Fellini’s fourth and final winner of the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, the somewhat autobiographical Amarcord (the title is a neologism for ‘I remember’ contrived from his childhood vernacular) is a tumult of stories of life over the course of a year in a village near Rimini in the early 1930s, often featuring lustful teenager Titta’s (Bruno Zanin) attempts to woo unattainable local beauty Gradisca (Magali Noël) and the more earthy, buxom local tobacconist. Underneath the Chauceresque humour is a current of melancholy that elevates the ribald to the sublime, whether in frequently beautiful set pieces or in the realisation that the film takes place in an Italy in thrall to fascism, which would shape the country in such terrible ways in the coming decade. 

Screening as part of the Federico Fellini retrospective, April 4th to May 10th.