Amarcord

Federico Fellini - 1973
A series of vignettes, surely autobiographical, through that busy world of Fellini's. And then, the striking image; let me take Mussolini's head, and the peacock in the snow.
They are clearly both fantasies of Fellini, representations of what the world was like, what it was felt to be like, the power and the imaginary. What I like is that Fellini does not blast them at us with awe (though they may be awe-some), but rather puts them in a local context, considers them, juxtaposes them with the ordinary, the completely unspectacular, to create something quite new. A peacock, the snow, the town; by themselves quite down to earth, as this film is, but together a strange new ambiguity is formed. Maybe I should be looking to late Fellini more for my kicks; the image as more important than what goes on, not a brutal image, but one that can act ass more than an accompaniment to words.