varietylights-1.JPGVariety Lights ends where it begins, on a train with Checco Dal Monte (a third-rate singer played by Peppino de Filippo) leering at a young show-biz wanna-be. Well, it doesn’t quite begin there . . . there’s a prologue that shows the charmingly inept musical-comedy troupe Checco “headlines” doing their thing, to not very high acclaim. That night, their landlord–who has not been paid– intercepts their cut of the theater’s take, and they’re on the train, heading for their next cheap venue.

Variety Lights launched the directorial career of Federico Fellini, in a collaboration with the established Italian Neo-Realist director Alberto Lattuada. At the time, Fellini had become known for his screen-writing, most notably his work on Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, Open City. Variety Lights breaks with the Neo-Realist canon not so much in technique, although some of it looks like it was studio-shot, but in its subject-matter — it eschews the prescribed social/class commentary for a compassionate drama about a group of outsiders and ne’er-do-wells. This, of course, became a hallmark of Fellini’s cinema.

But back to Checco leering on the train. The wannabe performer Liliana is played by Carla varietylights-2.jpgdel Poggio, Lattuada’s wife. Checco’s mistress Melina, sleeping on Checco’s shoulder while he does his leering, is played by Fellini’s wife Giulietta Masina (left). Del Poggio is first seen in the audience before the train ride; in those shots, she is almost heartbreakingly beautiful and vulnerable. It is no wonder that Checco instantaneously falls in love.

Inevitably, Liliana becomes the star of the little troupe and, just as inevitably, outgrows it. She and Checco strike out on their own, and it is at this juncture that her true nature is revealed: she’s a gold-bricker, in it for the stardom, and she takes poor Checco for a ride. Eventually, the long-suffering Melina puts up her life savings to give Checco and Liliana a chance to put together a review; it has possibilities until Liliana abandons him for more fertile ground. Thus, we end on a train, Melina sleeping on Checco’s shoulders, while he smirks at yet another potential star.varietylights-4.jpg

In this Variety Lights, Fellini’s love for outsiders and deluded dreamers is firmly established. Though Checco is a cad, Liliana a calculating hustler, and the whole troupe blatantly un-talented, the film portrays them with a loving, knowing touch. De Filippo, as Checco, is adept at broad comedy one moment and heartbreaking pathos the next; although del Poggio is gorgeous, she’s rather wooden — the subtleties of her character elude her.

Giulietta Masina, of course, would go on to anchor three of her husband’s greatest films: La Strada, Nights of Cabiria and Juliet of the Spirits. I’ll have more to say about her in essays on these films; suffice it to say that here she plays a Fellini type — the long-suffering spouse/mistress/female protagonist. This is something at which she apparently had real-life practice; though she was married to Fellini until he died, she had to endure his peccadilloes to do so.

Although Variety Lights is firmly Neo-Realist in technique, there are a few touches of the surreal. A large black trumpeter suddenly appears on the night-time streets of Rome. A carnival-like cadre of homeless people — including the trumpeter, a female Brazilian singer, a crazed dead-eye shooter — befriend the destitute Checco. These night-time city streets, and their various denizens, would become staples in Fellini’s future oeuvre.

Is Variety Lights one of the Fellini’s best? No . . . but it ain’t, as they say, chopped liver, either. A bitterly bleak drama, tempered with his trademark humanism, it both establishes many of his themes, and presages his future greatness. All in all, not a bad introduction to the Maestro’s work.

Tune in next Monday (or so) for The White Sheik.

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