It seems there are always a couple times each year I find myself lamenting the lack of storytelling in today’s films. Plot and character development frequently seem to take a back seat to wasteful visual effects and sight gags, seemingly to satisfy the bulk of viewers suffering from ADD. My immediate response is to look backwards at the films that once impressed audiences, many of which I wasn’t even alive to see during their first theatrical runs. Fortunately, there are many of these classic films, and even if the newer theatrical offerings aren’t delivering soon-to-be classics there are places we can turn to.
The first time I saw Federico Fellini’s Amarcord was 35 years after its original release. It was December 2008 in the small and uncomfortable Seattle Film Festival Cinema. It was the new 35mm print. It was immaculate. I had again fallen in love with yet another one of Fellini’s films. However, finding the words to tell someone why I loved it is another story.
Just over a year ago I ran into a similar issue with another Fellini film. I was reviewing Criterion’s Blu-ray edition of 8 1/2 and opened my review with a similar conundrum and explained my reasoning saying, “It isn’t so much a digestion of the content as much as it is a film that washes over me. It creates an atmosphere through visuals, circumstances and the wonderful score provided by Nino Rota… Fellini’s circus atmosphere’s, filled with fantasies and dreams, have appealed to me ever since I first saw this film.”
The same can be said about Amarcord, a title and word Fellini contrived out of the phrase mi ricordo which translates to I remember. It seems only fitting Fellini would use a made up word to describe a film in which he satirizes his youthful memories into a carnival of characters from his past in a setting not unlike, but unlike enough, his native Rimini.
Fellini allows his imagination to roam free, which ironically reminds me of a quote from the cover of Louis Malle’s screenplay for Au revoir les enfants (which just so happens to be hitting Criterion Blu-ray this March) in which Malle wrote: Memory serving as a springboard for imagination, I reinvented the past in the pursuit of a haunting and timeless truth. A better quote to describe the origins of both films I cannot imagine. However, the two films follow extraordinarily different paths in their execution from the merrymaking feast of activities seen in Amarcord to the more somber and dramatic Au revoir (a film I’ll be reviewing very shortly as well).
Amarcord is a dream as much as it is reality, bouncing from one instance to the next with little concern for narrative flow as much as it remains true to the inhabitants of the small town it’s documenting allowing the story to go wherever they go. It’s almost as if we are touring the brain of the filmmaker himself as the camera flows effortlessly from one thing to the next as there’s never an instance where something isn’t going on. Not a frame is spared in dropping hints as to the small town’s past and present as well as insinuations into what will happen in the future with characters so entertaining and so perfectly vivid you feel as if you’ve known them forever. Fellini knows how to get an audience invested in his characters because he invests in the actors portraying them.
In the included supplemental features it’s mentioned how Fellini would see a person somewhere and if they looked the part of a character he had in mind he would hire them no matter their acting abilities. He would shape the character around that person, as opposed to bending the actor to a mold he or she did not fit. In this way Fellini gets the very best out of his actors, bending the character’s to the actor’s strengths.
Criterion’s release is loaded with additional goodies. This disc is an impressive high-definition edition of the two-disc DVD that preceded it in 2006. This includes a fascinating audio commentary with Peter Brunette and Frank Burke, a gallery of Fellini’s drawings, archival audio interviews, a deleted scene and the trailer.
The two features that stood out most for me include “Fellini’s Homecoming,” a fascinating look back at Fellini’s life through interviews with his childhood friends, a few of which inspired characters in the film. And secondly the interview with Magali Noel who plays Gradisca in the feature. Her comments on Fellini and her time with him are equally entertaining and informative. The set is rounded out with a 64-page illustrated booklet worthy of the Criterion stamp.
The audio and visual quality on display are immaculate and while there is still an optional English-dubbed audio track, I would never bother listening to it as the native Italian track is part of the fun of watching a Fellini feature.
Overall, I can’t recommend this title more highly, but I am an unabashed Fellini fan and only hope Criterion continues to bring the rest of his films to Blu-ray.
