Amarcord

By Maddalena Dottori
29/04/2009

I watched Amarcord the other day for the first time, and I can assure you, it is still an unforgettable and a larger-than-life experience as it was for the audiences on December 1973, when the film was first released, followed by a massive critics and public acclaim. Larger-than-life and unforgettable are all the characters that inhabit the 1930's seaside village -very similar to Fellini's boyhood town of Rimini- where the movie is set. Amarcord means "I remenber" in local dialect and, as the title may suggest, it is the most affectionate and autobiographical of the director's movies.

From Fascists to crazy teachers. From young boys' collective masturbation sessions to a boy's first, impossible love for a star-struck older woman. From infatuation to marriage. From spring to spring, from year to year, Fellini remembers and reinvents his younger days in his native Italian village, and that was entirely recreated in Rome CineCitta' studios. Amarcord is a love poem in the form of one nostalgic year from the director's youth.

The story is told in twenty segments, starting with the oncoming of Spring. Festival is in the air. A crowd gathers in the town square for the annual ceremonial burning of the snow witch. The burning symbolizes the change coming. This will be a year for change for many characters, and yet, nothing changes. The circle completes itself, by ending with the return of spring. The village remains almost unchanged.

The main character is a young boy of about fifteen years old, named Titta Biondi (Bruno Zanin), and the people who surround him. Titta's put upon mother (Pupella Maggio) who plays comforter, nurse maid, and voice of reason of the household. Aurelio (Armando Brancia), Titta's father, pretends to be an ordinary man but secretly is an anti-Fascist (at a time when to be one is very dangerous). Gradisca (Magali Noel) is the sexy, eligible town favorite who is young Titta's first crush, and who, in turn, dreams of marrying Gary Cooper. Teo, the mental hospital-residing uncle (Ciccio Ingrassia), and all of Titta's friends and their pranks help to fill Fellini's human canvas. The structure is loose.

Although Titta is clearly the main human focus, in reality, he is just the object of focus to give the film its structure, while the real star of the movie is the small town.