Amarcord

Somewhere between Tinseltown reveries and Arabian Nights, the provincial Thirties of Federico Fellini's nostalgia. "But who remembers, anyway?" Spring to spring, bonfire of the witch to wedding of the vamp, one year in a seaside burg. The classroom is for pranksters and gargoyles, the church confessional is for reminding that jerking off makes saints cry. A vast stage for a profusion of doodles, the blind accordionist and the poetic bricklayer, the hairdresser with red beret and Art Deco fantasies (Magali Noël) and the nymphomaniac with green dress and slashes for eyebrows (Josiane Tanzilli). "Glowing ideas from ancient times," the paraphernalia of fascism like an imbecilic spell over the citizenry. (ll Duce is an emanation of kitsch, Oz the Great and Powerful as a papier-mâché float.) The impressionable teen (Bruno Zanin) is the official stand-in, yet the auteur is closer to the daffy peddler in the swirling harem, "un bugiardo nato." The three-ring dilation of I Vitelloni suits the cartoonist's superabundance, lost time is a sacred thing but also a fart joke. The paterfamilias (Armando Branchia) is given to apoplectic hat-chewing, Mama (Pupella Maggio) turns her back at the dinner table, uncle (Nando Orfei) is a deadpan juggler in dainty hairnet. Lost in the fog, grandfather (Giuseppe Ianigro) shrugs at mortality: "If death is like this, I don't think much of it." As in The Magnificent Ambersons, Wilder's Our Town comes into play—the Stage Manager is a chatty attorney (Luigi Rossi) who turns pedantically to the camera and takes a snowball to the face. The peacock's opulent plumage in the frigid town square inverts Gauguin, the brush with the ample tobacconist (Maria Antonietta Beluzzi) adduces Gaston Lachaise. Pièce de résistance: The whole town in boats trying to catch a glimpse of the transatlantic liner at midnight, the resplendent cardboard leviathan that materializes is a communal dream, cinema by any other name. "I want one of those encounters that last a lifetime." Bergman sees Fellini, and raises him Fanny and Alexander. Cinematography by Giuseppe Rotunno. With Ciccio Ingrassia, Gianfilippo Carcano, Ferruccio Brembilla, and Gennaro Ombra.