Amarcord

Plot synopsis:
A young woman hanging clothes on a line happily points out the arrival of "manine" or puffballs floating on the wind. The old man pottering beside her replies, "When puffballs come, cold winter’s done." In the village square, schoolboys jump around trying to pluck puffballs out of the air. Giudizio (Aristide Caporale), the town idiot, looks into the camera and recites a poem to spring and the swirling, drifting "manine."
At the hairdresser’s, a Fascist has just had his head newly shaved when Fiorella arrives to accompany her sister Gradisca (Magali Noël), the village beauty, to the traditional bonfire celebrating spring. As night falls, the inhabitants of Borgo make their way to the village square where Fellini presents his comic characters: the blind accordion player (Domenica Pertica) relentlessly tormented by schoolboys; Volpina (Josiane Tanzilli), the stringy blond nymphomaniac; the stout and buxom tobacconist (Maria Antonietta Beluzzi); Titta (Bruno Zanin), the rosy-cheeked adolescent protagonist based on Fellini's childhood friend; and Aurelio (Armando Brancia), Titta’s father, a construction foreman of working-class background. Modest and reserved, Aurelio responds in frenzied anger to Titta’s pranks while Miranda (Pupella Maggio), his wife, always comes to her son’s defence. Miranda’s brother, Lallo (Nando Orfei), lives with Titta’s family, sponging off his brother-in-law. In tow are Titta’s grandfather (Peppino Ianigro), a likeable old goat with an eye on the family’s young maid, and a street vendor, Biscein (Gennaro Ombra), the town’s inveterate liar.
Giudizio sits an effigy of the "Old Witch of Winter" in a chair on the stack and Gradisca is given the honour of setting it aflame. Lallo maliciously removes the ladder, trapping Giudizio atop the inferno. "I’m burning!" he screams as the crowd dances gaily round the bonfire and schoolboys run amuck exploding firecrackers. From a window, the Fascist bigwig (Ferruccio Brembilla) fires his pistol into the air. "I feel spring all over me already," says Gradisca in ecstasy.
The local aristocrat and his decrepit wife raise a toast to the dying flames. Schoolboys drag Volpina near the cinders then swing her back and forth in rhythm to the blind accordionist’s tune. A motorcyclist roars through the glowing coals in a mindless display of exhibitionism. Black-clothed women scoop the scattered embers into pans as the town lawyer (Luigi Rossi) appears walking his bicycle. Like Giudizio, he addresses the camera to explain choice tidbits of the town’s history. A florid suite of raspberries interrupts his charming pedantry and he departs in a huff.
Zeus (Franco Magno), the red-haired crusty schoolmaster, presides over an official class photograph. After showing us a wall hung with the portraits of the king, the pope and Mussolini, Fellini serves up a sequence of classroom antics involving Titta, Gigliozzi (Bruno Lenzi), Ovo (Bruno Scagnetti) and Ciccio (Fernando de Felice), the class fat boy who has a crush on Aldina (Donatella Gambini), a lovely brunette. If the schoolboys are stereotypical delinquents, their teachers are ridiculous. During her inane lessons on Giotto’s perspective, the art teacher (Fides Stagni) dips a breakfast biscuit in milk. Expanding her voluptuous chest, the feral-faced maths teacher (Dina Adorni) demonstrates an algebraic formula. Clicking tongue and palate to pronounce a syllable, the Italian teacher (Mario Silvestri) is reduced to hysterics by Ovo’s parody of him. Myopic religion instructor Don Balosa (Gianfilippo Carcano) wipes his glasses and drones on while half the class sneaks out for a smoke in the toilets.
"Fu Manchu!" cries Volpina, prowling on a sunburnt beach. When workers at Aurelio's construction site invite her to join them, the foreman promptly sends her off. Mortar, an old brick-maker, is asked to recite his new poem entitled Bricks:
My grandfather made bricks
My father made bricks
I make bricks, too,
but where’s my house?
Aurelio replies with a homily on the virtues of hard work. During dinner with his family, Aurelio explodes when news arrives that Titta urinated on the neighbour's hat. The ensuing squabble builds into a delirious domestic fit.
Titta and his gang follow Gradisca on her promenade under the arcades and, when that proves fruitless, flatten their noses against an irate merchant’s shop window. Lallo and his fellow Don Juans spot a carriage-load of new prostitutes on their way to the local brothel. The news spreads like wildfire to the town's male population.
