Amarcord

It's truly astonishing to see the range of response for other reviewers on IMDB.

This movie has a history for me. I first saw it when I was young, and it impressed me greatly. Would I like it today? I'm not sure. I'm thinking of renting it again to find out.

Here's what I remember: Excellent score by Rota; sitting here, typing this, I can hum one of the melodies. The sequence where we meet a number of teachers; priceless. The bricklayer/poet's poem about not having a house. The unyeilding emotional black hole that is the hero's father; "take him to the whorehouse...". Teo. The village. The technical fact of the tabacconist's shadow growing larger against the wall as she moves "away" from the light, just like Mickey Mouse in The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Gradisca. Snow. The spring cottonwood wisps that offer a gently rocking temporal cradle to a story which traipses on the edge between straight narrative and emotional space. Gradisca's wedding. Time becoming a wash as we give up our dreams and settle down. The end of an era.

Will all this fine feeling and high emotional tone work for me today? If it doesn't, does this reflect on me or this movie? Stay tuned....

Although on one level this is indeed a warm reminiscence of youth, it would be a mistake to think that's all it is. In fact there is sharp satire at the heart of the film, indicated by the punning title - "Amarcord" is the local dialect for "I remember" (used in preference to the Italian "Mi ricordo") while "Amaro" is Italian for "bitter".

There is considerable brutality among the laughs - a man is maltreated by the Fascists, a small boy tries to kill his infant brother with a rock in an aside the casual viewer might miss.

Rimini stands in for the whole of Italy as Fellini tries to get to grips with what factors in the national psyche (Catholicism, the education system, past imperial glory, sexual frustration) led Italy to invent and wholeheartedly embrace fascism.

These are some of Fellini's own comments on the film:-

"The province of Amarcord is one in which we are all recognizable, the director first of all, in the ignorance which confounded us. A great ignorance and a great confusion. Not that I wish to minimize the economic and social causes of fascism. I only wish to say that today what is still most interesting is the psychological, emotional manner of being a fascist. What is this manner? It is a sort of blockage, an arrested development during the phase of adolescence… That is, this remaining children for eternity, this leaving responsibilities for others, this living with the comforting sensation that there is someone who thinks for you (and at one time it's mother, then it's father, then it's the mayor, another time Il Duce, another time the Madonna, another time the Bishop, in short other people): and in the meanwhile you have this limited, time-wasting freedom which permits you only to cultivate absurd dreams – the dream of the American cinema, or the Oriental dream concerning women; in conclusion, the same old, monstrous, out-of-date myths that even today seem to me to form the most important conditioning of the average Italian."

One can only speculate on what Fellini would have made of Berlusconi.

Apparently the film as we see it was originally planned as part of a larger-scale project in which a man in the present day retreats into a nostalgic reminiscence of his adolescence. For whatever reason that framing device was abandoned and what we have is just the reminiscence.

Fellini described "Amarcord" as "a minor planet... not a masterpiece" but for all that it enjoyed considerable success and remains wonderful to behold. On the downside it could be considered the seed of the later plague of execrable 'adolescence' movies such as "Porky's" and "Road Trip".

Still, you can't blame Fellini for that.

When "Amarcord" had it's American premier at the Plaza Theatre on East 58th Street in New York, I was working as the manager of The Paris Theatre, also on 58th Street, just 2 blocks west, behind Bergdorf's and facing the front of the Plaza Hotel.

Both theatres were part of the Cinema-5 circuit of first-run theatres in Manhattan. I often took advantage of the pass privileges that theatres extend to one another and always attended every other theatre in the city to sample their fare.

As I often worked as 'relief' manager of The Plaza, I was well known to the the crew there and had easy access to that theatre at all times. When I first sat through "Amarcord" during it's opening, I realized that I had just seen "THE Finest Film Ever Made". When I told this to others, I was often scoffed at. I was told that the 'Finest Film' hadn't been made yet. That was until the scoffers saw the film for themselves. Every friend I brought to The Plaza to see "Amarcord" was as enchanted with the film as I was.

During it's opening run at the Plaza Theatre in 1974, I must have seen the film at least 50 times. I next saw "Amarcord" at an art house in another city in 1980. Yes, it was still the best film. In the 6 years since it's USA premier I can't say I saw any film better than "Amarcord."

Then, when it was at long last released on videotape in the 1990's, I purchased the tape. When I watched the tape I wept. Yes, it was STILL the finest film ever made. I DO think the world of "Nights of Cabiria", "La Strada", "La Dolce Vita" and "8 1/2". But "Amarcord" is more than just Fellini's greatest work. It is greater than ANY other film, made by any other person or group of persons. I know now, 27 years after I first saw this film, that I will certainly say, 27 years in the future: This is THE film that no film-maker can top.

..In my humble opinion, of course....

While this film certainly has some poignant points about life, it is mostly the work of a great artist who has reached an age where he can view his childhood memories from a detached, nostalgic point of view. Visual splendour and humor abound, and it is a thoroughly delightful watch but I still like Fellini more, when he is more personally invested in the problems of his characters, as in Dolce Vita or 8 1/2.

This film is a life journey. Filled with indelible images: The peacock in the middle of the snow, the awesome vision of the ocean liner--and the blind man crying out: "What's it like, what's it like?", the belly-laugh inducing introduction to each of the instructors at school, the beautiful people, the grotesques. Like life itself, the movie can be perplexing and enigmatic, sometimes magical, sometimes, in the face of the political climate and history, frightening as "simple people just trying to live get caught up in the times they were themselves creating". I don't think any film I've ever seen has so completely captured with such profound insight and simplicity the experience of losing a parent: The visit by the father and son in the hospital in which the mother realizes the awesome finality about to approach, and the son is blissfully unaware in his adolescent "immortality", and the total feeling of quiet and emptiness as the father sits at the dining room table, formerly filled with joyful, loud, noisy life--now emptier than could have ever been imagined before--this whole sequence comes as a powerful conclusion to a stunning film. With a final coda a la 8 1/2, Fellini embraces the audience, telling them not to worry--memories go on, life goes on, changed, altered forever perhaps, but it goes on, beautifully, enigmatically, magically.