The only and unsuccessful attempt at fiction by Riccardo Fellini (who went on to become a good documentary filmmaker) is also the film which made the two brothers fall out forever. Federico insisted that Riccardo use a different surname, something which he refused to do and Federico fought back even in his dreams (“I spit in his face” he commented in his Jungian Book of Dreams). Greeted with indifference, if not contempt, at the 1963 Venice Film Festival, the film and especially its central episode reveal a naive but not superficial sensibility: Anna’s wedding dinner, where she perhaps realises that she has married the wrong man, is portrayed with a sympathy for the poor people it represents, highlighted further by their ancient faces and melancholic poetry. And there is something heavy, harsh, marginal (and marginalised) which seems to foresee future films by Sergio Citti.

Paolo Mereghetti