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Amarcord (1974)

tomatometer

90

Average Rating: 8.2/10
Reviews Counted: 42
Fresh: 38 | Rotten: 4

Ribald, sweet, and sentimental, Amarcord is a larger-than-life journey through a seaside village and its colorful citizens.

90

Average Rating: 8.4/10
Critic Reviews: 10
Fresh: 9 | Rotten: 1

Ribald, sweet, and sentimental, Amarcord is a larger-than-life journey through a seaside village and its colorful citizens.

audience

90

liked it
Average Rating: 4.2/5
User Ratings: 16,857

My Rating

Movie Info

Federico Fellini's warmly nostalgic memory piece examines daily life in the Italian village of Rimini during the reign of Mussolini, and won the 1974 Academy Award as Best Foreign Film. The film's greatest asset is its ability to be sweet without being cloying, due in great part to Danilo Donati's surrealistic art direction and to the frequently bawdy injections of sex and politics by screenwriters Fellini and Tonino Guerra. Fellini clearly has deep affection for the people of this seaside

Apr 3, 1998

Janus Films

Cast

All Critics (42) | Top Critics (10) | Fresh (43) | Rotten (5) | DVD (14)

Continues to resemble something a lewd, grouchy, fitfully indecent silent-movie director might have made for his first time using color and sound. That, at least, would explain the shouting.

December 22, 2009 Full Review Source: Boston Globe | Comment
Boston Globe
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Fellini is so bountiful with incident and observation that he makes most other film makers seem stingy.

April 27, 2009 Full Review Source: TIME Magazine | Comment
TIME Magazine
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Federico Fellini's films beg to be seen on a movie screen. Their panoramic, overstuffed frames and larger-than-life characters overflow the boundaries of home theater; their exuberant, generous humor is best enjoyed in a packed auditorium.

March 27, 2009 Full Review Source: Minneapolis Star Tribune | Comment
Minneapolis Star Tribune
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Orthodox Fellini lovers will give primacy to La Strada or La Dolce Vita, but Amarcord has its fans, and it's easy to see why.

March 13, 2009 Full Review Source: Washington Post | Comment
Washington Post
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He [Director Fellini] leaves us with the hope that the human comedy just may be able to survive everything.

February 13, 2009 Full Review Source: Los Angeles Times | Comment
Los Angeles Times
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This Fellini opus is his most accessible to mass audiences since La Dolce Vita.

December 3, 2008 Full Review Source: Variety | Comment
Variety
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Sweet and endearing for many, irritating and tedious for others.

February 26, 2011 Full Review Source: Movie Metropolis | Comment
Movie Metropolis

Amarcord lovingly pays tribute to the way memory fades away and imagination takes over, a process that grows more intoxicating with age.

February 20, 2011 Full Review Source: Slant Magazine | Comment
Slant Magazine

A masterpiece of personal filmmaking

December 30, 2009 Full Review Source: Cinemania | Comment

Seen today, Amarcord is something of a disappointment, clever and moving in places, but also sprawling, undisciplined, clumsy in patches, and decidedly overlong.

December 17, 2009 Full Review Source: Boston Phoenix | Comment
Boston Phoenix

[S]imply nonsensical to me. Fascists are idiots, Catholic priests are clowns -- I agree with this. So why don't I feel it?

December 13, 2009 Full Review Source: Flick Filosopher | Comment
Flick Filosopher

Bloated, overblown and essentially empty, Fellini's last hit movie skims over the surface of the lives it depicts, substituting manufactured sentiment for genuine feeling or understanding.

April 27, 2009 Full Review Source: Film4 | Comment (1)

Amarcord will make you howl with laughter and then choke back a tear. And all the while you'll be building your own memories of this landmark movie.

April 23, 2009 Comment
Kansas City Star

Watching the movie feels like flipping through a cartoon sketchbook of Fellini's vivid remembrances and formative experiences.

April 14, 2009 Full Review Source: Philadelphia Weekly | Comment
Philadelphia Weekly

I'm not sure how Amarcord played in the '70s, but now it feels like an affectionate parody of Italian movie conventions.

March 27, 2009 Full Review Source: St. Paul Pioneer Press | Comment
St. Paul Pioneer Press

Amarcord is Fellini's scrapbook of memories culled from his own life and it is completely engaging and delightful.

March 17, 2009 Full Review Source: KPBS.org | Comment
KPBS.org

It's one of the noted Italian directors more vibrant films that captures him at his most playful and incisive.

March 1, 2009 Full Review Source: Ozus' World Movie Reviews | Comment
Ozus' World Movie Reviews
More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for Amarcord

I admit I've never been a huge Fellini fan, but I found Amarcord to be quite engaging. If anything, it's a portrait of humanity at its most interesting. The movie is funny, strange and surreal, but all at the same time being grounded in the reality of the story. The only minor problem that I had with it is its

November 13, 2011
FilmFanatik
Tim Salmons

Super Reviewer

An unorthodox semi-autobiography of director Federico Fellini, 1930's Italy, Amarcord is a vivid and ill-tempered mock of the personal youth of the director-author enriched by adolescent desires and social-political subtexts. Bellissima!

September 10, 2011
Jan Marc Macababayao

Super Reviewer

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