Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.
Federico Fellini (1920-1993) grew up in the small seaside town of Rimini in Italy, but left it behind in 1937 to move to Rome. He returned once to Rimini in 1945, but quickly discovered that it no longer comported with his memories of the place. “For me, the real Rimini is the one in my head . . . I discovered that the life I’ve told about had become more real for me than the life I really lived.” Thus is the nature of nostalgia. When later Fellini decided to commit those fantastic memories to celluloid, he even chose not to film Amarcord in Rimini, since by his boyhood town no longer bore greater resemblance to what was in his head than did any other place!
Amarcord means “I remember” in the dialect of Rimini. This is a film packed with joyful memories transformed into fantasy by nostalgia – the kind of memories that improve by the telling and the more with every repetition. The result is an almost carnival-like depiction of the Italy of Fellini’s childhood.
Historical Perspective:Amarcord was the last of Fellini’s widely acknowledged masterpieces, although he continued to make films for years to come. His neorealistic period behind him (La Strada, Nights of Cabiria), Fellini had turned to a more phantasmagoric, free-flowing, character-based, and autobiographical style in La Dolce Vita and 8 ½ – a style that became affectionately known as “Fellinesque.” Miraculously, Amarcord integrates the charm and sensitivity of his earlier works with the visual poetry of his phantasmagoric period.
The Cast of Odd-Ball Characters: Titta Biondi (Bruno Zanin), a 14-year-old boy, is at the center of the story. He is likely Fellini’s alter ego in this film, although Fellini denied that the film was expressly autobiographical. Perhaps Titta is closer to what Fellini remembers through the tint of nostalgia than to the reality of his boyhood. Titta is in a state of hormonal urgency, obsessed with women and the more voluptuous the better.
We meet Titta’s extended Italian family. Titta’s father, Aurelio Biondi (Armando Brancia), the nominal head of the household, is a communist, but is regularly locked inside the gates of his home by his prudent wife during political activities in town, to prevent him from risky participation or protests. In one scene, we watch him chasing his son around the yard furiously because Titta had urinated from the balcony of the local theater on the hat of a prominent man beneath. Titta’s mother, Miranda (Pupella Maggio), is temperamental and vitriolic, arguing with her husband about the raising of the children and whatever else comes under discussion. When vexed, she threatens to kill the entire family by putting strychnine in their soup or to kill herself “first.”
Titta’s mother’s brother vainly wears a hair net around the house to mat his hair, but Titta later discovers this uncle is quite a dancer and real Casanova with the ladies. His father’s brother, Uncle Teo (Ciccio Ingrassia), suffers from some type of lunacy. He is taken out of the asylum for a summer picnic by the family once a year. The family is distressed, first, when Uncle Teo forgets to open his fly before urinating at the side of the road and, later, when he climbs up a tree and refuses to get down, fending off would-be rescuers with stones, and yelling into the wind, “I want a woman” – over and over again. Finally, they send for help from the asylum and Uncle Teo is retrieved by a foul-mouthed midget nun, whose face we never see.
Titta’s paternal grandfather (Guiseppe Ianigro) slyly leaves the dinner table for an adjacent room before farting loudly. Later, he loses his way during a dense fog while just a few yards outside the gate of their home and suspects that he has died and gone to heaven, though he is less than impressed with the accommodations of paradise.
Gradisca (Magali Noel) is the most beautiful woman in town – the one that Titta and all of his friends idolize. She has a perfect derriere and broad hips that sway as if motorized. She wears large false eyelashes that accentuate her flashing eyes and dresses glamorously in bright reds and whites. Gradisca is simultaneously infinitely desirable and unattainable – at least for the entourage of adolescent admirers. Gradisca acquired her nickname from Rimini’s Grand Hotel, where she created a legend (see below). She is the embodiment of men’s carnal fantasies.
Volpina (Josiane Tanzilli), on the other hand, is very obtainable. Cost-free. She is Rimini’s nymphette, ready to please any and all comers and capable of true magic with her tongue. She instructs Titta in the art of French-kissing. Various narrators, most notably “The Professor”, give the film something of the sense of a guided tour through Fellini’s bank of memories. The Professor pedantically lectures the audience concerning the history of the town’s building and art works, weather statistics, and fables. The local priest, on the other hand, seems preoccupied mainly with one particular kind of sin – with whether the young lads in town touch themselves, demanding details and then dishing out Hail Mary’s.
A Sample of Vignettes: The film covers one year in the life of Rimini and begins with the arrival of the puff balls in the town square that signal the advent of spring and the end of the long winter. This leads to a celebration in the town square with a bonfire. Titta and his friends explode firecrackers amidst the crowd and a mysterious motorcyclist speeds through the ashes of the bonfire in the morning.
We are made privy to samples of the classroom education of the young boys and the mischievous pranks that absorb most of their attention. In math class, the boys rig up an elaborate tube formed from notebook pages that delivers urine from a boy near the back of the class to the base of the feet of the despised know-it-all geek reciting for the teacher at the blackboard. Later, a young lad attempts to master pronunciation of a difficult Greek word but is only able to produce a flatulence-like sound rather than the requisite intonation.
