplay
Tullio Pinelli
Story
Federico Fellini
Producer
Federico Fellini
Producer
Alberto Lattuada

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Federico Fellini

Writer, Producer, Director

Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini

One of Italy’s great modern directors, Federico Fellini was a larger-than-life maestro who created an inimitable cinematic style combining surreal carnival with incisive social critique. While his most popular—and accessible—film, the darkly nostalgic childhood memoir Amarcord, is a great entryway into his oeuvre, , a collage of memories, dreams, and fantasies about a director’s artistic crisis, is perhaps his masterpiece. In his early career, Fellini was both a screenwriter for neorealist pioneer Roberto Rossellini and a newspaper caricaturist in postwar Rome, competing influences he would bring together with startling results. After such early works as I vitelloni, Fellini broke away from neorealism’s political strictures with the beloved La strada, and from there boldly explored his obsessions with the circus, societal decadence, spiritual redemption, and, most controversially, women, in such films as Nights of Cabiria, Juliet of the Spirits, and And the Ship Sails On.