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In Roma, I wanted to get across the idea that underneath Rome today is ancient Rome. So close. I am always conscious of that, and it thrills me. Imagine being in a traffic jam at the Coliseum! Rome is the most wonderful movie set in the world.
— Federico Fellini
Certain film directors are so closely associated with
a locale that we automatically pair the two together--Truffaut
with Paris or Woody Allen with New York City. But
Fellini is
as firmly associated with Rome as Julius Caesar. Fellini's
1972 film, Roma, pays homage
to his beloved city, but unless you are a confirmed
Fellini fan, you should probably try his more traditional
films before tackling this one. It's pretty surreal.
Without a straightforward plot, this largely ignored
movie provides another autobiographical glimpse into
Fellini's life
through an entertaining array of visual impressions.
In fact, Fellini
appears in a cameo as himself, directing a production
recording images of modern Rome.
Another way to view Roma
is to adopt your "film student" persona to study this
work as part of the Fellini
canon—Roma is representative
of the way this auteur crafts his work, using a bare
outline and relying on creativity and improvisation.
Like most of Fellini's films, Roma
was inspired by a dream. He states in I, Fellini:
"I dreamed I was imprisoned in
an oubliette deep under Rome. I heard unearthly
voices coming through the walls. They said "We are
the ancient Romans. We are still here."
For this sequence, Rome's subway serves as the perfect
setting--a mysterious and dark place that frequently
comes across archaeological discoveries during its
excavation. We learn that Rome's subway had first
been proposed in 1871 but had been buried under tons
of bureaucracy and legalese for 100 years before engineers
and construction workers could begin the project.
The highlight of the sequence is when the drill breaks
through a hollow portion into a 2,000-year-old Roman
house, only to witness the frescos deteriorate rapidly
with exposure to the air.
Contrasts between ancient Rome and the more recent
Rome during Fellini's
life (from childhood to the WWII years to the 1970s)
are made throughout Roma.
While filming a modern tourist bus unload its picture-taking
foreigners on a peaceful Cathedral hillside, one elderly
man declares:
"This isn't Rome anymore. Everyone's
gone crazy. Too much of a hurry. They've become
mean. The true Romans have disappeared."
Yet, is this true, Fellini
asks? What are your first impressions of Rome? Recalling
his childhood at the beginning of the film, he shows
his first impression of Rome with a stone marking
the 340 km distance that lies in the fields just outside
his hometown. Then begins an elementary-school sequence
with a teacher who introduces Fellini's
class to Roman history, often by field trips. The
class even crosses the Rubicon as the teacher repeats
Julius Caesar's line "Alea iacta est!"
Early impressions include witnessing the city stop
for a papal blessing (while one nonreligious father
instead rants against the practice), trips to the
theater and cinema (with the often-referenced Fellini
favorite Greta Garbo on a poster).
Touches of humor are spiced throughout Roma—the
panicking teacher exhorting his young charges not
to look ("Whoever looks goes to hell") when a photo
of a nearly naked movie-starlet gets mixed in with
his Roman history lesson, the small child sitting
on the toilet declaring "I did it!," another young
boy urinating in the aisle of a crowded movie theater.
Fellini is
very down-to-earth and not above "bathroom humor"
in the basest sense!
Peter Gonzales plays the 18-year-old Fellini
as the handsome, restaurant-loving (and womanizing)
young man who first came to Rome at that age. He doesn't
have to do much, other than look bemused--the real
star of Roma is Fellini's
camera, which performs magnificent tracking shots
and shoots from interesting angles. The young Fellini
arrives in Rome just at the beginning of WWII, settling
into a large rooming house chaotically inhabited by
a menagerie of people, many of whom can easily fit
in with Fellini's
ubiquitous clowns.
There are some very funny scenes at an Italian restaurant,
where they don't just order spaghetti and fettuccini
and where no one is allowed to dine alone, as the
young Fellini discovers his first night in the city.
Imagine the stereotypical Italian family sitting together
discussing the food while gesturing wildly, saying
things like "The more you eat, the more you shit,"
or "No matter what you eat, it turns to shit." Who
says that Fellini
is pretentious?
Without beating us over the head, Fellini naturally
incorporates his recurring theme of illusion vs.
reality, most notably in a WWII sequence, where
the people believe Rome will never be bombed just
as Rome is being bombed--their belief isn't
based on reality. At the same time the Rome citizens
never forget about sex--the young Fellini
emerges from the bomb shelter arm-in-arm with the
lonely German blonde singer whose husband is fighting
on the Russian front. He has been invited to her home.
Some of the longer sequences occur in brothels after
Fellini compares
the young hippies hanging around the fountains with
their ideas of "free love" to his younger days during
the war, when visits for "paid love" were frequent.
In keeping with Fellini's earthiness, the professional
women shown here are anything but glamorous--they
are ample-breasted, well-fed, and sexually experienced
middle-age women who parade around the room of men
taunting them to give them a try. In America, only
a director like John Waters would think to cast some
of these large-bodied women as prostitutes, but Fellini
provides a touch of realism from his youth in these
scenes. Or is he toying with us?
Later a parallel scene with Catholic nuns, priests,
and cardinals provides the laughs, as they participate
in a "fashion show," modeling the latest in habits
and vestments for an audience of professional Catholics.
This is not the first time Fellini
has paired the sacred and the secular together, but
this is certainly the most humorous instance.
Watch for a poignant cameo by Italian actress Anna
Magnani near the end, appearing as a creature who
sleeps during the day and prowls the streets by night
to symbolize the city itself--"she-wolf and vestal
virgin, noblewoman and fishwife, somber and festive."
Her "Ciao" to Fellini
is the last word she would ever speak on the screen--she
died shortly after filming.
The collage of surrealistic images will seem bizarre
to Fellini
neophytes, but there are so many great individual
moments that will have audiences laughing despite
their confusion. Roma actually
makes a lot more sense if you have previously seen
other Fellini
work that treads familiar ground. Always at the center
is Fellini's
love of his beloved city. As a mini-guide to what
you have been seeing, Gore Vidal provides pertinent
commentary in a restaurant scene near the end:
"Rome is the city of illusions.
Not only by chance, you have here the church, the
government, the cinema. They each produce illusions
like you and I do."
The first time I saw Roma,
I had only been to the Rome airport, so my first impressions
of the Eternal City consist mostly of a chaotic terminal
with numerous armed uniformed guards. But Fellini's
Roma convinced me to add
Rome to my "must see" list (and I've visited the city
twice so far). Sadly, Fellini no longer can create
new imagery of Rome for us. But we have his body of
work to refer to in order to gain insights into his
beloved city and into our own dreams and imaginings.
Roma should not be the first
Fellini movie
on your list, but it ranks as a fine piece of filmmaking
for devotees.
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