You can’t go home, but you can recreate it on film. Often, a director will take a semi-autobiographical approach to a film at the beginning of their career, when the story they feel most compelled to tell is about their childhood or adolescence. Other times, a filmmaker who is far along in their career may find a new creative spark by exploring their own past.
400 Blows (1959)
François Truffaut’s debut is not only one of the most influential films ever made, but it also opened up a way in which a director could tell his personal story with stunning intimacy. 400 Blows centers on Antoine Doinel, a child who can’t help but get into trouble on the streets of Paris. Just like the young Truffaut, Antoine comes from a somewhat fragmented family, being sent to live with different family members before finally settling down with his mother and stepfather. However, despite Antoine’s problems with his parents and the authorities at school, who can’t figure out what to do with him, we see that cinema is an escape for him.
Amarcord (1973)
While in 400 Blows the director looks at the past from the point of view of the teenage protagonist, Armancord feels like we are experiencing a stream of memories coming back to the director as he looks back on his youth. The film’s director, Federico Fellini, returns to the coastal town in northern Italy, Rimini, where he grew up. In particular, he sees that he is recreating the time when Mussolini’s fascist party seized power in Italy, albeit before the tumultuous era surrounding World War II. The film is less interested in making a political statement than in showing a revolving door of colorful characters who exemplify the kind of vibrancy and humanity that can still flourish even when those in power try to suppress it.
Fanny and Alexander (1982)
It is hard to think of a filmmaker more dedicated to exploring themes that only adults are forced to contemplate than Ingmar Bergman. It is fitting that Bergman chose to make his last film about childhood, specifically a childhood not unlike his own growing up in Uppsala, Sweden. Originally conceived for Swedish television as a 4-part miniseries and released in theaters in a shortened (but still sprawling) 188-minute version, Fanny and Alexander clearly contains a subject matter that Bergman had no problem diving headfirst into.
Crooklyn (1994)
Although there is a character in Crooklyn who is a fictionalized childhood Spike Lee (he has big glasses and loves the Knicks), it is a rare example of an autobiographical film for many narrators. This is because even though “Crooklyn” was directed by Spike Lee, and it is undoubtedly a Spike Lee movie in style and tone, he also wrote it with his two siblings Joy Suzanne Lee and Sinkwe Lee.
