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everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The present: A town of horny retards. They are happy with their absurdity. Their happiness and absurdity go hand in hand. Among all the retards, Aurelio and his wife are the voices of rationality. Half of this rationality (the wife) dies at the end; their son (Titta) who is in love disappears after Grandisca (the jewel of the town) marries the prince. An asset goes to the rich? There is no change in sight in the future.It's a critique of a certain Italian community - perhaps the whole society. I don't need 2hrs and about 8 sequences to tell me about this 'dynamic'.

Translated as 'I Remember', the great Italian director Federico Fellini's Amarcord is a series a comedic vignettes that look back at his childhood in a 1930's coastal town. Apart from the intertwining inhabitants, there is nothing thematically or even tonally linking the stories together, much like memory itself. The film takes places over the course of a year, with nothing signifying the passage of time apart from the subtle changes in seasons. Apart from the film's brief focus on the rise of fascism, this is Fellini at his most satirically light, with his usual mocking of the bourgeoisie making way for some amusingly childish humour and some beautifully photographed scenes.True to Fellini's style, Amarcord is occasionally outrageous and always flamboyant. We see the majority of the film through the eyes of the closest thing there is to a protagonist, the young, rosy-cheeked Titta (Bruno Zanin), and therefore everything in the film feels exaggerated. The sexual aspects especially are often juvenile, but true to the experiences of a young, hormonal man, so when Titta shows off his strength by lifting the large, buxom tobacconist (Maria Antonietta Beluzzi) he so often fantasises about, he is rewarded by having a grope of her ridiculously large breasts in a scene that could have been called Carry on Fellini. There is also the local nymphomaniac Volpina (Josiane Tanzilli), who seems to hover around touching herself and growling hungrily at any man who glances in her direction. These are true Fellini grotesques.The comedy aside (and special mention must go to the hilarious segment in which Titta's crazy Uncle Teo (Ciccio Ingrassia) comes to stay and escapes into a tree), there are as many touching and profound moments that display Fellini's outstanding talent. The scene in which Titta must watch his mother's final moments on a hospital bed is brutal in its simplicity, with Titta's naivety failing to grasp the seriousness of the situation while his father Aurelio (Armando Brancia) lingers in tragic silence. There's also moments of beauty, namely the arrival of a peacock in the winter snow displaying it's covert feathers, or the sight of a giant ocean liner, seemingly meaningless moments that stuck with Fellini for decades. For me, this is not Fellini's finest moment - that would lie with 8 1/2 (1963), arguably one of the finest films ever made - but this is still one of the most accurate depictions of memory and beautiful ode's to nostalgia I've seen.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

