Fellini’s Amarcord is a film that truly lives up to its title. Drawn entirely from Fellini’s memories and imagination, it could only have been made by a director who knows the ways of small Italian villages first-hand. The atmosphere jumps out at you from the onset hitting all of your senses with everything from the Mediterranean heat to the smell of la cucina.
Amarcord is brimming with life and at one point we have to ask, just how much of this does Fellini miss? In a quasi-documentary mode of observation, Fellini hints at why he developed a love-hate relationship with the town of Rimini. It’s a lively town, full of laughter and festivities and few can deny the unity of the people. But during an early scene in which a huge bonfire is built to welcome the spring (signaled by the falling of puff balls from the sky), the depiction does not hide that this is a village of pranks that jump out of hand, reckless gags, and dangerous rowdiness.
Typical of Fellini, the film takes us in and a narrator personalizes the experience by interacting with the audience. In Mr. Lawyer (Luigi Rossi), we have a guide who may very well be Fellini himself. His films become the most absorbing lectures and they actually educate us while providing us with infinite pleasure. Much of Amarcord is pure farce. Particularly amusing are the scenes in the town school, where the students do just about everything except remember their Greek lessons.
These vignettes add up to an overview of the town that made such an impression on the young Fellini. They have a cumulative strength in that they paint a more definitive picture of the director’s youth than any biographer could. Each character we meet on this journey gives us words of wisdom that, for better or worse, shaped Fellini. Perhaps drawing from their rich ancient heritage, Italians have always had a passion for sharing bits of philosophy, talks on health, life, and mental well-being.
In one of the film’s best scenes, the elders talk over each other at the dinner table set at the house of Titta (Bruno Zanin), Fellini’s avatar. Just listening to them talk is a marvel of dialogue. Of course, Fellini never allows his conversations to run dry. The words sprout like candy from a piñata with vigor and gusto. Suddenly, the conversation erupts into an angry chase between Titta and his father (Armando Brancia) that goes out into the courtyard and turns the family upside down. Sometimes, the actions of the Biondi family get so bizarre that the film takes on an almost cartoon-like surrealism.
There is a variety of moods and tones that Fellini employs to tell the stories he remembers (or imagined). The thread? Well, there is the bike riding narrator and the upper-class middle-age ladies who know full well that they catch the eye of every man in town.
For the most part, Amarcord is a bouncy jolly film in which we never know what to expect next, much like vaudeville. But it also casts a serious indictment at the hypocrisy of the town. The women purposely draw the attention of lustful men, the tobacconist takes advantage of a sexually inexperienced young man, a hooker flirts with workers at a construction site, and yet the church has a firm handle on the town. Confession is a mandatory ritual and in its strictest tradition (no eating before confession). And yet, after confession the boys go off to masturbate in the secrecy of a car. Such unquestioning acceptance of the church teaching makes the citizens susceptible to and the arrival of fascism marks a new era.
But this is a spoof of fascism rather than a tragic telling of its effect. The talking Mussolini head is very funny as is the film’s jab at the absurdity of the government and the small percentage of Italians who supported it. We do get a sense of the fear cast on the villagers during a serio-comic questioning of Mr. Biondi by government officials who suspect him to be an anarchist. It’s not so much humorous as absurd. But he is let free and he returns home to Chaplinesque gags.
Besides Chaplin, Fellini shares commonalities with Mel Brooks as is evident in a scene depicting the arrival of a Middle Eastern prince and his seductive concubines. The truth is, Amarcord is a joke of a memoir and that is meant as praise. Like Woody Allen, his American admirer and imitator, Fellini depicts his own reality as comedy. Arguably, the funniest scene in the film involves Titta’s uncle Teo (Ciccio Ingrassia) predicament when he gets stuck atop a tree during a family excursion in the country.
Amidst the laughs, however, Fellini makes room not so much for intensity (the fascist movement is dropped half-way through), but for tenderness and family connections. There are some beautiful moments, as when the family goes out to sea on a boat holiday and finds time to gaze and wonder about the stars or, when Titta’s mother (Pupella Maggio) reminisces about how she met her husband. There is also an unusual (though decidedly Fellinian) moment when a peacock flies down during a snowball fight. It is a moment of biblical allusion, in which a being from another world (in this case, the tropics) appears in the middle of the children’s game, causing them to stop and reflect. Perhaps, this moment should be taken as the centerpiece for the whole film. If only the town could stop and reflect on itself. On what it has and what it is losing. On its unity and on its hypocrisy. Amarcord is a heartfelt memoir, tribute, and plea to the town of Rimini told through Fellini’s most proficient language, laughter.