Amarcord

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Movie
German title Amarcord
Original title Amarcord
Federico Fellini - Amarcord.png
Country of production Italy
original language Italian
Publishing year 1973
length 127 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Federico Fellini
script Federico Fellini
Tonino Guerra
production Franco Cristaldi
music Nino Rota
camera Giuseppe Rotunno
cut Ruggero Mastroianni
occupation
synchronization

Amarcord is a film by the Italian director Federico Fellini from 1973. The title of the film is a blending of “A m'arcord”, which means “I remember” in the dialect of Rimini and “io mi ricordo” in Italian. Fellini's hometown of Rimini is depicted in the filmmaker's youth, the fascist 1930s. There has been a Fellini Museum in Rimini since 2003, although Amarcord was not filmed in Rimini. In 2015, a restored version of the film was shown at the Venice Film Festival . The organizer of the festival justified this with the 40th anniversary of the Oscars for Amarcord.

Political importance

“What all of this meant for the common people, Federico Fellini captured in an unforgettable way in his film Amarcord - the title means 'I remember' in the Rimini dialect. In this in-depth study of what it felt like to remember a youth under fascism, there is plenty of 'normality' that belies the notion that the regime has permanently and extensively possessed and acted upon its citizens. But the film also shows political harassment and torture in the form of forced drinking of castor oil. On a more subtle level, it gives the feeling that people's mental life is slowly being reshaped: They project their fears and longings onto the Duce - for example in the fantasy of a fat, unattractive boy suddenly a huge Mussolini mask during a fascist parade in the city comes alive and the leader conquers the boy the girl of his dreams. In the end, so the viewer's impression, the whole population is infantilized rather than directly oppressed. "

- Jan-Werner Müller : The democratic age

“He lets a lovingly drawn microcosm of relatives, acquaintances and funny owls appear, bitterly mocks the political situation in fascist Italy of the 1930s and repeatedly finds poetic images for his fairy tale world. A film that you can simply dream along with. "

- Hamburger Abendblatt dated February 7, 1990

Fellini's Satyricon (1969) called for new ways of looking at contemporary youth culture by taking a personal look at the Roman classics, while Antonionis Zabriskie Point (1969) tracked down young Americans trying to start a political revolution. Visconti's Die Verdammten (1969) once again looked grimly at Nazi Germany, and De Sica's Der Garten der Finzi-Contini (1970) earned international acclaim for an examination of Italy's role during the Holocaust. Fellini's Amarcord (1973), a bittersweet analysis of Italian fascism, was arguably the most startling political film by this group of directors because it underscored the belief that fascism was a form of immaturity that still shaped Italian society. "

- Peter Bondanella : Federal Agency for Civic Education

The Amarcord art exhibition examined the role of identity and memory in modern art: “As a powerful tool of creativity, memory is an essential part of artistic inspiration. The production of modern film, theater, dance and visual works of art in the 20th century was influenced not only by individual, unique experiences, but also by political events and social spheres within a larger extent of contemporary society. "

action

For Fellini, directing means the art of arrangement. He doesn't think in terms of visible actions, but in effective images. Amarcord does not have a stringent plot, but a kaleidoscopic sequence of imaginative scenes, an arc of images.

The film consists of episodes from a year in the life of 16-year-old Titta. He lives in the provincial Adriatic city of Rimini during the times of Italian fascism . The sequences take place between spring 1933 and spring 1934.

Spring celebration (1933) on the central piazza, where all the main characters are briefly introduced, especially Titta with his family and school friends, as well as Gradisca, the urban beauty that Titta admires from afar. The following episode takes Tittas to school. On the occasion of a photo session, the entire class gathers with the teachers in the school courtyard. The following lesson scenes by the very different and peculiar teachers are mostly very bizarre.

Meanwhile, the father Tittas, a small building contractor, can be seen on his construction site by the sea, where Volpina also appears, a crazy prostitute who lives on the beach. Aurelio's employees take the opportunity to recite a short critical poem, but Aurelio teaches them that he too started out small and worked his way up through his diligence.

