Take, as your latest example, the new Essential Fellini<\/em> set. It\u2019s not as exhaustive as the Bergman and Varda boxes, which included all or most of those filmmakers\u2019 works; this one amounts to a little more than half of the Italian master\u2019s output, hence the specificity of its title. But these essentials tell the story, and what\u2019s perhaps most fascinating about Fellini\u2019s career is his evolution. The early films here, like Variety Lights<\/em> and I vitelloni<\/em>, are clearly grounded in the traditions of neorealism native to his homeland; they are intimate stories of real lives and real people. But Fellini\u2019s inclination towards unapologetic theatricality and whirligig chaos was always present as well \u2013 and so, with each new film and the new confidence it engendered, Fellini\u2019s own voice came further to the fore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s part of what makes Amarcord<\/em> \u2013 one of the key films of the set, as well as of the Criterion Channel\u2019s current \u201cDirected by Federico Fellini\u201d<\/a> program \u2013 so wonderful. Coming in the third act of his career, it feels like a culmination of those intermingling styles, a stage he sets where they can fight it out, so we have a sense of dirt-on-the-floor neorealism mixed with wild, ornate freak show fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is, first and foremost, a charming snapshot of village life, beginning and ending with the coming of the \u201cpuffballs\u201d in the air (\u201cWhen the puffballs soar, the winter is no more\u201d) and thus covering a year in the life of the people who live there. We\u2019re told about the puffballs in direct-to-camera address, and the village\u2019s tall tales and campfire stories are conveyed by a series of storytellers, not all of them necessarily trustworthy. Fellini\u2019s structure for the picture is loose and freewheeling; it\u2019s less driven by a forward-moving narrative than the mere passage of time, and the collection of vignettes, tidbits, and rumors amount to a memory play, inspired by his own childhood in the village of Rimini.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We get a sense, right away, of the town\u2019s feverish pace and colorful characters \u2013 or at least, that\u2019s how Fellini remembers them. And that matters; we\u2019re seeing all of this through his distinctive worldview, and while it\u2019s old hat to note how odd his actors look, it\u2019s also not untrue. His critics, now and then, saw his lensing of these actors as sneering or condescending, but it\u2019s quite the contrary. Frankly, it\u2019s just a joy to see, for once, the kind of faces you don\u2019t often see in movies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a result, the most conventionally handsome person in the movie \u2013 the adolescent son Titta (Bruno Zanin) \u2013 is the one who ends up looking like a freak. And that feels authentic, because that\u2019s how he feels most of the time, as most adolescents do. Amarcord<\/em> is the story of a town, but it\u2019s also the story of Titta and his family, a big, messy crew that yells and prods and needles and also, albeit more quietly and privately, loves. (The film’s influence on Woody Allen’s 1987 masterpiece Radio Days<\/em> has not gone un-remarked upon.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s also one of Fellini\u2019s hornier movies, which is saying something. You see him taking full advantage of the leeway granted by the cinema of the early 1970s, allowing him to be more explicit in the film\u2019s portrayal ofsex than he was able to in a film like La dolce vita<\/em>. But there\u2019s also a very child-like sense of humor at play here beyond youthful sexual obsession \u2013 the ribald laughs of farts, honking sneezes, and the like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Considering how broad the humor gets, it\u2019s all the more remarkable that Fellini folds in the film\u2019s passages of darkness so fluidly. The setting is the 1930s, and the Fascists take over the picture as they did the country. The filmmaker effectively sends up the sheer silliness of Il Duce\u2019s political cult of personality, and of the era\u2019s rampant paranoia (Titta\u2019s father is brought in for an interrogation, and when he mentions not having time to put on his tie, his interrogator replies, \u201cYour tie \u2013 or the anarchist\u2019s neckerchief?\u201d). But he also doesn\u2019t soft-pedal the horror of what was happening, and what was to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Amarcord<\/em> grows steadily more melancholy and evocative as its 124 minutes pass. In the later passages, as we feel the memories coalescing in Fellini\u2019s subconscious, it becomes less organic and grounded, and more staged and stylized. It\u2019s almost as though Fellini\u2019s artistic evolution is restaged, within the confines of this single work. Near its end, the characters stand agog at an incongruent sight among the white winterscape: a peacock in the snow. The connection isn\u2019t hard to trace. Seldom has an audience been handed so apt and appropriate a metaphor for the filmmaker himself. “Amarcord” is featured in Criterion’s “Essential Fellini” box set<\/a> and is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/amarcord2-1024x552.png\")
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