In I Vitelloni, Fellini presents a picture of five young men balancing between the spark of adolescence, and the pulling weight of adulthood. The most defined of the characters is Fausto, an individual with a focus on the girls of the town, eventually marrying a girl he had impregnated; Moraldo, the only real consciousness of the group, and the only member who questions the aimless life he and his friends lead; and Leopold, a writer with dreams to make it big (I Vitelloni).
I Vitelloni is the first film of Fellini’s to address his nostalgia, Having that Federico Fellini grew up in the seaside town of Rimini (a detail that would continue to show up in Fellini's filmography). Just like the young men in I Vitelloni, Fellini also craved the excitement of something beyond the close-knit nature of a small town. The shining spectacle of Rome bellowed to Fellini, ending in Fellini’s eventual move to Rome with his family. Fellini's use of nostalgia would continue in the rest of his work; becoming a main element in a majority of his films (Federico Fellini).
Fellini's characters called for a storyline that did not impede on their nature to roam.
The structure of I Vitelloni is called an “open structure” where the story does not have a distinct three-act structure, but rather has the characters come across different scenarios. As John C. Stubbs put it, “It pauses to show us a variety of things about its subject matter, and, of course, in so doing, it tends to privilege the individual sequences over the central structure of the whole or over strict adherence to a central line of cause-and-effect” (Stubbs 52). These scenarios allow for an exploration of the characters more thoroughly; by seeing the repetition of their reaction to situations.
From here on out, Fellini would continue to tell stories in an open manner. As for evolution, many of the elements in I Vitelloni would continue into the rest of Fellini's filmography consistently, until his last film Voice Of the Moon (1990).
