Amarcord may be the director's warmest, most subdued film (who goes to Fellini for warmth and good nature?), but it is also his safest. I miss the grand flourishes, the master showmanship, the epic heightening, that I've come to expect from Fellini. Amarcord lacks the vigor and drive, the joyous high spirits and sense of release that have been for me the chief pleasures of Fellini's work….

Amarcord is a trimming away, a paring down, rather than a return to the style of his earliest films…. Fellini has always shown impatience with strict realism. Rather than objectively recording the surfaces of Italian life, he always worked from personal predilections that hardened into obsessions. (p. 50)

Amarcord, like all of Fellini's work, far from being a "return" or a "departure," is a blend of the real and the fanciful—it's a distinctly stylized version of Italian life. This time, though...