Don't Believe the Hype

Absolutely Brilliant!

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

In this movie Federico Fellini attempts to contrast the Rome of his youth with modern day Rome with mixed results. The Rome of his youth is gaudy, earthy, raucous, but with a sense of community, while all that is lacking in the present day, yet Rome endures despite the changes. Fellini clearly yearns for the earlier time and provides a glimpse of a world and subculture that is now extinct. Oh, to go back to the days when neighborhoods existed, when people knew each other, when life was simpler and more fun. Yet the problem is that the movie lacks any real dramatic content. The movie is basically consists of anecdotal vignettes that show the ridiculous side of life, yet it's all based on caricatures that lack substance. As a result, the movie is dramatically flat. One can appreciate Fellini's attempt to recreate a happier bygone era but people are more than just caricatures and to portray people as such becomes a form of mockery which is ultimately unfair.

Federico Fellini's love for his adoptive city was unique. It was only natural he would make this film in which his awe and admiration for what became his playground is captured in vivid images which only could come from one of the most important masters of the Italian cinema of all times. The film is both a comedy and a sort of documentary in which we watch the director, himself, performing the role of what he did behind the camera, for our benefit.The film is autobiographical in many aspects. We watch as the young Federico, an aspiring journalist arrives in Rome from his native Rimini. His new home is in an apartment where he has been recommended to stay by relatives. The place was pure chaos with the many different Roman characters he found there. The heat of the summer brought everyone to the streets where dining was an art. The food in great proportions in spite of a war going on. Fellini is an observer of his new surroundings. The woman street singer that goes through the tables, reminds us a little bit of Gelsomina, an immortal character created by the director, and also of Cabiria, the fun loving prostitute.Rome, being a the chaotic place it was, is presented at a dizzying speed by the director who has taken his camera outside along a busy highway as fans from Naples arrive to attend a soccer match against the local team. The autostrada is some is a metaphor that emphasizes the confusion and the chaos anyone feels when arriving to Rome. Fellini ends it all in a massive car tie up in the street around the Colosseum. Fellini renders homage to his city in the last sequence as well taking the viewer through a night ride by motorcyclists that passes by all the best known monuments of the city.We are also taken to a neighborhood music hall that presents vaudeville acts. The atmosphere was typical of the one found in such places where everyone went to have a good time with their friends and neighbors. These places attracted a rough crowd that made a tough place for performers in which to act. Theater in Italy, although not remotely close to the scene Fellini shows, is a place where the real drama is not presented on stage; the real show is given by all the people that go to be seen without shame of behaving in strange ways.The subway excavation sequence offers an interesting aside in which the present day and the olden times come together when the workers discover a Roman home underground. The magnificence of the images that are discovered reveal the proud past of one of the oldest and most artistic civilizations of all times. Alas, it is only short lived because of the air that penetrates the hidden frescoes found under the rubble make them disappear.The brothel also played a big part in the sentimental education of the maestro. We have seen prostitutes in all of of Fellini's films in one way, or another. He wants to take us to two different kinds of pleasure houses, one for the common citizen and a high class one that closes up when important celebrities decide to have private fun. Fellini juxtaposes the scenes at the brothels with a gathering of the Catholic Church higher ups that have come to Princess Domitilla's palace for an ornate fashion show for ecclesiastical fashion that is decadent in the excesses presented. Like with other Italian creators, Fellini had an ongoing love-hatred by the institution that has ruled the lives of Italians for centuries."Fellini's Roma" was a great creation by Federico Fellini. It is as important as some of the other films because it captured the soul of the city Fellini loved so much. This was possible because of the images cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno, a amazing photographer of many of the director's work. Nino Rota's musical score is also an asset in the film. The cast is enormous to single out anyone, they all contribute to make this film a tribute to Rome, the eternal city.

The first half an hour of Roma is as good as anything that Fellini has made. Not following any real discernible plot, these 30 minutes largely show the thrill of a sprawling, wild lower middle class house that a young man (Fellini?) comes to stay at in Rome in the late 1930s. The scene where all the families in the apartments come out to eat pasta and snails(!) in the open air at night is thrilling for its use of stream of consciousness switch from one conversation to another - portraying the dynamism and the cheeky irreverence of Roman street life. This is film making at its best. Thereafter we switch to 1970s Rome and the mood becomes bleak. A long sequence of cars in a traffic jam in the rain with the conversations now all separate as people sit secluded away from each other. This appears to be a bleak comment on how Roman life has lost its zest. There are more switches of mood and scene all with no clear link other than they are based in Rome. Its all a bit confusing, but the first 30 minutes make it worth it. Woody Allen was clearly watching as there are many references here used in his films.

Fellini's Rome is a very weird film: it has not a clear plot, in fact there isn't any main character but the great city of Rome. We can watch different people from different times living and enjoying Rome. As a movie without plot it could become absolutely boring and annoying, but the greatness of Fellini transforms it in a curious portrait of characters that go up and down in the city. It is clear that it is an exercise of exquisite quality in directing, the main problem is that it is difficult to the film to be more than that. Had the movie a worse director, it would have been one of the worst films ever made. Being directed by Fellini, it becomes a curios strange film. I have not liked it at all, but I have to admit that the directing is great.