At lunch that follows, Titta's family is united at the table. The mood is tense, the grandfather tries to flirt with the maid, the mother is irritable and only serves her brother, who lives in the house, courteously, which also makes the father increasingly aggressive. When another prank by Tittas becomes known, the situation escalates.

In the next section you can feel the quiet small town life again. In Rimini in the evening, everyone is out on the streets to see and be seen. The local brothel also uses the hour to advertise itself with a carriage ride for the prostitutes.

The pubertal problems and joys of Titta and his school friends will be described on the occasion of a confession in the next episodes. Above all, it is important to the pastor that the boys do not “touch” each other, which is not easy given the abundance of erotic stimuli.

However, the carefree small-town life is deceptive, as a visit by Mussolini to the city shows. Almost all residents are gathered at his arrival at the station and cheer him. The students have to hold a parade in front of a huge picture of Mussolini. But in the evening the Internationale sounds from a church tower . The fascists are confused and are shooting wildly. The music comes only from a gramophone. But the guilty party must be found and so Titta's father, allegedly a suspect as a communist, is brought in for interrogation in the middle of the night.

It is now summer. The city's old grand hotel is closely linked to the history of its residents. Gradisca got her nickname from a nightly experience in a suite of the hotel, and Biscein, a poor trader, can also tell of sensual experiences with the harem ladies of an oriental prince who stayed here with his entire court. The friends of Lallo, Miranda's useless brother, also populate the hotel restaurant to seduce stupid tourists with their gigolos arm.

Titta's family goes on a carriage ride with her father's brother, Teo, who lives in a mental institution. Actually Teo is very treatable, but he takes advantage of an unattended moment to climb a tree and shout his despairing leitmotif for the film desire in the world ! "Voglio una donna" , "I want a woman" .

Then all the residents of the city are reunited. They strive to the sea, out onto the water, because they all want to see the Rex from as close as possible , the huge passenger ship that is supposed to pass the city one day. United at sea, isolated in their boats, they wait for the event, with their thoughts wandering into the distance.

In the area, autumn is particularly evident in the thick fog that drives grandfather astray right in front of the house, so that he even thinks he has already died. Even the ordinary way to school is transformed into a mystical journey through the gray impenetrability.

A car race then serves as the projection screen for their dreams. Titta sees herself as a successful racing driver who can invite Gradisca to come with him. Reality looks different, he experiences his first erotic adventure with the extremely plump tobacco dealer. An experience that really takes him away, and so in the next shot we see Titta lying in bed sick with a fever. His mother, although ill herself, takes care of him.

In the meantime it has become winter, the first snow falls and contrary to expectations it not only stays there, but gets more and more, so that the piazza is finally covered by huge mountains of snow. While Titta is healthy again and is performing his pranks as before, his mother is now in the hospital. In the middle of the night, the whole family is already together, Titta has to find out that his mother has died.

Finally it's spring again (1934). Gradisca has finally found a husband, a Carabinieri officer , and is getting married. They have set up their wedding table in a field. Titta and his friends are also there to see them off, because Gradisca will be leaving town with her husband. But Titta has already found consolation.

Reviews

  • “Giuseppe Rotunno's photography, with its sense of beauty and mood, lays a magical, even visionary glow over the entire work. The magician Fellini lets the viewer enter a world that he can recognize as his own and which is alienated by the gaze of memory. The boundaries between mythical reality and objective view seem to have been removed. You think you're moving in a specifically poetic world, the cinematic universe of Fellini. " ( Film-dienst )
  • “Fellini's comedy reaches the limits of taste in refreshing moments, when diligently urinating, masturbating and breast worshiping is practiced. His stylistic devices, which sometimes get too baroque in works like 'Casanova' (1976), are here channeled into pure poetry: flowing camera movements, pastel colors and an airy, artificial setting. " (1001 films - the best films of all time)
  • In a certain sense, “Amarcord” is the high point of Fellini's oeuvre, one could also say the quintessence of his cinematic work - especially when compared to “Das süße Leben” (1960) or “Satyricon” (1969), two films in which Fellini the decadence of the Roman set, the emptiness and disillusionment of the modern urban middle class (in "Satyricon" disguised in a story set in ancient Rome) and the mendacity and arrogance of this class castigated. [...].

