Roma

Trailer—Roma

source: Roma

Roma explores the city of Rome from several different perspectives, giving it a mystical life of its own that hangs in the balance between its rich history and its modern identity. With no real chronology, Roma is a tapestry of bizarre scenes and familiar images that blend together into a gorgeous visual carnival. Typical of Fellini, with the carnival comes a critique--and Roma tears through the city's political and religious history, satirizing the Catholic church and various faces of Italian government from Renaissance times through Mussolini's reign and on into the 1960s. While the camera lavishes affectionately over Rome's art and architecture and is clearly a tribute to the Eternal City, most of the sets in the film are constructed, reinforcing Fellini's narrative imagination and keeping viewers caught in a perpetual contradiction between reality and fantasy, history and the present, fact and fiction.

Even though lacking a plot, this part documentary/comedy film is really a mosaic of impressions of Rome, from when Federico Fellini first arrived during the 2nd world war, to scenes of Rome in the early 1970's. Personally I think Fellini's best films are the partly biographical ones,and this film is among Fellini's best ! The film is divided into mosaics or sections. Each section or 'mosaic' lasts about 20 to 30 minutes, and really is all about real life experiences of Fellini's Rome, filmed in slightly surreal, 'arty' style, dealing with the human element of Romes working class who nearly speak in the local vernacular or dialect 'li Romanaaccio', and because of that some scenes are really hilarious! (Except for the last section about the priest's/cardinals high fashion really boring, but very surealistic). The most grottesque is the visit to the hore-house by young Federico Fellini, as it was like during the wartime...horrible,surrealistic,and a little bit sad ! The section on the comedy theatre is the most funny and famous(the most famous scene: an irate spectator throws a live cat to a comedian making a poor preformance,to the ilarity of the audience !). The section gives an affectionate view of the Italian comedy/vaudeville theater between the two world wars called "avan-spettacolo" (before the show).Infact,before any film was shown in Italy the cinema would entertain the restless crowds with vaudeville type shows,comedy,magic and singing(usually skimply dressed women).These shows evolved into something well established so the films were shown elsewhere !! Many of Italy's best actors/actresses came from this background,where they had to do a hard apprenticeship,under the guidance of a master actor !Only after 5-10 years apprenticeship, could they finally aspire to be "avan-spettacolo" stars ! This explains why Italy's best actors/actresses were the 1950's /1960's stars of the Italian cinema,of which the most loved is Alberto Sordi.Here are the names of some these stars...Gianni Agus,Macario,Ugo Tognazzi,Marcello Mastroianni,Walter Chiari,Paolo Stoppa,Aldo Fabrizzi,Toto.....the list is endless..........all great actors, ...and I must say the Italian actors of today are a poor imitation ! No wonder !!,... they have no experience,but alot of pretensions,bordering on arrogance !! My vote for the film 8.

One of my all time favourites. My dearest Fellini. Still breathtaking cinema. A celebration of some thousand years in history of a major capital, once the center of the world. You can feel the athmosphere touching you. Nino Rotas music is a masterpiece of it's own - listen carefully. Definately a "must-see" over and over again and therefore a "must-have".

At the opening credits of "Roma", we are informed by our narrator and director Federico Fellini that this is not a normal film in the traditional storytelling sense, but more a perception of Rome, the way Fellini sees it. Sounds interesting? Well, it is, in that one must be so in love with their city to want to show it to the world through a series of small stories and shots of random happenings. I can relate: I have the same love for Melbourne. We shift from a portrayal of Fellini as a schoolboy with dreams of going to Rome, to a depiction of Fellini as a young man, moving to the city he always wanted to live at. There's also scenes of early 1970s theatre attendance, the almost ritual-like eating habits of the Romans, and then we move onto a documentary-like part of the film where we get to see Fellini's camera crew struggle as they try to capture the hustle and bustle of the entrance into Rome via a major highway, filled with drifters, animals, trucks, hitch-hikers, bikes, and more. The constant changing in scenes and stories is a bit messy, and could possibly confuse those not understanding what Fellini is trying to do with the film. At some times, I found myself questioning whether what we were being shown was a realistic dramatization of Fellini's past experiences, or some kind of farcical take on Roman culture (see the religious clothing fashion show scene!). The film is quite intriguing, taking in the sexual revolution of the era and putting it up against a city full of tradition. We are also exposed to some of the city's dirty little secrets, such as the surprising popularity of their whorehouses. It can't be denied that there is something endearing to "Roma" that allows Fellini to get away with a film that doesn't really give you much to take home with you, other than an idea of what Rome was like for someone in 1972, and what kind of life was lead to come to those perceptions. It is somewhat self indulgent, but Fellini does put across the impression that he has something to show you, something he'd like to share with you, because he has loved it for so long, and it still fascinates him on a daily basis.

