Amarcord (1973)

Rome became so important to Fellini that he dedicated a trilogy to it, but he did the same for the city in which he grew up. Three films can be added to the "Riminsky" cycle — "Mama's Boys" (1953), "Clowns" (1970) and "Amarcord" (1973). In the latter, he doesn't so much show reality as send us into his own memory space, building a city based on his memories of childhood and adolescence. It's not for nothing that the tobacconist in the person of Beluzzi gets into the frame, the embodiment of Fellini's teenage fears of female sexuality — frightening, paralyzing, absorbing. The film also intertwines stories about the celebration of the arrival of spring with the ritual burning of the winter witch, about the death of his mother, about the first snow, about Mussolini's fascist parades that took place in Rimini in the 1930s. All these are fabulous, vital and tragic fragments from Fellini's childhood.