Remarks

The film was shot in Cinecittà , where Rimini was built as an old village at that time.

Even if Fellini did not film an autobiography, it is likely that he used experiences from his childhood and youth in Rimini for the film.

“It's not memory that dominates my films. To say that my films are autobiographical is blatantly stupid. I made up my own life. I invented it especially for the cinema. Before I made the first film, all I did was prepare myself to get big and strong enough and recharge myself with the energy I need to be able to say 'record' one day! I lived to discover and create a director: nothing else. And I can't remember anything else, although I am taken for someone who lives out his expressive life in the department stores of memory. None of this is true. In the sense of the anecdote, the autobiography, there is nothing in my films. On the other hand, you find the testimony of a certain time that I lived through. In this sense it is true that my films are autobiographical: but in the same way that every book, every verse of a poet, every color on a canvas is autobiographical. "

- Federico Fellini : Il film 'Amarcord' di Federico Fellini, a cura di Gianfranco Angelucci e Liliana Betti

A connection is offered with the film Roma , which was completed a year earlier , and which works with very similar characters in the initial description of the small town and then tells the journey of a young man to Rome and his first experiences there, also similar to Fellini's résumé . Fellini moved from Rimini to Rome at the age of 19 so that he could study law there. In Rome he works as a draftsman for the satirical magazine Marc'Aurelio .

Fellini was rather critical of provincial small-town life, which was expressed again and again in his films with the orientation towards the big city as in Roma or the departure in general as in I Vitelloni ( The Idlers ). But there is relatively little of this criticism to be felt in Amarcord , as the critical points here seem rather comical and even lovable due to their bizarre exaggeration.

Awards

1974

1975

1976

  • Oscar - nominated in the categories Best Director and Best Original Screenplay

literature

Primary literature

  • Fellini, Federico: Amarcord. Idea u. Screenplay (= Diogenes-Taschenbuch 55, 5). Diogenes-Verlag, Zurich 1974, ISBN 3-257-20124-9 .
  • Federico Fellini, Tonino Guerra: Amarcord. Rizzoli, Milano 1973. (Italian).

