The film doesn't strike any major philosophical chords, briefly coming close as men peer up into the heavens, but the lines uttered as a poem by a construction worker are powerful ('My grandfather made bricks / My father made bricks / I make bricks, too / but where's my house?'). I loved the scenes satirizing the Fascists and the Catholic Church, and they're all the more powerful in this context, where they are reduced in significance, and just another zany thing Italians dealt with (or deal with) in life. The message which comes through is loving, and about the gaiety of life, embracing its madcap characters and moments - moments which will someday live in our memories, hazy though they grow, as little diamonds of light. Fellini gives us a series of memories, fantasies, and dreams in the vignettes which make up his semi-autobiographical film 'Amarcord' ('I Remember').
