AMARCORD Movie Review

I Remember

For those who would separate the films of Federico Fellini into the films made before La Dolce Vita (1960) and those that came after, Amarcord is often cited as the summation of the director's later work. This haunting and self-consciously dreamlike movie, featuring a lilting yet vaguely frightening score by Nino Rota, is a loosely autobiographical kaleidoscope of moments in the life of a young boy growing up in a small, Italian seaside town in the 1930s. Also known as I Remember, Amarcord is a film that viewers tend to recall in fragments, which is probably exactly what its creator intended. In attempting to find a cinematic equivalent for the selective memory that we all use when remembering the pleasures and pains of childhood, Fellini forces us to take the bitter with the sweet—most literally exemplified by the nightmarish sequence in which the young protagonist's father, suspected of disloyalty, is forced by the town's new fascist regime to drink castor oil until he collapses. Yet as hard as Fellini tries to bring the harsh lights of reality and cruelty to his remembered universe, it is the small joyous moments that always triumph. An uncle whose liltingly musical farting becomes as reassuring as a town crier; a gloriously lit ocean liner, stylized and mysterious, suggesting unimagined destinies to come; and, perhaps the simplest and most stunning of all, a peacock displaying its feathers during an unexpected, silent snowfall. These images—photographed by the great Giuseppe Rotunno—which might simply form a few privileged moments by an ordinary director, are at the heart of Fellini's art.

NEXT STOP … The White Sheik, Fellini's Roma, Akira Kurosawa's Dreams

1974 (R) 124m/C IT Magali Noel, Bruno Zanin, Pupella Maggio, Armando Brancia; D: Federico Fellini; W: Federico Fellini, Tonino Guerra; C: Giuseppe Rotunno; M: Nino Rota. Academy Awards ‘74: Best Foreign Film; New York Film Critics Awards ‘74: Best Director (Fellini), Best Film; Nominations: Academy Awards ‘75: Best Director (Fellini), Best Original Screenplay. VHS, DVD HMV