Titta realizes he will never have Gradisca and before anyone else in Borgo realizes it - Gradisca will soon be gone.Īnother of Amarcord’s most memorable scenes involves a family picnic with Titta, his parents, his uncle Lallo, his siblings and his other uncle, Teo (Ciccio Ingrassia), who is picked up from the insane asylum where he resides.
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You can imagine Fellini saying, “ Yes, these boys fantasize about women, but what would they do if they actually wound up with one? Would they know how to touch a woman in a way that is pleasing to her?” Gradisca ignores the gesture until she slowly turns to Titta and destroys his false confidence by asking him, “ Looking for something?” A mortified Titta doesn’t say anything. He then slides his hand up along her leg and under her skirt. Gradisca is once again entranced by the images flickering before her, while Titta makes his way, seat by seat until he’s sitting right next to her.
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In perhaps Amarcord’s most memorable sequence, we see Titta follow Gradisca into an empty movie theater where they are the only ones inside. Titta (Bruno Zanin) tries very unsuccessfully to seduce Gradisca in the town movie theater, who’s fixated only on the flickering image of Gary Cooper. In contrast, Titta and his classmates wear old, hand-me-down clothes which further alienates them from the females (young and older) in the town. After WWII, the designer understood the needs of women for functional and comfortable dresses, which explains Gradisca’s outfits). Gradisca - with her form-fitting outfits, stylish heels and fiery red hair - walks the streets of her Borgo as if she had stepped out of a Chanel exhibit (Chanel actually believed fashion ideas originated from the streets. This is disappointing to young Titta, who although significantly younger, fantasizes about Gradisca and chases her all over town like a little puppy. To Gradisca, he is a man and while she may feel affection for the males in her little town, they will never compare to her matinee idol. Gradisca spends many days in the local movie theater surrendering her dreams to the images of Gary Cooper. She dreams for a dashing, cultured man of excitement to whisk her away from her boring little town, but she has long since realized that she’s not going to find him there. Many of the men in this tiny town even obsess over the same woman a shapely hairdresser named Gradisca (Magali Noel), who wistfully longs for a companion herself. If there is a constant theme which runs throughout Amarcord it is this: virtually every male character’s thoughts are consumed by women. The town’s citizens gather in the town square for the annual spring bonfire, which symbolizes the burning of “the old witch of winter.” Here, we are introduced to the male inhabitants of Borgo - the lawyer, the blind accordion player, the manager of the local movie theater, the oddballs in Titta’s family and many others.
Borgo’s citizens jump and rejoice as puffballs soar through the air. Gradisca (Magali Noel), the village beauty, and her sisters stand outside the local theater, waiting to see the newest Gary Cooper movie.Īmarcord begins with the arrival of spring.
There are memories of town celebrations, strict school headmasters, adolescent hi-jinks and most notably, adolescent hormones.
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Benzi’s family was full of eccentrics, which Fellini felt would better serve his story.Ĭo-written by Michelangelo Antonioni’s prolific screenwriter, Tonino Guerra ( L’avventura, Blow-Up, Red Desert, Zabriskie Point), Fellini and Guerra delved back into their memories of growing up in small coastal Italian villages. Rather than base the film on himself and his family (Fellini believed they weren’t that interesting), he features the family of a childhood friend named Titta Benzi (played here by a young Italian fisherman named Bruno Zanin, who bears an uncanny resemblance to a young Matt Damon). Amarcord, however, is not entirely autobiographical. For Amarcord (1973), Fellini actually went back further into his memories - he went back to his childhood.Įven though Roma was released before Amarcord, perhaps the better order to watch (and discuss) these films would be the latter and then the former.Īmarcord takes place in the early 1930s Borgo San Giuliano, Italy, which is based on Fellini’s childhood town of Rimini. Those hoping to see Fellini return to surrealist fantasy in his next movie would have to wait. In Roma, Fellini recalls arriving in late 1930s Rome from his small town of Rimini to find work as a young journalist. Instead, he returned to a more grounded reflection into his past. In 1972’s Roma, Federico Fellini shifted away from the grandiose fantasy which defined his films during the second half of the 1960s ( Juliet of the Spirits, Toby Dammit, and Satyricon).
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