Word: amelia
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...short, it is business as usual around the television show We Are Proud to Present, which provides a few minutes of celebrity to the unusual or notorious. On the face of it, Pippo (Marcello Mastroianni) and Amelia (Giulietta Masina), would seem to fit right in. Back in the '40s they were a minor but prosperous dance team, imitating the high romantic style of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in provincial Italian nightclubs and variety houses. Pippo and Amelia are long retired, but their one-shot TV comeback will be a treat for old fans and an astonishment to the younger...
Actually, they are misfits in modern show biz, maybe in the modern world. Their routine may not have been much, just a modest impression of a unique and immortal creation. But in Pippo and Amelia's day, performers prospered because they were willing to do the hard work of polishing an artful act, not because they had the momentary nerve to commit an outrageous one. Besides, after they have endured the indifference of the youthful production staff and the chaos of rehearsal and performance (there is a power failure just as they begin their act, and a leg cramp causes...
Perhaps Fellini, who like his stars is in his 60s, is copping a generational plea: "Our kitsch is better than your kitsch." Maybe he means for us to see the faltering but brave Amelia and Pippo as surrogates for himself, still worthy of sober interest, maybe even moral admiration, although the headlines now go to younger directorial stars. Certainly he insists on pumping out more of the "Felliniesque," his trademark blend of the grotesque and the surreal, than we need to get his point that TV is vulgar and coarsening. More moving is his presentation of two carefully imagined archetypes...
...movies, of course, have long been partial to contemporary and often controversial social issues. But families in crisis have become especially hot topics since last January, when Something About Amelia, an ABC movie about incest, won both critical applause and big ratings. In October, viewers proved again that they will watch sober-minded dramas dealing with unpleasant family matters: NBC's The Burning Bed, starring Farrah Fawcett as a battered wife, drew the fourth highest ratings of any TV movie in history...
What conclusions are these TV treatises reaching about the family problems they tackle? One message is distressingly familiar: Mom and Dad, more often than not, are at fault. If parents have not overtly caused the problem (like the molesting father in Something About Amelia), they are, at the very least, insensitive or inattentive to the gathering storm clouds. In Not My Kid, the fact that the parents are completely surprised to learn of their daughter's drug problem is seen as proof that they have fallen down on the job. They are forced to send her to an institution, where...