The main concerns of Don Balosa, who doubles as the town priest, are floral arrangements and making sure his schoolboys avoid masturbation. At confession he warns Titta that "Saint Louis cries when you touch yourself." Given his fantasies involving the busty tobacconist, the sensual math teacher, the fat-bottomed peasant women on bicycles, Volpina the man-eater and Gradisca whom he tried to grope at the Cinema Fulgor, Titta complains that it can’t be helped.
A dirty dust cloud announces the visit of the federale during a parade led by the local gerarca. Following behind him are the maths teacher and her colleagues, rejuvenated by Fascist rhetoric. Now in uniform, Lallo joins the parade shouting "Mussolini's got balls this big!" In a wild daydream, Ciccio stands before the giant face of Mussolini, who blesses him and his "Fascist bride", Aldina. Surreptitiously wired into the bell tower of the town church, a gramophone plays a recording of the Internationale but it is soon shot at and destroyed by gun-crazy Fascists. Owing to his anarchist past, Aurelio is brought in for questioning and forced to drink castor oil. He limps home in a nauseous state to be washed by Miranda. We discover later that it was Lallo who betrayed him.
In a series of fantasy sequences at the Grand Hotel, Gradisca is encouraged to bed the Fascist high official in return for government funds to rebuild the town's harbour while pimple-faced Biscein recounts the night he made love to twenty-eight women in the visiting sultan’s harem. The Grand Hotel also provides the backdrop to Lallo’s gang of mother-controlled layabouts who obsessively pursue middle-aged female tourists.
One summer afternoon, the family visits Uncle Teo (Ciccio Ingrassia), Aurelio’s brother, confined to an insane asylum. They take him out for a day in the country but he escapes into a tree yelling, "Voglio una donna!" ("I want a woman!"). All attempts to bring him down are met with stones that Teo carries in his pockets. A dwarf nun and two orderlies finally arrive on the scene. Marching up the ladder, the nun reprimands Teo who obediently agrees to return to the asylum. "We are all mad at times," sighs Aurelio.
The town's inhabitants embark in small boats to meet the passage of the SS Rex, the regime’s proudest technological achievement. By midnight they have fallen asleep waiting for its arrival. Awakened by a foghorn, they watch in awe as the liner sails past, capsizing their boats in its wake. Titta’s grandfather wanders lost in a disorienting fog so thick it seems to smother the house and the autumnal landscape. Walking out to the Grand Hotel, Titta and his friends find it boarded up. Like zombies, they waltz on the terrace with imaginary female partners enveloped in the fog.
The annual car race provides the occasion for Titta to daydream of winning the grand prize, Gradisca. One evening the buxom tobacconist is about to close up shop when Titta tries to cadge a cigarette. She ignores him but he catches her interest by boasting that he can lift her. Daring him to try, she’s aroused when he succeeds. Setting her back down, he goes to sit breathlessly in a corner as she draws the shop's iron shutter and exposes a breast, overwhelming Titta by her sheer size. The teenager’s awkward efforts end with him being suffocated by the very objects of his desire. Losing all interest, she sends him away after giving him the cigarette for free.
On the cusp of winter, Titta falls sick and is tended by his mother. "This will go down as the Year of the Big Snow!" announces the lawyer peering out from behind a snow bank. As Gradisca makes her way to church in the town square, Titta follows in hot pursuit and is almost run over by the motorcyclist bombing through a labyrinth of snow. On a visit to comfort his ailing mother in hospital, she tells him that it’s time he matured. A friendly snow fight breaks out between Lallo, Gradisca, and the schoolboys but is quickly interrupted by a piercing bird call. They watch mesmerized as a peacock, on the rim of a frozen fountain, shows off his magnificent tail.
Titta wakes to find the house in mourning: Miranda has died. Locking himself in his mother’s bedroom, he breaks down and cries. After the funeral he walks out to the quay just as the puffballs return drifting on the wind. In a deserted field with half the village present, Gradisca celebrates her marriage to a balding pot-bellied officer. A man raises his glass and exclaims, "She’s found her Gary Cooper!" Someone asks, "Where's Titta?" "Titta’s gone away!" cries Ovo, as Gradisca drives off with her carabiniere to the tune of the blind accordion player.

