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Amarcord
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For the vocal ensemble, see ensemble amarcord.
Amarcord
Theatrical release poster
Directed by
Federico Fellini
Produced by
Franco Cristaldi
Written by
Federico Fellini
Tonino Guerra
Starring
Bruno Zanin
Magali' Noel
Pupella Maggio
Armando Brancia
Music by
Nino Rota
Carlo Savina
Cinematography
Giuseppe Rotunno
Editing by
Ruggero Mastroianni
Distributed by
New World Pictures
Release date(s)
December 18, 1973 (1973-12-18) (Italy)
September 19, 1974 (1974-09-19) (United States)
Running time
124 minutes
Country
Italy
France
Language
Italian
Box office
?2,989,500,000
Amarcord is a 1973 Italian comedy-drama film directed by Federico Fellini, a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age tale about Titta, an adolescent boy growing up among an eccentric cast of characters in the fictional town of Borgo (based on Fellini's hometown of Rimini) in 1930s Fascist Italy. The films title is Romagnol for "I remember".[1]
Titta's sentimental education is emblematic of Italy's "lapse of conscience".[2] Fellini skewers Mussolini's ludicrous posturings and those of a Catholic Church that "imprisoned Italians in a perpetual adolescence"[3] by mocking himself and his fellow villagers in comic scenes that underline their incapacity to adopt genuine moral responsibility or outgrow foolish sexual fantasies.
The film won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and was nominated for two Academy Awards: Best Director and Best Writing, Original Screenplay.
Contents
1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Reception
3.1 Awards
4 Home media
5 References
6 External links
[edit] Plot
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 winters 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 hairdressers, a Fascist has just had his head newly shaved when Fiorella arrives to accompany her sister Gradisca (Magali No?l), 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), Tittas father, a construction foreman of working-class background. Modest and reserved, Aurelio responds in frenzied anger to Tittas pranks while Miranda (Pupella Maggio), his wife, always comes to her sons defence. Mirandas brother, Lallo (Nando Orfei), lives with Tittas family, sponging off his brother-in-law. In tow are Tittas grandfather (Peppino Ianigro), a likeable old goat with an eye on the familys young maid, and a street vendor, Biscein (Gennaro Ombra), the towns 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. "Im 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 accordionists 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 titbits of the towns 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 Giottos perspective, the Fine Arts professor (Fides Stagni) dips a breakfast biscuit in milk. Expanding her voluptuous chest, the feral-faced math teacher (Dina Adorni) demonstrates an algebraic formula. Clicking tongue and palate to pronounce a syllable, the Italian professor (Mario Silvestri) is reduced to hysterics by Ovos 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 boys room.
"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 titled Bricks:
My grandfather made bricks
My father made bricks
I make bricks, too,
but wheres 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 neighbor'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 merchants 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.
Doubling as the town's parish priest, Don Balosa's main concerns 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 cant 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 math 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. Due 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 harbor while pimple-faced Biscein recounts the night he made love to twenty-eight women in the visiting sultans harem. The Grand Hotel also provides the backdrop to Lallos gang of mother-controlled layabouts who obsessively pursue middle-aged female tourists.
One summer afternoon, the family visits Uncle Teo (Ciccio Ingrassia), Aurelios 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 regimes 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, cap-sizing their boats in its wake. Tittas 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 weasel a cigarette. She ignores him but he catches her interest by boasting that he can lift her. Daring him to try, shes 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 teenagers 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 its 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, struts his magnificent tail.
Titta wakes to find the house in mourning: Miranda has died. Locking himself in his mothers 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, "Shes found her Gary Cooper!" Someone asks, "Where's Titta?" "Tittas gone away!" cries Ovo, as Gradisca drives off with her carabiniere to the tune of the blind accordion player.
