Roma – Fellini’s Roma (1972)

Directed by: Federico Fellini | 113 minutes | comedy, drama | Actors: Peter Gonzales Falcon, Fiona Florence, Britta Barnes, Pia De Doses, Marne Maitland, Renato Giovannoli, Elisa Mainardi, Galliano Sbarra, Paola Natale, Ginette Marcelle Bron, Mario Del Vago, Alfredo Adami, Stefano Mayore

“I’m throwing the cat off the balcony!” shouts a little boy in Fellini’s ‘Roma’. Rarely could a city be summed up in so few words. This short sentence has it all: the bravado, the overconfidence, the violence, the zest for life, the chaos and the immaturity that characterize the Italian capital.

In ‘Roma’, Fellini paints a vivid picture of his hometown. The city of food, nightlife and culture, but also the city of fascism, strict Roman faith and decadence. The film does not seem to follow a logical line, but is instead constructed from scenes that paint a captivating picture of Roman life like a patchwork quilt. Sometimes Fellini takes a trip into history, sometimes he sketches situations that are only recognizable to him and sometimes he seems to be mainly interested in Rome as an environment. At these moments he mainly uses the beautiful buildings, the rich palette of people and the cacophony of sounds as the ingredients for striking image compositions that serve no other purpose than to impress.

One might expect such a concept to yield a film that would be of particular interest to a patient and art-loving audience. Nothing could be further from the truth. Because of the rich mix of film styles ‘Roma’ manages to captivate a wide audience, although people who are looking for an evening of pure entertainment are not quite the right target group. Calling ‘Roma’ merely an art film, however, is the other extreme. Rather, this is a film that is somewhere in between documentary, feature film and travelogue. Often contemplative, sometimes lyrical, but more often observing.
What emerges from this observation is not an unequivocal picture. Rome is portrayed here as a source of contradictions, both among its people and in its culture. It is a city that is constantly in motion and at odds with each other, but it is precisely in this dynamism that Rome’s appeal lies. Here one does not find peace and purity, but chaos and filth in which the realization that one is alive is contained. Fellini’s ‘Roma’ should be seen as an attempt to convert this zest for life into dreamy film images that first and foremost act on the feeling and only then on the intellect.

As can be concluded from the above praised words, the film still succeeds wonderfully in this set-up forty years later. Using everyday scenes, Fellini manages to create an image of Rome that is both recognizable and disorienting. Anyone who has visited the city will recognize itself in the architecture, the street scenes and the apparently heated discussions that the Romans seem to have with each other on every street corner. At the same time, Fellini allows this everydayness to take on the contours of an abstract painting through the lack of a story, the mixing of film genres and his deviant view of composition. This realization finally sinks in when you, together with a group of motorcyclists, pass all the monuments of the city one last time, lit only by the headlights of the motorcycles and the artificial light of the lampposts. They are monuments that you have seen several times in your life, but you have never seen them this way.