Later, the village attends the reception for Gradisca's marriage to a Fascist officer. Miranda nurses a sick Titta to health, then as spring arrives again, dies of an illness herself. She gives him a cigarette then coldly sends him home. She becomes aroused when he demonstrates he is strong enough to lift her, but is annoyed when he becomes overwhelmed as she presses her breasts into his face. One evening he visits the buxom tobacconist at closing time. The annual car race provides the occasion for Titta to daydream of winning the grand prize, Gradisca.
Like zombies, they waltz on the terrace with imaginary female partners enveloped in the fog. Walking out to the town's Grand Hotel, Titta and his friends find it boarded up. Titta's grandfather wanders lost in a disorienting fog so thick it seems to smother the house and the autumnal landscape. Awakened by a foghorn, they watch in awe as the liner sails past, capsizing their boats in its wake. By midnight they have fallen asleep waiting for its arrival. The town's inhabitants embark in small boats to meet the passage of the SS Rex, the regime's proudest technological achievement. Marching up the ladder, the nun reprimands Teo, who obediently agrees to return to the asylum.įall arrives. A dwarf nun and two orderlies finally arrive on the scene. All attempts to bring him down are met with stones that Teo carries in his pockets. They take him out for a day in the country but he escapes into a tree yelling, " Voglio una donna!" ("I want a woman!"). One summer afternoon, the family visits Uncle Teo ( Ciccio Ingrassia), Aurelio's brother, confined to an insane asylum. He limps home in a nauseous state to be washed by his wife, Miranda. Owing to his anarchist past, Titta's father Aurelio is brought in for questioning and forced to drink castor oil. Surreptitiously wired into the bell tower of the town church, a gramophone plays a recording of " The Internationale" but it is soon shot at and destroyed by gun-crazy Fascists. Titta's friend Ciccio daydreams about being married to his crush, Aldina, by the giant face of Mussolini. When Titta goes to confession, he is able to avoid telling Don Balosa about his masturbatory activities and attempt to seduce Gradisca, a glamorous older woman, because the priest is more concerned with floral arrangements.įascist officials come for a tour, and the schoolchildren are required to perform athletic routines for their approval. All Titta and his fellow students can do is goof off or skip class when not called upon to solve math problems or identify obscure historical details. School under Fascism is a tedious cavalcade of dry facts recited by instructors of varying levels of engagement and skill. The townspeople play pranks on one another, explode fireworks, cavort with loose women and make lewd noises when the civically minded lawyer lectures on the history of the region.
As night falls, the inhabitants of Borgo make their way to the village square for a traditional bonfire in which the Old Witch of Winter is ritually burned. In a Borgo San Giuliano, a village near Rimini, the arrival of fluffy poplar seeds floating on the wind heralds the arrival of spring. The film won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and was nominated for two more Academy Awards: Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. Fellini skewers Mussolini's ludicrous posturings and those of a Catholic Church that "imprisoned Italians in a perpetual adolescence" by mocking himself and his fellow villagers in comic scenes that underline their incapacity to adopt genuine moral responsibility or outgrow foolish sexual fantasies. Titta's sentimental education is emblematic of Italy's "lapse of conscience". Benzi became a lawyer and remained in close contact with Fellini throughout his life. The titular role of Titta is indeed based on Fellini's childhood friend from Rimini, Luigi Titta Benzi. The title then became a neologism of the Italian language, with the meaning of "nostalgic revocation". The film's title is a univerbation of the Romagnolo phrase a m'arcôrd ("I remember"). Amarcord ( Italian: ) is a 1973 Italian comedy-drama film directed by Federico Fellini, a semi- autobiographical tale about Titta, an adolescent boy growing up among an eccentric cast of characters in the village of Borgo San Giuliano (situated near the ancient walls of Rimini) in 1930s Fascist Italy.