[edit] Cast
Bruno Zanin as Titta
Magali' Noel as Gradisca, hairdresser
Pupella Maggio as Miranda Biondi, Titta's mother
Armando Brancia as Aurelio Biondi, Titta's father
Giuseppe Ianigro as Titta's grandfather
Nando Orfei as Lallo or "Il Pataca", Titta's uncle
Ciccio Ingrassia as Teo, Titta's uncle
Stefano Proietti as Oliva, Titta's brother
Donatella Gambini as Aldina Cordini
Gianfranco Marrocco as Son of count
Ferdinando De Felice as Cicco
Bruno Lenzi as Gigliozzi
Bruno Scagnetti as Ovo
Alvaro Vitali as Naso
Francesco Vona as Candela
Maria Antonietta Beluzzi as the tobacconist
[edit] Reception
Europe
Released in Italy on December 18, 1973, Amarcord was an "unmitigated success".[4] Critic Giovanni Grazzini, reviewing for the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, described Fellini as "an artist at his peak" and the film as the work of a mature, more refined director whose autobiographical content shows greater insight into historical fact and the reality of a generation. Almost all of Amarcord is a macabre dance against a cheerful background".[5]
The film was screened at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival, but wasn't entered into the main competition.[6]
Russell Davies, British film critic and later a BBC radio host, compared the film to the work of Thornton Wilder and Dylan Thomas: "The pattern is cyclic... A year in the life of a coastal village, with due emphasis on the seasons, and the births, marriages and deaths. It is an Our Town or Under Milk Wood of the Adriatic seaboard, concocted and displayed in the Roman film studios with the latter-day Fellinis distaste for real stone and wind and sky. The people, however, are real, and the many non-actors among them come in all the shapes and sizes one cares to imagine without plunging too deep into Tod Browning freak territory."[7]
Rapidly picked up for international distribution after winning an Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1975, the film was destined to be Fellini's "last major commercial success".[8]
United States
When Amarcord opened in New York, critic Vincent Canby lauded it as possibly "Fellini's most marvelous film... It's an extravagantly funny, sometimes dreamlike evocation of a year in the life of a small Italian coastal town in the nineteen-thirties, not as it literally was, perhaps, but as it is recalled by a director with a superstar's access to the resources of the Italian film industry and a piper's command over our imaginations. When Mr. Fellini is working in peak condition, as he is in Amarcord (the vernacular for "I remember" in Romagna), he somehow brings out the best in us. We become more humane, less stuffy, more appreciative of the profound importance of attitudes that in other circumstances would seem merely eccentric if not lunatic."[9]
In his review, critic Roger Ebert discussed Fellini's value as a director: "It's also absolutely breathtaking filmmaking. Fellini has ranked for a long time among the five or six greatest directors in the world, and of them all, he's the natural. Ingmar Bergman achieves his greatness through thought and soul-searching, Alfred Hitchcock built his films with meticulous craftsmanship, and Luis Bu?uel used his fetishes and fantasies to construct barbed jokes about humanity. But Fellini... well, moviemaking for him seems almost effortless, like breathing, and he can orchestrate the most complicated scenes with purity and ease. He's the Willie Mays of movies."[10] Jay Cocks of Time Magazine considered it "some of the finest work Fellini has ever done - which also means it stands with the best that anyone in film has ever achieved."[11]
[edit] Awards
Wins
National Board of Review: NBR Award, Best Foreign Language Film, France/Italy; 1974.
New York Film Critics Circle Awards: NYFCC Award, Best Director, Federico Fellini; Best Film; 1974.
David di Donatello Awards: David, Best Director, Federico Fellini; Best Film, 1974.
Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists: Silver Ribbon, Best Director, Federico Fellini; Best New Actor, Gianfilippo Carcano; Best Story, Tonino Guerra; Federico Fellini; 1974.
Academy Awards: Oscar, Best Foreign Language Film, Italy; 1975.
Bodil Awards, Copenhagen, Denmark: Bodil, Best European Film, Federico Fellini (director); 1975.
French Syndicate of Cinema Critics: Critics Award, Best Foreign Film, Federico Fellini; Italy; 1975.
Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards: KCFCC Award, Best Foreign Film, Italy; 1975.
Kinema Junpo Awards: Kinema Junpo Award, Best Foreign Language Film Director, Federico Fellini; 1975.