Titta and his friends masturbation in unison in a car in a garage, shouting names of girls and women of their fantasies to excite one another, while causing the headlights of the car to flicker excitedly. On one occasion, Titta’s big opportunity seemingly arrives when he finds himself alone with the magnificent Gradisca in the local theater, where she has gone to watch her object of desire, Cary Grant. Titta circles his prey, moving closer, row by row, until he is seated next to her. He places his hand on her leg. As first she doesn’t even notice, but finally asks icily, thoroughly dousing his ardor, “Looking for something?”
Then, there is a riotous visit by Mussolini and his fascist entourage. They review a squad of the local fascists and witness the fitness demonstration (calisthenics) of the town’s youth. Later, the Fascist trot ridiculously from the local train station to the square. Suddenly, the strains of the communist “Internationale” emerge mysteriously from an unknown source, finally discovered to be the town’s bell tower. The Fascist riflemen and pistoleers are finally able to shoot down the phonograph playing the music but not before also shooting down the bell.
The Grand Hotel in town is a luxury hotel too expensive for any of the locals to step foot in. Hence, it has become a place of great mystery and legend. It was there, according to one legend, that Gradisca whimsically seduced a visiting Count to gain some important consideration for the town. Another time, a great Sultan checked in with his Turkish harem and, supposedly, the women of the harem later invited the town’s skinny, toothless, dim-witted vagrant to climb up a rope of knotted sheets for a night of frolicking in which he dutifully serviced the entire lot. We are informed by the Professor that he has only the word of the vagrant for the authenticity of the story, beyond the fact of the Sultan’s arrival.
Later, the townspeople climb aboard small boats and paddle into the harbor to await pridefully a close-up view of the passing of a new Italian luxury ocean liner. The blind accordion player begs for a description as it passes by.
Titta visits a voluptuous tobacconist (Maria Antonietta Beluzzi) who has a taste for young lads. Titta attempts to impress her with his ability to lift her, despite her distinct excess of kilograms. Excited, she bares one of her oversized jugs and invites him to suckle. When he complains of suffocating, she throws him out.
The blizzard of the century descends on the town. Pathways are shoveled amid tall drifts. The count’s peacock soars overhead and then lands on the snow-covered fountain, spreading his plumage in full array. Later, the lads engage Gradisca in a snow ball fight, selectively targeting her perfect rump. Gradisca later marries a Fascist official on the beach, signaling an end to the adolescent ambitions of the boys.
Themes: There is no substantial theme to this film – beyond the simple warmth of nostalgia. It is style that counts in Amarcord rather than message. The town’s innumerable misfits are all blatantly caricatured yet always with warmth and affection. Even the activities of the Fascists are presented mainly as silly spectacle with little effort at condemnation. Fellini is engaged in fanciful personal reminiscence without much of a care in the world. No plot intrudes to distress the moody atmosphere. Fellini himself was once quoted as saying, “I have no messages for humanity.” More than any other filmmaker, Fellini made films for the simply joy of expressing himself, and not for an audience. The result is sometimes films of great personal warmth and vision and other times films of excessive self-indulgence with far too little to say.
Production Values: Fellini quite properly eschews realism for this film, turning his subject matter into caricature, even inviting his performers to “overact.” He thereby effectively captures the essential quality of memory which has been tinted rose by nostalgia. This is a film based on pure subjectivity, in stark contrast to the objectivity of, say, Buñuel. The respect, warmth, and affection with which these sometimes-grotesque characters are treated reveals Fellini’s touching brand of humanism. Human sexuality is sensibly dealt with matter-of-factly, without embarrassment or the Catholic guilt-trip that Fellini always resented. The boys, for example, openly ogle the derrieres of the women of the local bicycle club and one senses that the women in this film would not want it otherwise.
Most of the cast were acquired from local amateur groups in Northern Italy. It is this method of casting that permitted Fellini to consistently people his films with interesting and eccentric – and thus memorable – faces and body types. It was not Fellini’s desire to populate his films with physically perfect specimens and slim divas in the manner of Hollywood.
Many of the standard Fellini symbols and tactics are evident here in Amarcord. There’s the half-finished scaffolding, the satirizing of Catholicism, elaborate parades and processions of bizarre characters, grotesque faces and marvelously lyrical body movements. Like many Italian directors, Fellini’s practice was to dub in most of the dialog after filming. Consequently, scenes could be filmed with music playing to provide a melody and rhythm (later unheard by the film audience), subtly guiding the graceful movements of the principals and extras. And speaking of music, the delightful score by Nina Rota, built out of swing-style dance tunes of the forties and fifties, is a major enhancement to Fellini’s images.
Bottom-Line:Amarcord is the ultimate nostalgia film. Nostalgia films are generally not my cup of tea, but this one is rendered so exquisitely as to win me over entirely. Amarcord won the Academy Award for best foreign film in 1974 as well as the New York Film Critics Circle Award. The Criterion DVD is the best print available, but is short on the kind of extras that movie-lovers have come to expect from Criterion. There is just the trailer and a feature on the benefits of the restoration process. Amarcord is in Italian with English subtitles. The running time is 124 minutes.
I first watched this film about eight months ago or so and had I reviewed it at that time, I think that I would have given it no higher than four stars. My difficulty with that first viewing was that I kept looking for the plot, not realizing at the time that Fellini does not often provide one. I watched the film again today, knowing that there would be no plot, and consequently found myself more receptive to the leisurely perusal of Fellini’s scrapbook of highly original human portraits. Lacking an option of 4.5 stars, I’m going with five.
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