Amarcord - Criterion Collection

Starring:Pupella Maggio, Armando Brancia, Magali NoÃ«l, Ciccio Ingrassia, Nando Orfei, Luigi Rossi, Bruno Zanin, Gianfilippo Carcano, Josiane Tanzilli, Maria Antonietta Beluzzi, Giuseppe Ianigro, Ferruccio Brembilla, Antonino Faa Di Bruno, Mauro Misul, Ferdinando Villella, Antonio Spaccatini, Aristide Caporale, Gennaro Ombra, Domenico Pertica, Marcello Di Falco
Director: Federico Fellini
Studio: Criterion
Product Type: DVD

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From moment to moment and shot by shot, Amarcord delivers more sheer pleasure than any other Federico Fellini movie. That's not to say it's his greatest film, or that anything in it rivals the emotional, lyrical, or metaphysical wallop of the finest passages in Nights of Cabiria, 8 1/2, La Strada, or even La Dolce Vita, the big early-'60s crossover hit that made the director king of the international film world. But Amarcord was the last clear triumph of Fellini's career, his prodigious gifts for phantasmagoria, amazing fluidity, and gregarious choreography all feeding an emotional core that caught at audiences' heartstrings and carried them away.

The title is supposed to mean "I remember," and the film is ostensibly a memory-dream-diary of life in the director's seaside hometown of Rimini during one year in the 1930s. But Fellini was an irrepressible showman who loved pulling the audience's collective chain, and Amarcord is no more straightforward as a recollection of his real adolescence than "amarcord" is a real word--Fellini made it up as a bit of pretend vernacular. So the strolling town historian who pops up occasionally to supply antiquarian footnotes directly to the camera more often than not gets pelted with snowballs from offscreen. Just as Nino Rota's (wonderful) music score recycles melodies from his scores for earlier Fellini masterworks, Fellini's movie is full of lyric ecstasies--spontaneous parades, comic ceremonies, eye-popping surrealist moments--that exist principally because that is what a Fellini movie is supposed to be like. There's no dominant story line, no individual character or player to be identified as the center of the film's swirling movement. Yet we do get to "know," and begin to cherish, literally dozens of goofy, eccentric, funny/sad creatures who have their distinct places in the continuum of Fellini's made-up town and reimagined Italy of a bygone era.

The era was, of course, that of Facsism. Fellini's take on Fascism here is anything but portentous; the giddy nationalism given voice occasionally by delirious crowds of townsfolk is no more sinister than the same crowd might have been in cheering on the local football team. In the movie's most famous set-piece, dozens of locals put out to sea in small boats to witness the passage of a fabulous ocean liner, the Rex, "the greatest construction of the regime." Waiting, they sleep--till suddenly the luminous (and entirely unreal) vision is towering above them, threatening to swamp them all. The moment is both ecstatic and terrifying. It's not the only one.

One last memory: In 1975 Amarcord received the Oscar for best foreign-language film of 1974. Since the film went into general U.S. release in '75, it was eligible for the Motion Picture Academy to turn around and nominate Fellini again, in '76, for best director and best original screenplay of 1975. He didn't win any further awards, but his repeat appearance in that year's Oscar derby occasioned an exquisite cultural moment: the young Steven Spielberg, realizing that he had not been cited for his direction of Jaws, gasping, "They gave my nomination to Fellini?!" --Richard T. Jameson

Customer Reviews:

Amarcord.......2007-07-03

This stunning Criterion edition features a newly restored high-definition transfer, along with a grab-bag of first rate extras, including "Fellini's Homecoming", a new documentary exploring the director's complex feelings about his origins. "Amarcord" itself remains unabashedly lewd but also deeply sentimental.Fellini's surreal film memoir won the Best Foreign Film Oscar, and it's easy to see why. With its circus-like feel and an engaging cast of cranks, fools, fanatics, and horny teens, "Amarcord" is a splendid homage to the director's hometown and misspent youth in pre-WWII Italy. But there's also a dark undercurrent, as we sense the Fascist menace slowly impinging on the lives of Titta's relatives. Set to Nino Rota's winsome score, "Amarcord" is a marvelous melange of indelible anecdotes by one of the world's great directors.