Cinema Writers Circle Awards, Spain: CEC Award, Best Foreign Film, Italy; 1976.
[edit] Home media
The film has the distinction of being the first released in a consumer video format in 1984 with the letterbox aspect ratio fully intact. The format was the RCA CED Selectavision Videodisc system.[citation needed]
Amarcord was released on DVD twice by the Criterion Collection, first in 1998, then re-released in 2006 with an anamorphic widescreen transfer and additional supplements. Criterion re-issued the 2006 release on Blu-ray in 2011.
[edit] References
^ Pettigrew, 76. Fellini elaborated further by suggesting that the Italian words, 'amare' (to love), 'cuore' (heart), 'ricordare' (to remember), and 'amaro' (bitter) were contracted into the Romagnolo neologism, 'amarcord' (a m' arcord, in Italian io mi ricordo).
^ Peter Bondanella, Amarcord: The Fascism Within Us in Federico Fellini: Essays in Criticism, pp. 20-21.
^ Bondanella, 20. For other discussions of Fellini and fascism, see Bondanella's The Cinema of Federico Fellini and I'm a Born Liar: A Fellini Lexicon.
^ Kezich, Tullio (2006). Federico Fellini. Faber and Faber: New York, p. 314.
^ Fava, Claudio G. and Vigano, Aldo, The Films of Federico Fellini, Citadel Press: New York, 1990, p.157. Grazzinis review was first published in Corriere della sera, December 19, 1973.
^ "Festival de Cannes: Amarcord". festival-cannes.com. http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/2214/year/1974.html. Retrieved 2009-04-27.
^ Fava, Claudio G. and Vigano, Aldo, The Films of Federico Fellini, p.158. Davies review first published in The London Observer, September 29, 1974.
^ Bondanella, Peter. The Cinema of Federico Fellini, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 265.
^ Canby, Vincent. The New York Times, film review, "Funny, Marvelous Fellini Amarcord, September 20, 1974. Last accessed: February 22. 2008.
^ Ebert, Roger. Chicago Sun-Times, film review, September 19, 1974. Last accessed: February 22, 2008.
^ Alpert, 248
Bibliography
Alpert, Hollis (1988). Fellini: A Life. New York: Paragon House. ISBN 1-55778-000-5
Fava, Claudio and Aldo Vigano (1990). The Films of Federico Fellini. New York: Citadel. ISBN 0-8065-0928-7
Kezich, Tullio (2006). Fellini: His Life and Work. New York: Faber and Faber. ISBN 978-0-571-21168-5
Pettigrew, Damian (2003). I'm a Born Liar: A Fellini Lexicon, New York: Abrams.
Further reading
(Italian) Angelucci, Gianfranco and Liliana Betti (ed.) (1974). Il film 'Amarcord' di Federico Fellini. Bologna: Cappelli editore.
Bondanella, Peter (1976). "'Amarcord': The Impure Art of Federico Fellini." in: Western Humanities Review, Volume 30, no. 2.
Bonnigal, Dorothe (2002). "Fellini's 'Amarcord': Variations on the Libidinal Limbo of Adolescence." in: Burke and Waller (ed.), Federico Fellini: Contemporary Perspectives, p. 137-154.
Burke, Frank and Marguerite R. Waller (ed.) (2002). Federico Fellini : Contemporary Perspectives. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0-8020-0696-5
Gaudenzi, Cosetta (2002). "Memory, Dialect, Politics: Linguistic Strategies in Fellini's 'Amarcord'." in: Burke and Waller (ed.): Federico Fellini: Contemporary Perspectives, p. 155-168.
Gianetti, Louis (1976). "'Amarcord': Fellini & Politics." in: Cineaste, Volume XIX/1, n. 92, 1976, p. 36-43.
Ledeen, Michael A. (1974). "'Amarcord'." in: Society, Volume 12, n 2, p. 100-102.
(Italian) Maccari, Cesare (1974). Caro Fellini, 'Amarcord', versi liberi e altre cronache. Parma: CEM Editrice.
Marcus, Millicent J. (1977). "Fellini's 'Amarcord': Film as Memory." in: Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Volume 2, n 4, p. 418-425.