Whereas a film like 'Bueno Vista Social Club' depicts a poor city in a charming and loving way this depicts the not so charming aspects of a relatively rich city, still with lots of heart and irony though. We get several episodes in this non-documentary like one about traffic, one about whorehouses, one about peaceful hippies being beaten by the police, one about the digging of tunnels for the metro system and so on. There is a frame story about Fellini, first about the young Fellini learning about the old Roma, then about how Roma is now, its not so important, but its well integrated into the whole story and shows how personal this film is. We get bombarded with the rude, the noisy and the chaos, as usual for Fellini a lots of things are happening all the time so don't watch it while not up and awake so to speak. The implications are many, the comments likewise. Its never sentimental, but it still opts for change. Wait a minute, isn't the Vatican in Roma(in double sense)? Well, check for yourself.

Director Federico Fellini's impressionistic tribute to Rome, Italy is both loving and disdainful, a past and present collage of a city in transition. Lots of gorgeous imagery, but the loosely-structured 'plot' doesn't warrant much attention. With action swinging back and forth in time, the film lacks a kinetic energy, and the inherent bittersweet nostalgia doesn't always carry it through. For those so inclined, a few of Fellini's trademark freaks do pass by, but the film isn't as garish--or as exciting--as Fellini's earlier works. It seems the artiste was in transition himself. Although the film won a technical Grand Prize at Cannes, it was snubbed at Oscar time. ** from ****

This film consists of many different mini films within a film and all are tied together because they have something (no matter how tenuous) to do with Rome. Some are rather touching, some are very crude, some are meant to be very offensive but none of them were boring and all were accompanied by the usual cast of Felliniesque extras (ugly people, huge breasted whores and the like). If I had been in Fellini's shoes back in the early 1970s, I might have been tempted to do what he did with ROMA. Instead of a traditional narrative or plot, he just took disparate images and segments having to do with Rome and tossed it all together into a compote of sorts without a lot tie it all together. What could be easier? While a new or struggling director would have probably been ignored or castigated for such excess and lack of discipline, since it was the great Fellini, then it was the work of an artiste. In other words, since he'd attained great international fame by creating some wonderful films, now he was free to screw around and do anything he wanted and STILL pack theaters and make the critics happy! Talk about a great life! Now as for me, I have a habit of being a nay-sayer--someone who often tries to see things from a different point of view. And while I used to think Fellini was an overrated "genius", in recent years I have come to realize he was a great director as evidenced by LA STRADA and so many other great works. Unfortunately, because I also buck conventional wisdom, I also feel that starting in the 1960s, sometimes the director created some awful films that were adored by snobs but left the common man wondering if either the critics were nuts or they were. Frankly, after seeing SATYRICON, CASSANOVA and ROMA (all films that often carried Fellini's name on the title), I think I know the answer to that! If you like surrealistic and artsy films that make you feel smug in your own sense of self-importance, then by all means watch and enjoy this film. As for me, I just think all these films were really a form of self-parody and Fellini was just having a laugh at the expense of his die-hard fans. As for me, I think I'd rather have a migraine than see this film again--no matter how good some parts of the film were. FYI--A warning to parents. This film has quite a bit of nudity featuring very unattractive women's breasts. There is also a scene where a little kid pees in the aisle of a theater--something I didn't need to see. Additionally, there is a rather irreverent jab at the Church near the end, so parents should exercise some caution before letting their kids see this--but on the other hand, what kid would WANT to see this?!

This is not a fiction movie. it needs to be seen with a different perspective. This is a movie about a city, one of the most beautiful and fascinating cities in the world. Fellini describes here the city, his feelings about it, his memories, the history and the people who live in it. One needs to look at this film like looking at a painting of an old master, not like at a fiction film. Then what is exposed to the viewer is a the full world of characters, some of them appearing on screen for a few seconds but stay in memory forever. It is the landscape of today, the memories and the history, the history that when touched by the air of the present melts under our own eyes as it happens in the fabulous underground scene. From the many films of Fellini this is one of the most personal, and a touching one. I loved it.