Perfect movie - what's with the liner notes?.......2007-06-09

Amarcord is one of my all-time favorite movies and this print is even more of a feast for the senses than it was before, due to the latest color remastering technology. The written notes include a short piece by Fellini himself. They also include some obligatory commentary by a Fellini "expert," which is unbelievably poorly written. It reads like a bad college essay, full of words like "mutability" that don't actually mean anything. The author ends by comparing Fellini's theme of ephemerality and irony to "a pheasant in the snow," alluding to a scene in the film. The trouble is, it's a peacock! Has he even WATCHED the movie? -AR

Being Oneself:Always an Act of Creation in Amarcord.......2007-05-06

The theme of this story is the compassion that allows close-knit, small-town Italians in the 1930's to lead a meaningful existence in the context of Fascist oppression and economic hardship.
This story is culturally valuable because it shows the beauty of meaningfully existing, unchanged, amid destructive and oppressive forces. When a peacock lands in the snow with its beautiful, vibrant blue and green feathers, it exemplifies beauty, simply existing, within harsh conditions. The point of the story is not that the characters of this small Italian town make any world-altering advances, but rather that they maintain what they already have and admire--their sense of community and individual compassion--despite oppressive odds. Fellini gives his audience mischievous adolescents, oblivious teachers, a "crazy" uncle, a humorous grandfather, an idealistic and extremely feminine beauty, a generous but sickly mother and her easily-angered husband, dissatisfied workers, a story-telling lawyer, a prince, and a lying snack vendor. And none of these characters is ever treated inhumanely, or as being of any less value than any other. The uncle has an episode in which he climbs a tree and throws rocks at people who try to get him down, all the while yelling, "I want a woman!" Hours pass and the doctor who eventually comes to get him down remarks, "He has normal days, and he has not normal days...Just like us." Through the interaction of these characters, Fellini allows his audiences to encounter a town, the families, a community, and the simple life that exists within it. This film is powerful because it is saying that one does not have to defeat oppression to be worthy of being a model, seen and honored. You have only to live, to be yourself--which means to create--to be something powerful and moving.

WAY overrated.......2007-03-20

Too many fart jokes, too many urination references and just an overall bore. I love all the other Fellinni movies I have seen, but this one just was not up to his others at all. Skip this if you can...

Cinema as Art.......2007-02-21

Though it has a much lighter feel than 8 1/2, La Strada, or Nights of Cabiria, Amarcord is no less a masterpiece. Amarcord is one man's fantastical reinvention of his childhood memories. By turns funny and touching, outrageous and sobering. Amacord manages to be surreal and absurd yet capture the sense of real people and their thoughts & feelings than many of Fellini's more realistic movies. A teenage boy with the usual raging hormornes lives with his loving and typically dysfunctional family. Fascism reigns & war is imminent but these people would rather carry on at the local moviehouse. A wonderful movie about a normal boy living with normal people in a normal town in extraordinary times.

Average customer rating:

Amarcord
Perfect movie - what's with the liner notes?
Being Oneself:Always an Act of Creation in Amarcord
WAY overrated
Cinema as Art

Amarcord - Criterion Collection
Starring: Pupella Maggio , Armando Brancia , Magali Noël , Ciccio Ingrassia , and Nando Orfei
Director: Federico Fellini
Manufacturer: Criterion
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: 0780020693
Release Date: 1998-04-01

Amazon.com essential video

Federico Fellini's 1974 fantasy-memoir of life in his hometown during the Fascist era is basically the full palette of experience--sex, families, politics--with his surreal twist. As a general picture of the 1930s community carrying on rituals but with an element of government harshness in the air, the film is quite memorable (especially in scenes set around the town square). Less satisfying is Fellini's tighter focus on certain, forgettable individuals. The ironic title translates into, "I remember," but here memory is more a matter of loving vision than actuality. --Tom Keogh

Description

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.

Customer Reviews:

Amarcord.......2007-07-03

Perfect movie - what's with the liner notes?.......2007-06-09

Being Oneself:Always an Act of Creation in Amarcord.......2007-05-06

WAY overrated.......2007-03-20

Cinema as Art.......2007-02-21

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