(Italian) Minore, Renato (ed.) (1994). 'Amarcord' Fellini. Introduction by Manuel Vsquez Montalbn, Rome: ed. Cosmopoli.
(Italian) Pauletto, Franco, and Marcella Delitala (2008). 'Amarcord'. Federico Fellini. Perugia: Guerra Edizioni, lingua italiana per stranieri, Collana: Quaderni di cinema italiano per stranieri, p. 32. ISBN 8855700979, ISBN 9788855700979
Price, Theodore (1977). Fellini's Penance : the Meaning of 'Amarcord'. Old Bridge, N.J. : Boethius Press.
Sciannameo, Franco (2005). Nino Rota, Federico Fellini, and the Making of an Italian Cinematic Folk Opera, 'Amarcord'. Lewiston (NY): Edwin Mellen Press. ISBN 0-7734-6099-3, ISBN 798-0-7734-6099-7
[edit] External links
Amarcord at the Internet Movie Database
Amarcord at AllRovi
Amarcord at Box Office Mojo
Amarcord at Rotten Tomatoes
Amarcord film trailer at You Tube (Janus Films Channel)
Amarcord soundtrack by Nino Rota at You Tube
Amarcord images at EyeGate
v  d  eAcademy Award for Foreign Language Film Winners (1961C1980)
1961: Through a Glass Darkly ? Ingmar Bergman ? 1962: Sundays and Cybele ? Serge Bourguignon ? 1963: 8? ? Federico Fellini ? 1964: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow ? Vittorio De Sica ? 1965: The Shop on Main Street ? Jn Kadr & Elmar Klos ? 1966: A Man and a Woman ? Claude Lelouch ? 1967: Closely Watched Trains ? Ji? Menzel ? 1968: War and Peace ? Sergei Bondarchuk ? 1969: Z ? Costa-Gavras ? 1970: Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion ? Elio Petri ? 1971: The Garden of the Finzi Continis ? Vittorio De Sica ? 1972: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie ? Luis Bu?uel ? 1973: Day for Night ? Fran?ois Truffaut ? 1974: Amarcord ? Federico Fellini ? 1975: Dersu Uzala ? Akira Kurosawa ? 1976: Black and White in Color ? Jean-Jacques Annaud ? 1977: Madame Rosa ? Mosh Mizrahi ? 1978: Get Out Your Handkerchiefs ? Bertrand Blier ? 1979: The Tin Drum ? Volker Schl?ndorff ? 1980: Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears ? Vladimir Menshov
Complete list  Submissions  (1947C1960)  (1961C1980)  (1981C2000)  (2001C2020)
v  d  eFilms directed by Federico Fellini
Variety Lights  The White Sheik  I Vitelloni  La Strada  Il bidone  Nights of Cabiria  La Dolce Vita  8?  Juliet of the Spirits  Histoires extraordinaires  Fellini: A Director's Notebook  Satyricon  I clowns  Roma  Amarcord  Casanova  Orchestra Rehearsal  City of Women  And the Ship Sails On  Ginger and Fred  Intervista  The Voice of the Moon
v  d  eCinema of Italy
Actors  Directors  Animation  Cinematographers  Composers  Editors  Producers  Screenwriters
Films A-Z  Films by year: 1910  1911  1912  1913  1914  1915  1916  1917  1918  1919  1920  1921  1922  1923  1924  1925  1926  1927  1928  1929  1930  1931  1932  1933  1934  1935  1936  1937  1938  1939  1940  1941  1942  1943  1944  1945  1946  1947  1948  1949  1950  1951  1952  1953  1954  1955  1956  1957  1958  1959  1960  1961  1962  1963  1964  1965  1966  1967  1968  1969  1970  1971  1972  1973  1974  1975  1976  1977  1978  1979  1980  1981  1982  1983  1984  1985  1986  1987  1988  1989  1990  1991  1992  1993  1994  1995  1996  1997  1998  1999  2000  2001  2002  2003  2004  2005  2006  2007  2008  2009  2010  2011
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