Tags: cult, flashback, psychedelic, humor, satire, prank

Review:
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.
About 10 Fellini-films later I read that this won the academy-award for best foreign picture, which I never expected, but think is quite rightly.
Federico Fellini's "Amarcord" is perhaps the flamboyant directors most entertaining and autobiographical film.
"Amarcord" is filled with memorable and eccentric characters including a blind accordianist; a foul-mouthed midget nun; a buxom tobacco store owner with a penchant for young men; a lascivious and gaseous grandfather; Volpina the town nymph; Theo the sexually-repressed, mad uncle; and an ever present dim-witted street vendor.
After repeat viewing, I can understand why many viewers may not like Fellini, especially his so called "later films" "Amarcord" may seem too crowded, too loud, too vulgar, too bawdy, and too self-indulgent.
But so is life  loud but tender, vulgar but touching, self-indulgent but full of humor, love and compassion to the film's eccentric characters.
It's been said a lot about memorable scenes and images in "Amarcord": yes, the famous peacock that spreads its plumage on the snow, a magnificent ocean liner that is been greeted by the townspeople, a local tobacconist  a woman of such size and proportions that it could be simply dangerous for the teenage boys to try and make their dreams about her come true.
I love "Amarcord"  always have  perhaps, Fellini played all the right notes for me or more likely, Nino Rota wrote his best musical score for the film which could be the best score ever.
And Magali Noël as object of every man's in Rimini desire  Gradisca ("Help Yourself").Wonderful film  by the power of his magic, by the light of his memory, the great master saved the town where he was young and happy.
His films following that seemed utterly pretentious, as if the director had lost his touch and was trying desperately to figure out what people had liked so much about his films (the exemplary masterpieces being La Strada, Nights of Cabiria, La Dolce Vita, and 8 1/2).
Amarcord, like those films, is quite flamboyant - the colors are orgasmic, as they were in those three bad films, the sex is exaggerated (sort of as if these films all took place in that fantasy world where Guido from 8 1/2 had his harem), and the characters are sort of typical or stereotypical.
In all his best films, Federico Fellini absolutely loves his characters.
"Amarcord" (which means "I remember" in the Italian dialect of Emilia-Romagna, the region in which Fellini was born and where the film is set) is one of the most dazzling, personal films you'll ever see.
In the corners of the mind there are memories....bitter, sweet, scary, embarrassing, wonderful....and they topple out unexpectedly and for little reason at any moment.Such is Fellini's treatment of this film.
I really wanted to like this movie; I am a great Italophile and thoroughly enjoyed Fellini's "Satyricon," but "Amarcord" was a major disappointment.
I had to force myself to watch "Amarcord" to the bitter end and will definitely wait a while before taking out my next Fellini movie..
Not just one person, but a whole group of people living in a small coastal town in Italy 1930s.It may not be his most dazzling or mesmerizing film, but Amarcord is Fellini's most personal journey.
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..
Federico Fellini's 'Amarcord' is a chaotic, grotesque yet sentimental portrayal of an Italian childhood maybe not so different from the director's own.
A particularly interesting scene has them burning "the witch", and there's a little bit of a mishap (or maybe it wasn't a mishap).Anyway, "Amarcord" is another great movie from the man who may have been Italy's greatest director in history.
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.
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.
Fellini gives us a series of memories, fantasies, and dreams in the vignettes which make up his semi-autobiographical film 'Amarcord' ('I Remember').
It was not any influence of adults; the films were filled with amazing characters, each having an entire life of their own/ like they had waited & waited & waited for FELLINI to bring the cameras & just film us- I noticed that the crazy guy in the tree screaming" I want a woman!" Was repeated by Merchant/ Ivory in "ROOM WITH A VIEW"- don't know the significance- we never did it growing up- this is a great film- sit back & just enjoy.
Translated as 'I Remember', the great Italian director Federico Fellini's Amarcord is a series a comedic vignettes that look back at his childhood in a 1930's coastal town.
Apart from the film's brief focus on the rise of fascism, this is Fellini at his most satirically light, with his usual mocking of the bourgeoisie making way for some amusingly childish humour and some beautifully photographed scenes.True to Fellini's style, Amarcord is occasionally outrageous and always flamboyant.
