Roma (1972)

"Roma" is a feature with neither plot nor timeline and composed by an edition of disconnected footages of Rome, the Eternal City.

Fellini makes a homage to Rome and depicts and entwines moments of the ancient and the modern Rome, such as during the fascist period of Mussolini; building the subway; in a traffic jam; a fashion show for the Church members; brothels with clients and prostitutes on display; repression; ordinary people on the streets and restaurants. For fans of Fellini and Rome, this movie may be a must-see; otherwise, it may be boring and too long.

My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Roma de Fellini" ("Fellini's Roma")

Fmovies: Fellini's films are a collection of unforgettable images, rather like reading through a photo magazine in a foreign language - you don't need to know the language to understand the pictures. The subtitles can be turned off and you can still follow one stunning vignette after another. Best of all, this film can be watched over and over because you will see something new or interpret it a different way each time.

Rome is seen as a carnival and the people are the freaks, carneys and revellers. Rome has been a great city for over 2,000 years and was once THE city - the center of the world. One cannot imagine New York in 1,800 years time, and certainly not Washington. The film shows the evolution of that great city into a noisy, overcrowded, modern-day nightmare of chaotic traffic, circling around the ancient ruins. Life goes on. We all turn to dust, but others come to take our place.

The most unforgettable image for me was the ecclesiastical fashion show as gaudy and vulgar as anything Ken Russell could dream up. My biggest problem was with the subtitles. Somehow I doubt that the viewers of Fellini's film choose to use vulgar American slang.

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.

Roma fmovies. 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.

Everything is revolving around Rome in this movie, its beauty, its decadence, its history, its inhabitants, seen with the eyes of our magnificent Maestro: Fellini. The scene of the war-period theatre is one of the funniest of the whole history of cinema and no subtitle can render it in a proper way, you should live in Rome for years to fully appreciate the dialogues. It's worth seeing for the countless characteristic "faces" that Fellini was used to employ for his movies, giving that special taste to his works we are still call "fellinian" nowadays.

As I already knew this film was virtually plot less I had not been expecting a great deal from Fellini, but I was given more than a great deal. Fellini sets out on an almost mythical journey through the shocking but wonderfully real City of Rome as he remembers partly as a boy and as a young adult. You could be mistaken for thinking that Fellini was criticising Rome but he is actually praising its vibrancy in a way in which only he can. There is no plot to speak of, just an array of both gritty characters and breathtaking backdrops. I am not surprised that this film has a relatively low rating because most viewers would feel that for a film a plot is essential. However in my opinion Fellini demonstrates that a plot is not always needed to make a film enjoyable, funny and gripping, as he showed with his brilliant account of his growing up in Amarcord. I would definitely urge you to see Fellini's Roma, as it is not an unbelievable storyline, but a pure film, which will grip you with its continuous vibrancies. 9/10