This should be easy. Choose a scene in the film (any scene!) and analyze it in depth. Be sure to discuss its sociocultural influences, why you chose the scene, and how the scene relates to the film as a whole. Your response should be thoughtful and along the lines of what you'll do in January. Be thorough--at least 3 paragraphs. Here is an interesting article on Fellini and Amarcord that you can use in your response. In addition, Roger Ebert has an excellent essay on the film. Be sure to include a quote from either article in your response.
Due: Friday, November 7
I chose to analyze the film in which Titta is confessing to the priest. This particular scene cuts between the physical confession and the mental scenes that occur in Titta’s teenage mind that he may be able to confess but he does not. These scenes include the tobacco lady, his teacher, the festival in which he and his friends look at the women getting on to their bikes, a scene with Volpina at a wall and finally the scene in the movie theatre with Gradisca. All of the scenes that Titta thinks of while confessing have one major theme in common; lust. Through the juxtaposition of the church shots and the lustful shots I believe that Titta’s guilt is being equated to his lust.
ReplyDeleteThe scene opens with an interesting positioning of the objects. Titta is surrounded, somewhat closed in by holy objects/people. The priest to his left, a statue of a saint to his right and a portrait of a saint above him. Through the kinesis of shots in the shots with the footage of the festival Fellini reiterates the boys already apparent obsession with women as sexual objects. By zooming in on the behinds of these women getting their bikes it brings the attention of the viewer to the behind. But also puts us in the shoes of the obsessive teenage boys. Also the quick panes make us feel the frantic obsession, looking at all of them as fast as we can so that we get a view of all of them. Again making us feel the same excitement that the boys would feel. Fellini deploys a low frame rate while Titta is biking to again reinforce the frantic nature of a teenage boys lust for women. The following shots of multiple teenage boys casually and routinely going through their confessions just reiterates the lack of passion and the overall habitual nature of getting confessions given. The casual nature in which the priest hands out the blessings is satirical to the routine nature of the church in the real world. How people may go to church on sundays, and say all their prayers then. But once out of the religious setting the devout churchgoers will sin just as much as the non churchgoer.
This scene is the essence of the film as a whole, in a more specific setting. This scene in particular is dealing with the teenage male lust for women while the movie in general just deals with teenage boys vantage points on life as a whole. While the film as a whole deals with other subjects such as school, family or joining the army. This scene in particular focuses on sex and religion.
AVANT CORD!!
ReplyDeleteThe film Amarcord which was made in 1973 but is based in the 1930s has a lot to do with the dynamics of family in times of struggle. In Italy during the time of the film’s setting, the Fascist regime had taken over and the economy was in ruins due to the depression and the incompetence of Mussolini’s economic plans. In the scene in which the family is eating dinner together there is strong emphasis on the importance and the nature of family in the time period. From the opening of the scene, the status of each family member is clearly shown. The father is at the head of the table and is framed usually without others which defines him in cinematic space as the leader of the household. Also, his father and brother are obviously respected by the head of the household, because they both have head wear on at the dinner table, which in Italian culture is disrespectful. His wife, at the beginning of the scene doesn’t sits down or rest, as she is constantly serving the family. That is consistent with the role of a mother and wife in Italy of the time and is an important depiction of women in the film. The house is a bit cluttered, suggesting that the house is possibly on the small side, without a lot of extra spice to hold excess items. There are some cupboards however, whose insides are filled with miscellaneous items. This shows the wealth of the family, they aren’t poor, however, as the nature of the items in this cinematic space would not fit the profile of the poor; the dishware seems new and of a high quality, the tablecloth is fresh, white, and without blemish, and the house, though mildly cluttered, is very clean and kept after, as opposed to the filth and disorder that some of the lower class characters are depicted in. Next, the prominence in-frame of wine in many of the cuts shows the significance of wine to the Italian culture. The bottles of wine, much of the time, are almost as large as the people talking and sitting in frame. Considering sound, the overlapping conversation and overall amount of noise, both from talking and just noises that the family makes, is representative of perhaps the average Italian dinner or at least what Fellini’s dinner may have sounded like. The grandfather, during the dinner, talks about sex frequently and how important it was to life, at least for a man, as elderly people are often kept separate from the sexual realm. Not only does he talk about sex, but he is very proud of his sexuality, and takes great care to maintain it. The personalities of the family members are dramaticized quite a bit, they show very wild emotions.They also have a lot of kinesis, as they move around all over within the frame. This is paired with a static camera to make the effect more defined. Interesting to note is that throughout the scene, excluding when one of the woman is standing, all of the members at the table in frame at any given time have equal or almost equal headspace. This demonstrates the importance of family as the camera doesn’t really favor anyone at the table. Despite all of the shouting, conflict, and energy, the family is still one unit. In this time, Italians faced many problems economically and politically. However, much like in Bicycle Thieves, family is still kept together, or at least tries to be
Fellini’s Amarcord is a film that takes the typical boyhood genre of the time period it was made and places it in facist Italy. The film interjects these positive, nostalgic, and usually funny moments with scenes of Italy before the second world war. It creates a contrast that is seen throughout the filom and makes the viewer strangely sad when such positive and negative imagery are onscreen at the same time. Fellini may be touching on the innocence that Italy lost once it ushered in the influence of facism. The whole movie ends up taking on a somber tone because of his constant conjecture of nostalgic imagery and shocking pro-facist attitudes.