For me, this is not Fellini's finest moment - that would lie with 8 1/2 (1963), arguably one of the finest films ever made - but this is still one of the most accurate depictions of memory and beautiful ode's to nostalgia I've seen.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com.
Reassembling through a succession of little vignettes his youth memories in a small town named Borga, Fellini paints the flamboyant portrait of colorful and eccentric characters, so different yet so united that the town feels like a character.
It's sad to see Gradisca hailing the Duce, unaware of the chaos he'll bring Italy to, and even sadder to see Aurelio, Titta's father, a brave communist working-man being harassed by the fascist police.Titta's family is another remarkable example of Fellini's capability to create characters that rapidly grow in our hearts, delirious and poignant in the same time, like so many clowns of life's circus act.
And still, it's a Fellini's film with its share of music, the nostalgia inducing tone of Nino Rota, parades and processions.And like many coming-of-age stories, the film follows a clear cycle, one year, starting with the arrival of puffballs floating in the air, announcing the spring.
Sex has been so trivialized that even the scene where Titta literally suffocates in the tobacconist's breast is more innocent than any clip from today's television.Indeed, "Amarcord" is the eulogy of a lost innocence, it ends with these Felliniesque parties where Gradisca leaves the town, after having found the love of her life, but somewhat, as the beaches gets empty, I was sad to see these people I shared this two-hour slice of lives leaving the screen.
Well, I liked looking into the old Italy of Fellini's childhood and observing all the interesting and quirky characters--I am a sucker for these elements.
perhaps the best coming-of-age film ever, Amarcord gets a standing ovation at precisely the 100:00 minute mark (check it yourself) as every young mans dream comes true, in this case, 100 times over.
A peacock in the middle of a snowstorm seems to hit the upper limit of fantasy (or memory), so Fellini swiftly takes the film to an end with the sequence of Gradisca's marriage to a carabinieri, an end so "soft" that looks like the dissolution of a dream, as characters and landscape gently fade out.
It is the kind of movie that is a gift for the viewer.Interestingly I haven't liked any other of Fellini's films to this extent.
What struck me, however, was that after this film's success, other well known directors made movies (Francois Truffaut's "Small Change" and John Boorman's "Hope & Glory," for example) that seemed to be following Fellini's either reminiscence theme and/or its focus on childhood.
I guess knowing that Fellini did it first really solidified the worth and value in my mind of "Amarcord." I believe that anyone who likes movies should see this film as it has much of what comprises a memorable cinematic experience..
A nostalgic look at a year in the life of a small Italian coastal town as told by the master at the height of his powers.It is a work of art providing a feast for the senses as only Fellini can.
He gave his audience images that would not leave their mind:  a snowball fight in the middle of a town suddenly interrupted by falling peacock feathers in a snowstorm, a man being tied to the rope and thrown up into the air like a kite, a young boy walking through a foggy forest and silently watching an escaped bull walk past, an adolescent sucking on the enormous breasts of a voluptuous woman, an entire town going out to sea in canoes to meet an enormous boat, a midget nun climbing a tree to retrieve a mad uncle,   the image of a dirty Saraghina sitting in a dirty green dress on the beach looking back at a young boy and smiling, two teenagers getting married with the blessing of a giant Mussolini, and the entire town burning their furniture.
Other reviewers here have said enough about AMARCORD, a film with wonderful and nostalgic atmosphear of life in a small town.
The greatness of Fellini's film is in its capability of mixing masterfully comic and grotesque moments with some scenes plenty of sadness.But "Amarcord"is not,as someone wrongly said,the narration of director's childhood,therefore a poetic and ironic vision of pre-WWII Italy seen with the eyes of an adolescent,whom everyone of us can identify in.
Fellini's nostalgia trip to Italy in the 1930s.This film has something for everybody.I think that everybody can recognize them self in some scenes.The film is a comedy and it´s VERY funny but it´s also a fantastic beautiful film and a bit sad.The cinematography is masterful,the music is excellent by Nino Rota.The film has wonderful characters.A warm and fantastic film to watch over and over again.5/5.
The film overflows with images both vulgar and dreamlike, colorful small characters, moments both hilarious and sad, all seamlessly interwoven forming the background of a year in a small town in 1930's Italy.
I have a faint memory of starting to see one of his other films and not lasting fifteen minutes, but I read Amarcord was his best work and rented it last night.The vignettes were somewhat amusing at first.
