Amarcord

Every summer I look forward to going to see films at the Paramount. I ended this summer at the Paramount with Federico Fellini's semi-autobiographical film, Amarcord, a masterpiece that manages both poignancy and bawdiness in a nostalgic and often dreamlike remembrance of his youth in a small seaside town in Fascist-era Italy. The film is populated with a menagerie of larger-than-life characters, characters that, despite the satirical elements in the film, Fellini clearly has a tremendous fondness. There is no central character; Fellini just parades them all before us. If there is a central character, it would have to be the town.

Set over the span of one year, the film is book-ended by the arrival of Spring. There are multiple narrators, some even addressing the camera directly, as Fellini guides the viewer through life in the town of his memory, laced with moments of the fantastical. Fellini's direction is masterful, the film flowing with rhythmic effortlessness of orchestrated chaos, a hypnotic dance to the wonderful Nino Rota music.

On the surface, the mood is mostly up tempo, the residents brimming with life and the film loaded with humor, from the lofty satirical to the lowly fart joke and everything in between. (Yes, there are many a fart joke to be had here.) There are also many moments of wistfulness that Fellini renders with the touch of a poet, such as the scene when the grandfather gets lost in the fog. And magical moments, as when a peacock descends through a curtain of falling snow to land on a frozen fountain in the town square.

Fellini once said: "My films from my past, recount memories that are completely invented." Here, Fellini invented a deliberately artificial universe, one that not only illustrates that memory is not reality, but also stresses that the hopes and dreams Mussolini's Fascist regime offered were illusory.

I know it's an oft repeated phrase, but they really don't make movies like this anymore.

Amarcord
Score: 94%