ReplyDeleteOne scene that perfectly displays boyhood innocence alongside facist leadership is when the students of the town’s school (it seems to be the only one), are inviolved in the parade that is going on, celebrating the facist government. The scene seems to come out of nowhere which makes it even more surprising to the audience. This is probably done to draw the audiences’ attention. The boys are all perfectly coreographed in this scene and the crowds of children in soldier’s uniforms is truly a haunting image. The mise en scene makes it all the more memorable as the scene really shines out with it’s colorful set design. The costumes make the children look like small soldiers preparing to go to war and makes the scene seem almost like an anti-war statement. However, it begins bordering on the rediculous when a gigantic face of the leader, made out of flowers, is raised over the kids, who come into the frame cheering like soldiers after a victory on the battlefield. Its shocking at first to see kids so vigorously supporting such a figure, but, it quickly becomes comical as one of the boys begins fantasizing about his secret love, Aldina. The haunting parade quickly becomes a comical fantasized wedding between the two children, with the gigantic flower-head as the priest wedding the couple. “All this would resemble nothing stronger than “boys will be boys” schoolyard nostalgia and legends if it weren’t for the thick layer of sardonic criticism Fellini applies to them,” wrote Micheal Rowin, and this certainly applies to this scene.
This is how most of the movie plays out, Fellini introduces a controversial subject to the audience but interjects it with enough humor that the message is picked up without being to heavy-handed. It is a good way to convey something to the audience without directly saying it to them or shoving it in their face, so to speak.
Fellini’s Amarcord is a film that just radiates the nostalgia and bitter-sweet moments one might feel when reminiscing about one’s childhood and up-bringing. While the film’s plot is very loose and more of a collection of anecdotes, these stories document the ups and down of throughout a year in the hometown of Fellini himself. This nostalgic trip through Fellini’s memories is fronted by Titta who is not only a character meant to embody Fellini and his childhood friends, but the film is displayed mostly through his eyes, thus giving it this child-like feel of wonderment. While the film has a fairly happy vibe throughout, there are instances in which the real world shines through the veil of delectable memories.
ReplyDeleteOne of these scenes in which the camera looks through the gilded images of the past is the moments directly after the fascist parade in which Aurelio is interrogated by the fascists as he is the one known communist in the town. While the scene before this paints fascism in an extremely favorable light through the well-lit shots and vivid colors on the decorations for the ceremony and the giant face of Mussolini. In this scene the fascists portrayed in hardly any light at all in the beginning of the scene, which takes away their individuality and makes the separate fascist members into one oppressive force. Not only that but the walls of the fascist base of operations are lacking in any vivid colors and rather are coated in dulls greys and run-down yellows, not only that but they are also all dressed in black uniforms. Accompany this with the one light in the room being used as a harsh spot light on Aurelio and Fellini paints a much different picture of the fascists than he did in the previous scene. The previous scene portrayed the facsits in a positive light, with the men and women rushing into the streets to greet them. The whole scene is almost as dream-like as the one sequence in which Cicco fantasizes about being married as the lighting and set does not change once it goes into his daydream. This is because the whole scene is somewhat of a day dream of the fascists as they were in no way as well liked as they are in the film. As most of the film is from the perspective of young boys it is no wonder why this parade scene seems to be surreal. However it is when there is no nostalgia and we are looking through the eyes of someone who isn’t a child (Aurelio is who the camera relates to most in this scene) we see the true state of affairs in the town as a dark, dull oppressive presence. This is one of the few scenes in which Fellini shows us how life is in the town without romanticizing it as he does throughout most of the film.
While this film is very much a love letter from Fellini to his childhood, he still realizes that the time he grew up in was not free of hardships. While most of the scenes in the film look through the glossed over eyes of a child coming out of boyhood, who isn’t old enough to really see some of the more pressing issues facing his society, this is one of the few that shows the time as what it really was. Fellini still manages to display his upbringing in a loving way that says “it was not all okay back then, but it was the fact they are a part of how one grows up” and that is why Amarcord is praised by many to be “a movie made entirely out of nostalgia and joy” (Roger Ebert).
I chose to analyze the scene at the end of the film where we see Gradiska finally get married in the country and the film reaches its conclusion. I chose this scene because although I missed the first day of watching and never got around to watching the first thirty minutes or so, I still noticed that this scene was the first point in the film that took place outside in sunlight and good weather. As well as this I thought it was a good scene because for the first time in the film there seems to be one straightforward direct plot and that is Gradiska, showing to me that this is Gradiska's final establishment as the main character.
ReplyDeleteThe first thing that I noticed in the scene was the mise en scene. Particularly I noticed, as I said before, the change in environment around the characters. Specifically, there is sun and grass with high lighting to signify happy thoughts, as well as the location of Gradiska's wedding as it is out in the country whereas I would've expected them to be in the city with 100s of people or just something slightly more large. This is a symbol of change in the film as change is the theme of this last 5 minutes scene and thus, potentially making it a major theme in the film overall. The changes appear in environment, character placement (as they are now a closer more classic looking italian family at the wedding), and Gradiska's life as she has finally been married which is her big dream throughout the film.
Another cinematic element that I noticed was the sound design in the scene. Throughout the entirety of the film there seems to be a far more intimate design of sound than we see in this scene as we only hear a couple of people speaking at once regardless of the situation. In this scene since there is a wedding everyone there is heard shouting in their italian anger and passion again taking us back to change as a major theme as we now hear everyones thinking at once rather than individually.