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Amarcord - Criterion Collection

Amarcord - Criterion Collection

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A truly perfect movie...
Review: I've always enjoyed Fellini's films, but have never been a big fan or follower. However, this is a lifetime achievement, in which all his wisdom, skills, humor, compassion, experience, love, humanity & artfulness come together. I have watched the digitally remastered Criterion version innumerable times and its beauty never fails to move me profoundly.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: ejem...
Review: im sorry, but i disagree a little with everyone out there. i mean, i recognize some merits in this film, the structure is splendid, its a film bout the town as a character rather than a person or gruop. but theres something about it i dont like. its really naive (too naive sometimes) and really pretty. Antonioni once said that every good story is about something "bad", sufferting or something like that. Amarcord is about people being happy for two hours. and when theyre not, everything is filmed in a happy manner. sorry, but i cant like this film (altough the scene of the family at lunch is superb)

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Fellini's Other Deeply Personal Extraordinary Film
Review: Like 8 1/2 before it, Amarcord marks an extremely personal film for Fellini. Like his relationship to Guido in 8 1/2, the character of Titta serves as an extension of Fellini on film. Whereas Guido served as an extension of Fellini's state of mind, Titta serves as an extension of Fellini's childhood memories.

Through the retelling of emotional stories that deal with Titta and his family, Amarcord (which translates into "I Remember") presents a cyclical collage of wondrous nostalgia for the Italy of Fellini's childhood. Starting in the spring and ending their one year later with the return of the yearly "puffballs", we are presented with and touched by the many experiences that Titta comes face to face with.

At the same time, the film is much more than a mere visual presentation of Fellini's own nostalgia, for it also questions the true validity of one's own memories. This questioning of memory by Fellini is made apparent in the manner in which single scenes can go from "reality" based to fantasy-like parody back to "reality" based in a manner of moments.

One of the more noteworthy examples of this technique is the scene in which El Duce visits the local town square. In the scene the serious yet joyous procession of El Duce eventually turns into a comedic/fantasy experience in which schoolchildren are shown happily carrying guns in the imagined wedding of two schoolchildren in front of a giant talking Mussolini head. Moments later the film cuts to nightfall, in which the local Fascists soldiers wreak havoc on the town and afterwards interrogate and beat Titta's father. Depending on Fellini's own presentation of the Italian Fascists, (and just as importantly, the view in Italy towards the Fascists at that time) very different interpretations can be read of them. In using such a juxtaposition, Fellini (in his echoing of Arnheim's formalist theory) is purposely trying to express the impossibility of remembering and re-presenting a true account of the past as a result of the individual nature of memory itself.

Another scene that blurs the real and the imagined is Titta's late-night encounter with a large busty Tobacconist (she is given no true name within the film) just as she has closed up her shop. The woman, who Titta has fantasized about at an earlier point in the film, playfully flirts with Titta, a flirtation that eventually ends in a moment of extreme foreplay between the two. But the inexperienced Titta is unable to please the tobacconist, and she soon forces him to stop. At this time she acts as if nothing has happened, she gives him his tobacco and shows him out the store. How much of this was real, and how much of this was imagined both within the film and with regard to Fellini's own experiences? As is the case with many of the other sequences in the film, the answer is left up to the viewer.

Amarcord is thus not so much about reconstructing mirror images of the past, but rather more about how we would like to, and thus do, remember the past through our own distorted points of view. Andrei Tarkovsky deals with very similar themes in his film Mirror, albeit in a manner that is much less entertaining than Amarcord, which was released shortly after Amarcord.

**** (10/10)

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Criterion English dub
Review: Love this movie, and do want to make one observation about this release.

If you don't know Italian, I would recommend viewing the English dub; I was very very impressed with it. And I don't take doublage lightly. For instance, I won't listen to the Criterion dub of Cabiria; I'd rather read the subtitles. I'm sort of curious if this is really the original Fellini soundstage English dub, or one put together later; I found the voice acting and use of idiom nuanced (a la Fellini), still fresh, and worthy of this movie.

Upshot; if you're not sure whether to get this movie because you don't know what you hate more, subtitles or dubbing, fear not.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: SOUP ! giggle giggle
Review: Lovely nostalgic film, absolutly classic for those with an honest sense of humor and a non-american concern for political correction. A film that manages to illustrate the ridiculous pettyness of life, simultaneously and successfully existing within a culture firmly set in its old ways - This is something that everyone is trying to achieve. Bread and Butter!!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Watch it and learn!
Review: On the surface, a very messy and vulgar film with no apparent narrative. Watch it more closely and you will see that Fellini is attempting to make a very good point about the oppressive years of fascism. Many think it is an autobiographical film, but Fellini himself denies this fact, stressing how the name Amarcord is the name of a local aperitif. The sexual repression of the young boys, the constantly foggy surroundings, Titta's suffocation by the buxom tobacconist lady - all trying to say something, don't you think? Please don't be put off at face-value, because much more lies under the surface. Enjoy.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Masterpiece
Review: One of Fellini's best, most winning films. Uncle Teo is Everyman.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I remember
Review: One of Fellini's greatest. Certainly his funniest. Warm, nostalgic, absurd, wonderful, the film observes a small Italian town during the German Occupation. It is humanistic to it's core, knowing and loving. In my top ten. This week, anyway.
Ha.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Autobiography of growing up in a madcap Facist Italy. Funny
Review: Quasi-autobiography of Fellini's youth in Pre-war Facist Italy. Great variety of characters, scenes and circumstances including family tragedies. Centered around his mid teen years. Obviously reality is exagerated, given it's Fellini's interpretation of his family and environment. Very funny. Get it Italian if you appreciate the sound of the language. Review based mainly on content and dialogue rather than bizzare visuals like some of his films. Good music also.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: a great Criterion Collection film. Fellini's youth revisted
Review: The film title means "I remember" This movie, filmed in Fellini's home town of Rimini is his depection of what he remembers of his own teenage years. In it we have a series of unrelated scenes which merge together to create a depiction of what life was like under Musollini's facist regime. It is a very interesting film with some humor in it. My favorite scene was when smeone had put a gramaphone (record player) in the bell tower of a local building and had "Internationale" playing on it! The police reaction is quite humorous. It is cool how the facists considered communism 'subversive'.

Fellini said that is was based loosely on his own teenage years.


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