Roma

Some people would complain that this movie has no plot, but does life have a plot? No, of course not! And so this movies goes, from scene to scene, through memories, collages, documentary footage, hallucinations, with only one continuous character but hundreds of faces, bits of conversation, music, all flowing around just like life when you are very drunk and everything in life makes sense, no matter how absurd.

This movie contains some stunning scenes: the "ecclesiastical fashion show"; the Roman traffic jam in the rain; the deli-style whorehouse; the family style meal; the discovery and destruction of Roman ruins during the construction of the subway system. You can walk in at any moment on this movie and it doesn't matter, you don't have to follow it to enjoy it. Perhaps this is true of all Fellini movies, I'm not sure -- certainly it's true of another favorite of mine, Satyricon.

Opinions may vary regarding the work of this artist.

One thing is certain: the man had a genius for making any person, place or thing a "Fellini subject": no matter where his camera pointed, what emerged on celluloid was a "Fellini image."

In "Roma" the shot could be a routine traffic jam; with Fellini not an ordinary one. Along the standard highway appears darkly hooded figures--one holding a silhouetted parasol--while a bonfire casually smolders, emitting clouds of black smoke.

It's no longer just a normal freeway but a Felliniesque creation mounted on the surreal palette of a genuine stylist.

Contemplate the quality of his characteristically rapid-paced dialogue, and you'll discover it's less communicative discourse and more self-indulgent chatter.

All the Fellini trademarks are there: big breasted women, clownlike characters, rude Rabelaisian remarks, all to brassy street band accompaniments tooted on worn, cheap instruments.

In some ways "Roma" picks up where "Satyricon" leaves off, minus main characters. It's all an extremely personal vision--and not a little bit weird, rather like temporarily inhabiting the domain of a slightly warped mentality.

Recalling my own visit to the Eternal City, I don't recall experiencing anything like this purgatorian collage. Then again, I suppose what we see is pretty much the result of who we are.

Made just a couple of years after Antonioni filmed his "Zabriskie Point" in Los Angeles, Fellini never "did the foreign thing," opting to remain working on his home terrain.

For Fellini fans and others with an interest in film history, "Roma" occupies a valid place for observation, notation and appreciation.

Beautiful and colorful Fellini's Roma (1972) is a very enjoyable film with a subtle message and a lot of heart. The magnificent Eternal City, one of the most famous cities in the world is deservingly the main character of this very personal for its creator, Maestro Fellini, film that can be described as a montage of unrelated scenes.

"Roma" consists of three parts. In the beginning, young Federico, the student in his native Rimini, learns about Rome from movies, plays, works of art, and from school history lessons. Then, as a young man, he arrives to Eternal City, strange, loud, and confusing on the outbreak of World War II. The third part takes us to the beginning of 70th when Fellini, the famous master is creating a visually unforgettable, full of life and history portrait of Rome consisting of several vignettes that take us back and forth in time and director's memory.

I think the reason I enjoyed "Roma" is that its vignettes have so much heart and love, irony , and interest to the master's favorite city, its past and present, to its streets, palaces, and cathedrals, and to its people, their laughs, smiles, and tears. Some of the stories are amusing (variety show, first Federico's dinner in one of the outside restaurants where everybody knows everybody) while some are very emotional.

A powerful scene takes place in an underground tunnel where subway construction workers discovered an ancient palace filled with beautiful frescoes of Ancint Rome period that later slowly fade out and disappear before our eyes taking with them a mystery of times long gone.

I loved the fashion show of nuns and priests; I liked the sequence with the prostitutes on display – both are typical Fellini's surreal scenes, funny and sad in the same time.

In improvement from "Satyricon," this time, Fellini, did not have any central characters presented in every vignette; and result is more satisfying: this is one of the best documentary style movies that I have seen. The main character in all its stories is Rome and that's the only character we need here.

Gracie Federico!

I have come to believe that Fellini is a genius (past tense would be irrelevant here). More so since as an American who studied film in Britain came to live my life an hour's drive from his birthplace when I was 49, 14 years ago. And discovered Italy. Fellini expressed Italy in the most accurate way imaginable. The so-called "Fellini crowd" does exist, everywhere here. Fellini lovingly satirized everything pitiful and shameful and laughable he saw around him.

I don't know whether I would call Roma a masterpiece, yet it is the work of genius. Fellini growing up under Fascism in Rimini, near the river (more of a stream really) Rubicone which Caesar crossed with his legion marching on Rome. Later, Fellini as a young man arrives in Rome at the outbreak of WWII. And Finally, Fellini in the early 1970ies introduces us to Rome. There is a plot! A very clear one. What's wrong with those who say the film consists of unconnected vignettes? But you have to live here for at least a decade or more to find the plot in Fellini's Roma.

Chaos is an Ancient Greek word, but it describes Italy to a "t". A chaos organized only in the imagination of arrogance of fascism and of the church, and of everyday ignorance.

"May I ask you a question" Fellini asks Anna Magnani attempting to interview her around midnight at her Roman doorstep. "No, I don't trust you, Federi, go to sleep" responds the famous actress. Should we trust him to tell us the truth about Rome, the Church, fascism and ignorance?

Fellini's ROMA imposingly alternates between two paralleled narratives in Rome, his salad days during the WWII and the beginning of 1970s, when he is an eminent filmmaker making a new film about the city, erratically charts its local customs and folk culture to pay homage to an ancient and great city. Structurally, the film doesn't stick to a linear one, instead it disguises with a pseudo-documentary style, in fact, most of the scenes were re-constructed in Cinecittà, however, Fellini stuns audience again with his majestic undertaking which significantly blurs the line between fiction and non-fiction.

The film is not just an ode to the city, more prominently, it is the clashes between past and present that reverberate strongly today. His young self (played by Falcon), a doe-eyed townie arrives in Rome for college, enjoys a boisterous dinner in the street trattoria with the entire neighbourhood, watches a shoddy variety show with crude spectators which would be interrupted by an air raid, flirts with the brothel for the first time; when time leaps forward to the 1970s, the flower-child generation is consuming with alienation and torpidity, a poetic episode of the underground metro construction team encounters an undiscovered catacomb, where fresh air breaches into the isolated space and ruins all its frescoes in a jiffy. A superlative conceit encapsulates the dilemma between modern civilisation and ancient heritage.

There is no absence of Fellini-esque extravaganza, the brothels during wartime are quintessentially embellished with crazed peculiarity and vulgarity for its zeitgeist and national spirit, where sex can be simply traded as commodity without any emotional investment. The most striking one, is the flamboyant fashion-show of church accouterments organised by Princess Domitilla (De Doses) for Cardinal Ottaviani (Giovannoli), consummated in an overblown resurrection of the deceased Pope, it is sacrilege in its most diverting form, only Fellini can shape it with such grand appeal and laugh about it.

Two notable celebrity cameos, Gore Vidal, expresses his love of the city from an expatriate slant, and more poignant one is from Anna Magnani, her final screen presence - Ciao, buonanotte! - a sounding farewell for this fiery cinema icon. The epilogue, riding with a band of motorists, visiting landmarks in the night, Fellini's ROMA breezily captures this city's breath of life, sentimental to its distinguished history, meanwhile vivacious even farcical in celebrating its ever-progressing motions, a charming knockout!