Roma

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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.