A part of this view­ing list: Cri­te­rion Col­lec­tion Spine #4: Fed­erico Fellini’s Amar­cord.

You can get excel­lent broad-​spectrum treat­ments of this film by read­ing the review and essay I’ve linked to at the bot­tom of this page. I’m not going to give you a broad-​spectrum treat­ment at all, because to me Amar­cord is all about mas­culin­ity from begin­ning to end. The film is def­i­nitely a satire and full of polit­i­cal com­men­tary, but all of it is seen through a testos­terone lens that it becomes one of the most com­pre­hen­sive lists of manly pos­tur­ing that I’ve come across. This is not a bad thing. Film semi­oti­cists like Chris­t­ian Metz prob­a­bly love this film because it can come apart and be reassem­bled in so many dif­fer­ent ways.

There is plenty of male lust, the film opens with a spring rit­ual, where they burn a witch in effigy and men prove their viril­ity [or per­haps hope to keep it] by jump­ing over the hot ashes of the bon­fire. The women know that they are the objects of the scopophilic gaze, but instead of reduc­ing them to objects it puts them in a posi­tion of power, mainly because the men are so horny that they can’t help but be enthralled. Every man stops and stares, [and even most of the women as well] when the new whores are brought to the brothel in town. There’s also Volpina [that means fox] who pretty much acts like a fox and looks like a fox and is a nympho­ma­niac. Most inter­est­ing is Gradisca [a nick­name, which means “What­ever you want” or some­thing sim­i­lar], who has a “rep­u­ta­tion” that no one really believes in, and who is still the object of the most slack-​jawed pant­ing behav­ior on the part of the male pop­u­lace of Rim­ini. There is also mas­tur­ba­tion, mas­tur­ba­tory fan­tasies [dur­ing Con­fes­sion no less [!], and at other times], and a rather dis­turb­ing scene where the ado­les­cent Titta [a stand in for Fellini, cf. The 400 Blows for sim­i­lar­i­ties] is almost suf­fo­cated by enor­mous Ger­man boobs. Lust is prob­a­bly the most com­mon theme because the film harks back to Fellini’s own ado­les­cence, but there is more to a man than that.

What else do you ask? Power and vio­lence of course! The “story” of the town takes place while Italy was under Fas­cist con­trol. When the Fas­cists pay a visit we get hero-​worship of Mus­solini [includ­ing a male fan­tasy where Il Duce lets the fat kid marry his crush], march­ing about and intim­i­da­tion on the part of the black­boots [not boot­blacks] and even­tu­ally a lit­tle bit of polit­i­cal stron­garm­ing when the Fas­cists pour cas­tor oil down Titta’s father’s throat because he isn’t a card-​carrying Fas­cist. Since Italy was con­sid­ered a Father­land at this point, the fact that the entire city goes out to sea to watch the pass­ing of Il Rex [a huge pas­sen­ger liner, the Pride of the State!] adds another lit­tle cor­ner to the mas­cu­line edi­fice of the film.

The most beau­ti­ful and rich syn­tag­matic blah­blah is a scene dur­ing the first snow­fall in win­ter, when a loose pea­cock flies about town crow­ing, lands in the square, and spreads its arro­gant plumage to a large group of men who are watch­ing. I don’t want to talk much about this part, because it is so per­fectly done in the film that any other dis­cus­sion of it makes it less than it is. I’ve already said to much about it.

There are glimpses of man­hood behind the mas­culin­ity, but only glimpses, which is prob­a­bly appro­pri­ate. Titta’s crazy uncle Teo ends up in a tree, anguished and vio­lent, yelling that he wants a woman. When Titta’s mother is ill [pos­si­bly from being out on the sea wait­ing for Il Rex all night], we can see the help­less­ness that his father feels but tries to hide. When she dies, Fellini pulls off another mas­ter­ful piece of film­mak­ing by allow­ing one sob from Titta and a shot of an empty bed before cut­ting imme­di­ately to the funeral. Some things are too griev­ous to be observed, and the lack of obser­va­tion makes the emo­tion all the stronger. Of course, Titta’s mom isn’t even in the ground yet before he is check­ing out one of his dis­tant relatives.

There is also the gen­tle fatherly fig­ure of the Lawyer, who gives us a bit of nar­ra­tion through­out the film, the patho­log­i­cal tale-​teller Bis­celin [who once porked in one night 28 out of the 30 con­cu­bines that a vis­it­ing Emir brought with him] and some dude who we never see doing any­thing but rid­ing around on his motor­cy­cle and almost run­ning peo­ple over. There is also a motor-​car race [where the fat kid finally gets over his crush, in a totally dif­fer­ent type of mas­tur­ba­tory fan­tasy]. I’m prob­a­bly for­get­ting a few things, but I’m all out of machismo and don’t want to write anymore.

• Roger Ebert Review
• Cri­te­rion Essay by Peter Bon­danella
• The Cri­te­rion Contraption’s review.