This entry is part of My Cinephile Journey with Federico Fellini.
As Pauline Kael rightfully points out in her review, there are two particular sequences in Variety Lights that stand out. The first is when Checco’s troupe walks along a backcountry road, beautifully lit and framed as they trudge along, and the second is the final stage show that finds Lilliana on stage as a showgirl, in a manner that surely spoke to Paul Verhoeven’s penchant for flamboyance. Even though Fellini was just an assistant director at the time who claimed to not have much input, these scenes feel particularly out of place in a movie by Alberto Lattuada, a master of Italian Neorealism who, very purposefully so, didn’t institute much flair in his movies. This observation serves as insight into the kind of director Fellini would become—someone who both didn’t have time for the Neorealist style yet recycled the movement’s humanity and empathy for everyday people.
Italian Neorealism was a film movement that emerged in the mid-1940s as a response to the devastation of World War II, and it offered an unfiltered look at the lives of blue-collar Italians, depicting their hardships, their ultimate resilience. Italian Neorealist characters were often played by non-professional actors, they were shot on location, and they were generally surrounded by a very minimalist plot. Themes often involved unemployment, inequality, and corruption—wounds left behind by the war and Italy’s transition to recovery. Unlike the melodramas that were so popular in Hollywood at the time, Neorealism focused on the hard truths of life, which were conveyed in a visceral, almost documentary-like manner.
Thematically, you can see the ties between Fellini and his Neorealist friends. After all, Variety Lights focuses on a band of low-paid entertainers who scrape by on listless applauses (and the occasional heckler), who desperately want to believe in the power of their profession, of their art, but are worn down by the realities of this cruel, unforgiving world. But Fellini took those core ideas in an entirely new direction as he became a solo director, shifting towards subjectivity and dreams in a manner that seemingly escapes the point of Neorealism, yet elevates its message and focus to an ethereal degree, to a previously unknown plane, to what we now refer to as Felliniesque.
The great departure Fellini made from the Neorealist movement was turning his focus artistic inwards. Where Neorealist movies sought to reflect the external reality, Fellini wanted the messy hodgepodge that consumes our inner selves during our lowest moments to color the reality that revolved around his characters. While Fellini’s blend of fantasy and reality, his elaborate, poetic visuals, his larger-than-life characters might seem antithetical to Neorealist masters like Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica, one could argue that Fellini’s aesthetic allowed him to go even deeper on everyman struggles. By turning the hardships of everyday life into allegory, into an incredibly introspective questioning of identity and memory, of the human condition itself, the director might have exposed the “reality” of working class citizens more thoughtfully, more realistically, even, than his Neorealist counterparts.
In this light, it’s easy to view Neorealism as a limitation for Fellini. The man wrote screenplays for years for the Neorealist movement. And his first directing gig wasn’t a real one, as he was second to Lattuada, who, according to Fellini, almost fully directed Variety Lights. Lattuada claims he made Fellini co-director because he believed Fellini to be a genius and he thought this credit would initiate him into the film world (and it did—god bless you, Lattuada). But I also believe it’s reasonable to argue that Fellini would have never become the surrealist director he became without the framework of Neorealism, of Variety Lights.
Fellini’s second film, The White Sheik, is a great example of this dynamic. While the movie consistently soars and floats in ways that Variety Lights never did, it also shares some crucial narrative similarities that allow us to heavily relate to The White Sheik’s characters. A divergence from the melodramatic material that came from Hollywood, which can feel theatrical or campy at times, Neorealism’s deep empathy for ordinary struggles is honest and raw. Neorealist movies aren’t filled with beautiful movie stars or hammy acting, but regular people who feel like they’ve wandered out of the television and into your room.
The White Sheik takes a decidedly different path from Variety Lights by focusing on entitled men of privilege and disengaged dreamers, yet these characters feel akin to the Neorealist characters. Wanda and Ivan of The White Sheik are just as lost and emotionally crippled by the realities of society as the performers of Variety Lights. Existential turmoil isn’t prejudice—it comes after everyone. Including these people who dream of bigger lives than they actually have, who use their dreams to escape the reality that is. So while the path Fellini takes to depict his characters’ struggles is quite different, the final product is not: we deeply feel for these people at the end of the movie.
So let’s further think of Variety Lights, the first movie that found Fellini in the director’s chair, where he saw how to make a movie firsthand, as a framework for his emerging style. After working with the Neorealist greats, here’s what Fellini brought to his movies:
- A focus on ordinary people and their struggles: The film’s grounded depiction of the performers’ ambitions and failures reveals how Neorealism taught Fellini to root his narratives in human vulnerability and resilience. The fantastical elements wouldn’t have carried as much weight without such inherent empathy.
- An episodic structure: By being focused on the hardships of life, Neorealist films often employ a loose structure, sketching a variety of low moments to accurately color characters’ existential struggles, to convey the unpredictability of life. This approach is evident in Variety Lights, as the story unfolds through a series of vignettes—auditions, rehearsals, performances, personal interactions—that altogether capture one’s fragmented identity, the natural rhythms of life. Born from this framework, much of Fellini’s work would go on to balance structure with spontaneity.
- A revealing environment: Neorealism emphasized the interplay between characters and their environments, often using real locations to highlight the socio-economic realities of postwar Italy. In Variety Lights, the dusty provincial towns and cramped theaters are more than just settings—they are integral to the characters’ experiences. Fellini absorbed this lesson, later transforming physical spaces into reflections of his characters’ inner selves.
- A world of great contrasts: In Variety Lights, the path to notoriety for Liliana, a beautiful dancer who is ogled by rich and powerful men, looks much different than the path for Checco, a down-on-his-luck manager who purports to be more important than he actually is. As is the case with most Neorealism, the dream is always greatly overshadowed by reality—even in Liliana’s case, her dream of becoming a dancer feels bittersweet, as she becomes nothing more than a secondary showgirl reliant on a rich manager. Fellini’s movies are filled with these sorts of contrasts. (It’s just the way he chooses to depict those contrasts that later sets him apart.)
- An emphasis on emotional truth: Say what you will about how Fellini’s style greatly differs from Lattuada. But the end result, the absolute focus on people and how they come out the other side of adversity, is very similar. Variety Lights doesn’t end spectacularly, but instead down in the dumps where the movie began. This focus on emotional truth became a hallmark of Fellini’s films, where even the most fantastical elements served to illuminate his characters.
In this light, you can see how being co-director with Lattuada, as well as being a screenwriter for Rosselini and Pietro Germi, helped Fellini to master his approach to characters through writing and observation. Obviously once in the director’s chair by himself, he discovered the style we now refer to as Felliniesque. But that style needs the grounded elements in order to flourish, and Variety Lights served as Fellini’s initial chance to articulate the wonder of his art.
Check out more entries from My Cinephile Journey, where I travel through the most important movies of our time.