I remember having seen Amacord in the late 1970s; and also that its last scene left a sad feeling in me, despite having had good fun watching the rest and more than a few laughs in some of the most outrageous scenes: the antics of teachers and students in the classroom, the hilarious shenanigans at the family table, the day out in the countryside, etc. If I had at the time to resume the whole movie in one word I would have said: Nostalgia. What perhaps gives a good hint of how the world has changed, or maybe me, is that after this present day viewing I would have said two different words: Sadness, Melancholy. Amacord is such a melancholic film, it made me feel sorry for Fellini, for the things he had to endure during those early years of his life. I didn't notice at the time how sad is to have to grow up in a political system that doesn't allow the smallest form of dissent and which, even worse, has managed to entirely wrap up the lives of everyone in society and made of them contented, brainless, drones. How sad to have had, in that crucially formative period of our life nothing but unfunny clowns as our role models: the patriarch who nobody takes seriously and who in utter frustration tries to commit suicide tearing apart his own jaws; a poor sap whose isolated act of rebellion backfires and ends up in a literal stinko. The priest more preoccupied with church flower arrangements than with the confession of his young faithful. The parasitic uncle who pays his brother in law for providing him with free room and board by denouncing him to the fascist police. The gramps who rather than to dispense wise, time tested, advice to his grandchildren prefer to spend his time grabbing the maid, farting and reminiscing about "the old in and out", as Alex Lelarge would put it. A gallery of characters that, if you look behind the antics, the laugh, are throughly pathetic. Growing amongst them must have been quite an ordeal for poor young Federico.Of course some will have a different view on things, taking what Fellini himself postulated about the artist and reality "What is reality, who cares about reality?" He snaps back, answering to his interviewer, when confronted with the idea that any artwork is the fruit of the artist's take on reality. Not so, he says. The artist's work is not the reflection of reality in his mind, soul, but an entirely new construct by him. The artist creates his own reality says Fellini, and because of that he, Fellini, defines himself as a lier, but a honest one. So, we are not here to see his reminiscences of his younger years but to see the construct of his own imagination, using as basic bricks for it his own experiences, or those of others. Some of what we see in Amacord really happened, in the same way or not, and some of it is just his imagination. But we are not here to decode fiction from reality--must be our conclusion—but to watch what he has prepared for us. Sorry but that doesn't change the bare historical facts. Titta, Fellini's best friend, speaks of his complete indifference to the then prevailing political system and, given the faithful reproduction of the social conditions at the time in the film, we can only assume that what lay behind such indifference was nothing but a complete impotence and powerlessness face to the reigning situation as Titta's father, in the movie, shows us well where any demonstration of protest or revolt could have led the protester.One point well made by the DVD commentators concerns the subservient role played by women in Fellini's movies. Real communication, intimacy, between the sexes is practically absent, at least in this one, and women usually appear there to fulfill men's fantasies—to offer them their over-sized backsides and breasts for appreciation, for ex.--to clean after them or to take whatever blame is for the taking. Examples on this abound and I mention it because it's something I noticed also. The film begins, in fact, with the public burning of the "winter witch"(!)--with no Spring Fairy in sight. Then a good deal of movie time is spent showing males of all ages salivating at the sight of female body parts--which makes for a rather eerie analogy with a butcher's view of things--and ends up with the saddest vignette of all: Gradisca, the only truly liberated woman in town, marrying...a Mussolini carabiniere. A bird free as the wind willingly getting into a steel cage, everything coming into order... But anyway, this is a masterly made piece of cinematography. The color compositions are truly breathtaking, specially during the surreal late afternoon scene where the mad uncle is ordered down the tree by a midget nun. Also kudos for the night passage of the Rex and the foggy morning. Other scenes that deserve applause are the school kids dancing to the film's score outside the Grand Hotel, the bum playing the flute to the harem, the Mussolini parade and the recurrent guy in the motorcycle—I wish Gradisca had married him instead. The pacing is sustained and the camera work appropriate, without being what draws the most attention--that's ostensibly the colors. The acting, well, these people don't even seem to be acting, they are just being themselves, as in any typical Fellini. As for plot, there's no one here, just a composition of miscellaneous anecdotes intended to create a mood in the viewer, presumably of nostalgia...or sadness maybe. In all, a great Fellini, if not the most joyful or the deepest. 7.5/10.

This Italian film featured in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before you Die, and is rated five out of five stars, I will admit I may not have paid the fullest attention while watching, and even dozed off, this is the only reason for my rating, from Oscar nominated director Federico Fellini. Basically this is an autobiographical look at life in a small Italian coastal town during the 1930's, it is based on the town Rimini where Fellini grew up. There is no story as such, it just looks at young people and others who surround them as they live a year in the town, with amusing antics, both from a regular and grotesque cast of characters, all with peculiarities. While watching you could see this as mocking the people of the seaside town that the film is based on and in, a mock of the Roman Catholic religion, or just an excuse to see cinematography put to good use with colourful sets and likable people. I will confess, I didn't see much going on during the film that excited me, only regular everyday activities such as washing clothes and hanging them up to dry, stuff like that. Starring Pupella Maggio as Miranda Biondi, Magali Noël as Gradisca, Bruno Zanin as Titta Biondi, Armando Brancia as Aurelio Biondi, Ciccio Ingrassia as Uncle Teo, Nando Orfei as Patacca, Luigi Rossi as Lawyer, Gianfilippo Carcano as Don Baravelli, Josiane Tanzilli as Foxy Volpina, Maria Antonietta Beluzzi as Tobacconist, Giuseppe Ianigro as Titta's Grandfather and Ferruccio Brembilla as Fascist Leader. The best thing I can say about this film, having not really got it all, is that the characters are all good, the scenery of the town is really well made, and there are some amusing moments to make you giggle, I'm not sure I could recommend it unless I watched it closer again one day, but I know it is a worthwhile comedy drama. It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and it was nominated for Best Writing, Original Screenplay, and it was nominated the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film. Good!