Secondary literature

  • Gianfranco Angelucci , Liliana Betti (eds.): Il film Amarcord di Federico Fellini (= Dal soggetto al film 48, ZDB -ID 763433-x ). Cappelli editore, Bologna 1974.
  • Peter Bondanella: The films of Federico Fellini. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 2002, ISBN 0-521-57325-4 (English).
  • Dorothée Bonnigal: Fellini's Amarcord: Variations on the Libidinal Limbo of Adolescence. In: Frank Burke, Marguerite R. Waller (eds.): Federico Fellini: Contemporary perspectives. University of Toronto Press, Toronto et al. 2002, ISBN 0-8020-0696-5 , pp. 137-154. (English).
  • Frank Burke, Marguerite R. Waller (eds.): Federico Fellini Contemporary perspectives. University of Toronto Press, Toronto et al. 2002, ISBN 0-8020-0696-5 (English).
  • Roger Ebert : The great movies. Volume 2. Broadway Books, New York NY 2005, ISBN 0-7679-1950-5 (English).
  • Cosetta Gaudenzi: Memory, Dialect, Politics: Linguistic Strategies in Fellini's Amarcord. In: Frank Burke, Marguerite R. Waller (eds.): Federico Fellini Contemporary perspectives. University of Toronto Press, Toronto et al. 2002, ISBN 0-8020-0696-5 , pp. 155-168 (English).
  • Louis Gianetti: Amarcord: Fellini & Politics. In: Cineaste. Vol. 19/1, No. 92, 1976, ISSN  0009-7004 , pp. 36-43 (English).
  • Michael A. Ledeen: Amarcord. In: Society. Vol. 12, No. 2, 1974, ISSN  0147-2011 , pp. 100-102 (English).
  • Millicent J. Marcus: Fellini's Amarcord: Film as Memory. In: Quarterly Review of Film Studies. Vol. 2, No. 4, 1977, ZDB -ID 303004-0 , pp. 418-425 (English).
  • Franco Pauletto, Marcella Delitala: Amarcord. Federico Fellini (= Quaderni di cinema italiano per stranieri ). Guerra, Perugia 2008, ISBN 978-88-557-0097-9 (Italian).
  • Theodore Price: Fellini's penance. The meaning of Amarcord. Boethius Press et al., Old Bridge NJ 1977 (English).
  • Franco Sciannameo: Nino Rota, Federico Fellini, and the making of an Italian cinematic folk opera. Amarcord (= Studies in the history and interpretation of music. Vol. 119). Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston, NY 2005, ISBN 0-7734-6099-3 (English).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Italian script legend: Fellini friend Tonino Guerra dies. Spiegel Online Kultur, March 21, 2012, accessed November 18, 2015 .
  2. ↑ Amarcord. Altervista, accessed November 18, 2015 (Italian).
  3. ^ Angelo Turchini: History, Culture and Literature of Romagna. (PDF) Goethe-Institut, p. 7 , accessed on November 18, 2015 .
  4. ↑ Dirk Schümer: The director and his hometown: Rimini finally has a Fellini Museum. Frankfurter Allgemeine, December 4, 2003, accessed November 18, 2015 .
  5. ↑ Venice Film Festival honor Fellini with restored Amarcord. Aargauer Zeitung, August 26, 2015, accessed on November 18, 2015 .
  6. ↑ Jan-Werner Müller: The democratic age . A history of political ideas in Europe in the 20th century. 1st edition. Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-518-73247-2 , p. 182 .
  7. ↑ Fellini's Amarcord. Hamburger Abendblatt, February 7, 1990, accessed on November 17, 2015 .
  8. ^ Peter Bondanella: The Italian Contemporary Cinema - A Balancing Act between Art and Commerce. Federal Agency for Civic Education, April 3, 2009, accessed on November 18, 2015 .
  9. ↑ Amarcord. Fellini Gallery, 2012, accessed November 18, 2015 .
  10. ↑ Dieter E. Zimmer: Once upon a time ... ZEITmagazin, March 29, 1974, accessed on November 18, 2015 .
  11. ↑ cf. Ulrich, Franz: Amarcord . In: film-dienst 29/1967
  12. ↑ cf. Schneider, Steven Jay (Ed.): 1001 films: the best films of all time . Hombrechtikon / Zurich: Ed. Olms, 2005. ISBN 3-283-00525-7
  13. ↑ Ulrich Behrens: Amarcord. Film releases, accessed November 18, 2015 .
  14. ↑ Andreas Kilb: The journeys of the Minotaur. ZEITmagazin, November 5, 1993, p. 2 f , accessed on November 18, 2015 .
  15. ↑ Thomas Migge: Uncertain future for famous film studios Cinecittà. Deutschlandradio Kultur, July 22, 2012, accessed on November 18, 2015 .
  16. ↑ Places. Fondazione Federico Fellini, accessed November 18, 2015 .
  17. ↑ Hans C. Blumenberg: Cazzomas on the planet of women. March 4, 1977. Retrieved November 18, 2015 .
  18. ↑ Federico Fellini: Il film "Amarcord" di Federico Fellini, a cura di Gianfranco Angelucci e Liliana Betti . Cappelli, Bologna 1974, pp. 95 f .
  19. ↑ biography. Fondazione Federico Fellini, accessed November 18, 2015 .
  20. ↑ 1974 Award Winners. National Board of Review, accessed November 18, 2015 .
  21. ↑ 1974 Awards. New York Film Critics Circle, accessed November 18, 2015 .
  22. ↑ THE 47TH ACADEMY AWARDS 1975. Oscars.org, accessed on 18 November 2015 (English).
  23. ↑ Golden Globes 1975. International Movie Database, accessed November 18, 2015 .
  24. ^ KCFCC Award Winners 1970-1979. Kansas City Film Critics Circle, accessed November 18, 2015 .
  25. ↑ Kinema Junpo Awards 1975. International Movie Database, accessed November 18, 2015 .
  26. ↑ THE 48TH ACADEMY AWARDS 1976. Oscars.org, accessed on 18 November 2015 (English).