Fellini's AMARCORD (Event Over)

(1973) “I remember” in the Romagnese dialect… Federico Fellini’s ultimate work of reminiscence, drawing on memories of his hometown Rimini, unfolds against the spectacles of Fascism in a completely imagined — and Cinecittà-created — world, across four seasons during the 1930s, with vignettes of town life and its inhabitants: the Fascist parade, with an enormous floral arrangement of Mussolini’s face; the central character “Titta” (based on a childhood friend of Fellini’s), still wearing short pants despite the painful onset of adolescence; the catastrophic family trip to the country with an uncle let out for the day from a mental hospital; bombshell “Gradisca” ( Rififi’s Magalí Noël), whose adopted name means “Whatever you desire”; the fat boy who hopelessly longs for an unobtainable young virgin; “Ronald Colman,” the town Lothario; the local tobacconist, sporting the most mountainous breasts in the whole bosom-oriented Fellini oeuvre; the tall-tale-telling peddler, recounting the night he spent in a harem; Titta’s anti-fascist father, forced to “drink” to the party; the sudden appearance of a peacock in the square amidst a freakish snowfall; and the rush to view the magical nighttime passage of the super-liner Rex — all underlined by one of the most haunting of Nino Rota’s Fellini scores. Co-written by frequent Antonioni collaborator Tonino Guerra ( L’Avventura, Blowup, etc.) and shot in vibrant color by Giuseppe Rotunno ( The Leopard), who supervised this restoration, Amarcord was one of Fellini’s greatest international hits and critical successes, winning the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, the New York Critics’ Best Director and Film awards, and similar honors around the world, including Japan’s Best Foreign Film award.