Memory, Movies, And The Long Shadow Of Fellini

 Memory, Movies, And The Long Shadow Of Fellini

Date: February 2, 2026

Last night I happened to catch an early episode of Memory of a Killer on television. It was on the Fox channel, and they only showed one episode, so I will probably never see another one again. Even so, I was impressed by the quality of the production and the overall craftsmanship of the show. The acting was solid, the pacing was confident, and the atmosphere was handled with care.

At the same time, I could not help feeling that the story itself was a little unbelievable. The series is based on a small-time New York gangster, a racketeer type of character who owns a restaurant and somehow runs his own version of Murder Incorporated in plain sight. It is surprising how open he seems to be about his criminal dealings. Then again, welcome to the world of cinematography, where reality and fantasy constantly blur into each other.

The premise of the show is built around a hitman who lives a double life. He is both a feared enforcer for a criminal organization and a family man trying to hold on to something normal. To complicate things even more, he begins to suffer from early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. His failing memory threatens not only his work but also the carefully hidden structure of his private life. On top of that, he is drawn into a personal vendetta connected to his wife’s death, and he is forced to confront people from his past while trying to protect his family and remember the truth.

In a strange way, watching this show also reminded me of something else entirely. Just a few days ago, I was thinking about the fact that the President’s wife made a movie, and how the reactions to it have been slowly trickling down through the pipeline of criticism, praise, confusion, and misunderstanding. Some people say the quality was good, while others say the film itself was not very good at all. The story, from what I can tell, was about a powerful man, a kind of ruler or conqueror figure, and the strange world built around him. It felt like one more attempt to wrap modern politics in the costume of spectacle and mythology.

My own heritage and tastes probably shape how I react to these things. I have always admired the way Italian cinema, especially the work of Federico Fellini, mixed fantasy, memory, and social criticism. I was thoroughly influenced by the black-and-white evolution of Fellini’s films and by his way of looking at Italy after the Second World War. His movies often show a society that feels like a circus, a parade of clowns, illusions, and broken dreams. That strange mixture of beauty and decay has always stayed with me.

I think of one Fellini film in particular, where a small group of well-dressed, middle-class people drift from party to party while mourning a rich friend who has committed suicide. There is a famous beach scene where the waves crash, people wander around, and one character talks endlessly and erratically about the complications and tragedies of life. Marcello Mastroianni is there, looking both involved and detached, while clowns and circus figures seem to hover in the background like a surreal echo. The whole thing feels like a dream that is slightly out of focus, or a reckoning that never quite lands where you expect it to.

Fellini’s work also reminds me of the devastation that followed the war in Italy, when entire towns were damaged or destroyed and ordinary people were left wandering through poverty and uncertainty. Some survived because they were rich, and some survived because they were very poor, and almost everyone else seemed to be caught in between. These were harsh realities, but in Fellini’s hands they became stories that were both critical and strangely poetic.

When I think about modern political movies and the attempts to turn power into art, the comparison feels unavoidable. The recent film connected to Trump and his family does not strike me as anything like Fellini’s work. Still, it does stand as a strange and revealing artifact of how power wants to see itself. It is a bizarre movie about an Italian woman and an American man who calls himself a president or a dictator, depending on how you look at it. Somewhere in the background there is an unspoken demand that we are supposed to admire it, or at least accept it, and maybe even bow to it.

I also think about Sophia Loren and the impoverished worlds she portrayed in classic Italian cinema. Sometimes it feels as if Trump imagines his wife as a kind of modern Sophia Loren. I do not think that comparison really holds. Then again, maybe there are still people in America who have never truly tasted the deeper influences of modern art and cinema, and who might one day wake up to a more complicated kind of realism. I am not holding my breath, but history has surprised us before.

In the end, whether it is a crime series about memory, or a political movie about power, or an old Fellini film about clowns and broken dreams, they all circle around the same questions. They ask what we remember, what we forget, and what stories we tell ourselves in order to live with both.