By Walter Sanders

Maybe the greatest cinematic love letter ever filmed, Federico Fellini’s 1973 Amarcord is a special treat on Valentine’s Day.

It’s a multi-layered, lasagna-like love story-a good looking taste treat of Fellini’s remembrances of growing up in Rimini. Through the eyes of his alter-ego teen character Titta Biondi, Fellini tracks a year (from spring to spring) in pre-WW II Fascist Italy.

Amarcord, dialect for “I remember,” is about his love of youth, his love of the seasons passing, his love of women, his love of political folly, his love of the foibles of love, his love of Rimini, and his love of being in love, his love of memory and how it expands some images…and laughs at others.

The characters are lush and over the top. Zio Teo, the crazy uncle, sprung from the asylum for a family picnic, climbs a tree and howls for hours like a horny wolf “Voglio una donna!” (I want a woman.) [Read more…]