Amarcord
Directed by: Federico Fellini 2 hours, 3 minutes 1973 Italy Color Blu-ray 1.85:1
Starring: Magali Noël, Bruno Zanin, Pupella Maggio, Josiane Tanzilli
Only Fellini could make fascism whimsical. Watching this for the first time I thought of the old Italian man in Catch-22 who explained how Italians would survive forever because they knew when to wave the proper flags and how to flatter that year’s fashionable ideologues. The title is an invented word, the phrase “mi recordo” (I remember) rendered in Fellini’s native Romagnolo dialect. The story follows Titta, a young boy based on one of Fellini’s childhood friends, as he makes his way between stories in the town of ‘Borgo’, based on Fellini’s native Rimini. Fellini works in caricatures, and the Fascists in power are portrayed as grand and ridiculous stooges, as comical as the town idiot or the myopic, bottleglassed priest. Titta has his adventures and the Blackshirts have their parades but Amarcord is above all the story of the town and the people in it.