#0000C/#4: FELLINI, Federico: Amarcord (1974)

FELLINI, Federico (Italy)
Amarcord [1974]
Spine #0000C/Spine #4

DVD/Blu-ray

1998 synopsis

In this carnivalesque portrait of provincial Italy during the fascist period, Fellini satirizes his youth and turns daily life into a circus of rituals, sensations, and emotions. Adolescent desires, male fantasies, and political repartee are set to Nina Rota's music in this beautiful transfer of Amarcord.

2020 synopsis

Federico Fellini returned to the provincial landscape of his childhood with this carnivalesque reminiscence, recreating his hometown of Rimini in Cinecittà’s studios and rendering its daily life as a circus of social rituals, adolescent desires, male fantasies, and political subterfuge. Sketching a gallery of warmly observed comic caricatures, Fellini affectionately evokes a vanished world haloed with the glow of memory, even as he sends up authority figures representing church and state, satirizing a country stultified by Fascism. Winner of Fellini’s fourth Academy Award for best foreign-language film, Amarcord remains one of the director’s best-loved creations, beautifully weaving together Giuseppe Rottuno’s colorful cinematography, Danilo Donati’s extravagant costumes and sets, and Nino Rota’s nostalgia-tinged score.

127 minutes
Color
Monaural
in Italian

1:85:1 aspect ratio

Criterion Release 1998/2020

Director/Writers

Story and screenplay by Federico Fellini and Tonino Guerra.

Fellini was 54 when he directed Amarcord.

Other Fellini films in the Collection:

#0000C/#189: The White Sheik (1952)
#0000C/#246: I Viteloni (1953)
#0000C/#219: La Strada (1954)
#0000C: Il Bidone (1955)
#0000C/#49: Nights Of Cabiria (1957)
#0000C/#733: La Dolce Vita (1960)
#0000C/#140: 8½ (1963)
#0000C/#149: Juliet Of The Spirits (1965)
#0000C/#747: Fellini Satyricon (1969)
#0000C/#848: Roma (1972)
#0000C/#50: And The Ship Sails On (1983)
#0000C: Intervista (1987)

The Film

The title is a univerbation of the Romagnol phrase a m’arcôra (“I remember”) — further meaning “nostalgic revocation” in Italian.

Fellini -- ("I'm a born liar") -- remembers his childhood in a small town near Rimini as a fictional autobiography. He might be Titta (Bruno Zanin); his parents might be Aurelio (Armando Brancia) and Miranda (Pupella Maggio) ... all the unforgettable characters in this film might be memories of a filmmaker far removed from a childhood reality.

Some of those who populate those memories:

Gradisca (Magali Noël) -- a liberated woman; object of the young men's attention ...

Uncle Teo (Ciccio Ingrassia) -- is he really crazy -- having been furloughed from an insane asylum -- for simply climbing a tree and shouting that he "wants a woman"? ...

Patacca (Nando Orfei) -- another uncle; effeminate, committed Fascist ...

The "lawyer" (Luigi Rossi) who narrates the proceedings ...

The tobacconist (Maria Antonietta Beluzzi) to whom Titta boldly makes an advance ...

In its two-hour running time, Amarcord advances through the seasons of a year -- bookended with the coming of spring and the arrival of the "puffballs" (poplar seeds).

If there is a must see in Fellini's oeuvre, this is it.

Film Rating (0-60):

58

The Extras

The Booklets

#0000C only: Essay by David Forgacs.

“For the vast majority of Italians, the title was obscure, and deliberately so. Fellini took impish pleasure in the fact that it would sound to many like the name of an aperitivo, evoking the Italian word amaro, meaning bitter (there was even a digestif named Amaro Cora). It also suggests the Latin noun for ‘heart’: cor, cordis.”

154-page booklet featuring an introduction by Bilge Ebiri and essays by Michael Almereyda (Primary Sources); Colm Tóibin (Imagined Homes); Carol Morley (Life on Earth); Stephanie Zacharek (Tough Love); and Kogonada (There is No End).

Tóibin:

“The Grand Hotel is a place of magic and allure. ‘As small boys in our little jackets and knickerbockers, the Grand Hotel in Rimini seemed like an enchanted palace.’ Fellini makes the hotel, and much else, belong to the illusion created by film rather than something solid and stable that needs to be captured … a great deal of the film comes from memory … since Fellini did not trust memory, this may explain why the film has no central narrative. Like James Joyce’s Ulysses, it is a set of episodes. Each one stands alone, like something that needs to be recreated with exquisite attention because it may fade if it is not filmed. The parts in between, the sequences that connect the episodes, as the young protagonist grows up and begins to notice more intensely, the director leaves to the imagination.”

#4 only:

Four-page leaflet featuring an essay by Peter Bondanella.

“The inhabitants of Fellini’s imaginary Rimini are not divided into good anti-fascists and evil fascists. Instead, all of the characters are sketched out in masterful caricatures, comic types with antecedents in Fellini’s earlier films. Fellini’s fascists are not sinister, perverted individuals (for that, see Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom [Spine #17] — LS) but pathetic clowns, manifestations of the arrested development typical of the entire village. As Fellini himself wrote in an essay-interview entitled ‘The Fascism Within Us’: ‘I have the impression that fascism and adolescence continue to be … permanent historical seasons of our lives … remaining children for eternity, leaving responsibility for others, living with the comforting sensation that there is someone who thinks for you … and in the meanwhile, you have this limited, time-wasting freedom which permits you only to cultivate absurd dreams.’”

#0000C only:

Commentary

From 2006 by film scholars Peter Brunette and Frank Burke.

Two Fellini experts who glide through the film with some great insights.

The Secret Diary of Amarcord

A 1974 behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of the film.

45 minutes. The doc begins with the racist deleted scene between Patacca and a Chinese man. What follows is a behind-the-scenes look at the production.

Deleted scene

The poor guy who must descend into the sewer to retrieve a diamond ring, lost by the Contessa.

Fellini’s homecoming

A documentary from 2006 on the relationship between the director and his hometown.

With Fellini’s childhood friends and colleagues.

Interview

From 2006 with actor Magali Noël.

Do people’s memories dissolve into fantasy?

Noël recalls a phone call from Fellini which woke her up at 2:00 AM in Switzerland, instructing her to be in Rome by 11:00 AM. She expresses her consternation at such a request, but insists that she made it.

Really? In 1973?

Fellini’s drawings

Of characters for the film.

Delightful.

Presentation

Of Amarcord ephemera from the “Felliniana” archive of collector Don Young.

Posters from various countries, and radio spots.

U.S. theatrical trailer

A fine trailer that whets one’s appetite to see this amazing film.

#4 only:

Restoration demonstration

Extras Rating (0-40):

38

58 + 38 =

96

By Director
By Spine #