Amarcord @ the Lavazza Italian Film Festival
October 8th 2008 21:59
Fortunately, I was able to catch "Amarcord" last night at the Lavazza Italian Film Festival, an absolutely thrilling celluloid pleasure to see Federico Fellini's 1973 bawdy masterpiece as audiences originally saw it: in the theatre.
There's something about sitting in a theatre that exceeds all expectations... the laughter in the crowd, the big screen that gives the weight of the characters so much space and presence. When the lady at the tobacconist bares her gigantic, milky, pendulous breast, it is literally the size of a gigantic Manta Ray, filling the screen with the release of repressed lust.
"Amarcord" is an autobiographical look at Fellini's upbringing in Rimini, Italy in the 1930... it's a seaside town, one that seems away from the vital arteries of Italian life, but its inhabitants are no less fervent in their passion for life and scandalous behaviour.
Though he grew to be one of cinema's greatest auteurs - as Ebert notes:
"But Fellini .. well, moviemaking for him seems almost effortless, like breathing, and he can orchestrate the most complicated scenes with purity and ease.
Fellini looks fondly on his childhood in this vulgar city, the townspeople resorting to crude humour and flailing wildly in anger, desperate for something to happen just so they can feel alive.
Naturally, the film takes on a satirical face as Fellini, the Satyr, laughs uproariously at the pomp and pretentiousness of the Fascist Regime; the town leaps over itself to please Mussolini, who comes for a visit that is complete with spectacles and a giant Mussolini-head made out of flowers.
"Amarcord" plays out much like Truffaut's "The 400 Blows", an intimate, personal look at the joy and pain of growing up as a rebellious child. Whereas Truffaut's vision was a childlike delight that focused on his strife with his family, "Amarcord" is a tribute to Fellini's town; a living entity, a pulse that shook and stirred when any minor event happened to distract the residents from their anger and jealousy.
Fellini is not a judge, though, and his film does not criticize - no, it's a labour of love, a beautifully mesmerizing homage to a small seaside town. While the rest of the country was gearing up military production and self-flagellating themselves in the name of Fascism, Fellini, as a young adult, was running around with his friends, interested only in skipping school, playing jokes and masturbating furiously to lusty dreams about the local women.
I say: An absolute masterpiece, an effortless combination of nostalgia and perfect comic timing. Edited like a derailed locomotive, "Amarcord" is a furiously shifting film, cutting rapidly from one scene to another, like the flutter of gossip on whispered breaths.
See it for: With this film, Fellini expresses his inner fetishist, his absolute love for the curves of women. The film exaggerates the breasts and the buttocks and it works so well in bawdy humour.
*this image is from Celtoslavica.de
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I've always loved Nights of Cabiria, his wife is amazing in that.
One thing you have to say about the Italians - they never shy away from showing on screen how loathsome and repellent their own people can be.
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