"Art House" cinema).This 1973 film's erratically disjointed sequences were so hastily slapped together (thanks to Fellini's obvious directorial incompetence) that they inevitably defied any real logical coherency at all.To say that I was completely floored with disbelief to find out that "Amarcord" had actually won an "Oscar" for "Best Foreign Film" of that year would truly be an understatement like no other..
Amarcord is an episodic coming of age film from Federico Fellini.
Depicting what happens in an Italian little village in the middle 30's, Federico Fellini's AMARCORD is, at the same time, a sweet remembrance and a sarcastic and humorous satire.
Of course the entire plot circles around TITTA (Bruno Zanin), but characters like MIRANDA or AURELIO, his parents, or even GRADISCA, his muse, are very important as well.Here Fellini does a film which is pure, intense, sarcastic, at parts grotesque, but essentially humorous and real!
Amarcord, Italian for "I Remember," is a colorful and artistic film from famed Italian director Federico Fellini.
We grow to love the characters in the film and we watch their larger-than-life stories unfold before our eyes in a beautiful and enticing way.
This film makes its own rules and paints itself up as an incredibly spirited tale of joy, love, and even bittersweet remorse for a town that only could have existed the way it did in the time period it did.It isn't difficult to see the personal level of this film that Fellini includes.
Amarcord isn't self indulgent and it doesn't lose track of its heart and soul which makes it such a pleasurable experience.Fellini takes some liberties with the narrative style of this film as it is told in a very free-form way.
Amarcord (1973) is Fellini's great synthesisa synthesis on multiple levels, an ensemble of synthesis, the masterpiecethere are many things that he wants to communicate herethis film is like a fruit, the fruit of a lifetime experience and thought and dreamingthe opportunity itself.
There is no plot, only seasons and memories.At once sentimental and unrealistic, Amarcord has a dream-like quality and you will in some ways remember your childhood, classroom pranks and different experiences when you watch this..
Although I have not seen everything Fellini has done, this film jumps out for me as his best work.
And unlike a couple of Fellini's other films it really isn't as confusing as I first though; his works at times are like those poems read one year and then taken again years later work on another level.
Amarcord (1973) *** (out of 4) Oscar-winner for Best Foreign Film, this Fellini comedy is considered by many to be a masterpiece but I'm afraid I wasn't that impressed by it.
I've never really warmed to the films of Federico Fellini, but I absolutely loved "Amarcord."Fellini's trip down memory lane is a nostalgic, episodic film about growing up in a small Italian village during the Fascist days of WWII.
Having watched and loved La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2 and La Strada previous to Amarcord, I was understandably expecting good things for this film.
The acting is excellent, Magali Noel is the standout lightening up the screen with her allure and acting talent.Overall, Amarcord is a wonderful film, while it wasn't my first Fellini movie, I'd say this is a good enough introduction to the work of a master director.
Undoubtedly Fellini's most accessible work (to modern audiences, that is), "Amarcord" ranks right there with "Giulietta degli Spiriti" as the director's best in my view - a funny, sad, dreamlike and altogether beautiful film that may well be autobiographical.
Here, as in almost every other film by the director, the story is about peoples' lives and their own personal conflicts, as seen through the eyes of a teenage boy in a Italian village during the World War II.
not having seen any movie by Italian director Federico Fellini before,i had no idea what to expect.thankfully,i had my experience from viewing this film was positive even pleasant.it takes place in the mid 1930's in a small Italian Seaside village,and offers a slice of life of the people who populate the village.there are many very humorous moments throughout, some subtle and some quite over the top.it also has its touching moments,as well.it also makes fun of Fascism(the political system of the time)in a none too subtle way.overall,the film is quite cheeky.i found it quite entertaining and would recommend it for foreign film buffs.for me,Armacord is an 8/10.
Even when moments are presented in a tame or natural way, they're always followed up by a moment of movie magic you wouldn't have expected.Amarcord isn't one of my favorite films, but it definitely ranks very high on the list.
Amarcord is one of Fellini's masterpieces of his young days growing up in a coastal Italian town in the 1930's (under the watchful eye of 'Il Duce' & the rest of that sub element).
Amarcord is a fictionalization of Fellini's life as a youth growing up in Fascist Italy.
Amacord is such a melancholic film, it made me feel sorry for Fellini, for the things he had to endure during those early years of his life.