Fellini's Roma

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Federico Fellini's 1972 ode to the city of Rome is far from a coherent narrative, but as a selection of images and sounds celebrating the famed Italian capital, it's dazzling and hugely enjoyable. Stylistically, it's a perfect bridge between the excesses of Satyricon and the nostalgia of Amarcord, and it showcases the true love that Fellini had for the Eternal City. Mixing autobiographical flashbacks with the travails of a present-day movie company making a film about the city (headed up by Fellini himself), Roma is an impressionistic tour de force, delivered via Fellini's unique cinematic vision. If you can't tolerate Fellini's larger-than-life approach, the sometimes-garish colors, or the circus atmosphere, you'll probably find Roma insufferable. But fans of Fellini will be in seventh heaven, especially during some of the wonderful set pieces--a music dance hall performance that's interrupted by bombing during World War II; a papal fashion show that's so surreal it must be seen to be believed; and a breathtaking sequence in which the film crew, tagging along with an archaeological dig, happens upon an ancient Roman catacomb and watches as the beautiful murals disintegrate before their eyes. Through it all, Fellini's passion for Rome (and moviemaking) shines through, especially in the film's climax, a dialogue-free sequence of motorcycles roaring through the city at night, a tour that ends at the magnificent Colosseum. At that marriage of past and present, Roma is about as perfect as cinema can get. --Mark Englehart

Description

Acclaimed director Federico Fellini (Fellini's Satyricon, La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2) brilliantly demonstrates why he is regarded as "the last of the great epic filmmakers," delivering "a thrilling personal memoir" (Newsweek) with this monumental and outlandish tribute to his beloved RomeThe Eternal City. This lavish autobiography, full of "lush fantasy sequences and monumental pageantry," (Los Angeles Times) begins with Fellini as a youngster living in the Italian countryside. In school he studies the eclectic but parochial history of ancient Rome and then is introduced as a young man to the real thingarriving in this strange new city on the outbreak of World War II. Here, through a series of "visually stunning" (Los Angeles Times) vignettes brimming with satire and spark, the filmmaker comes to grips with a "sprawling, boisterous, bursting-at-the-seams portrait of Rome" (Interview), reinterpreting with his inimitable style an Italian history full of "rich sensual imagery and extravagant perception" (Playboy).

Customer Reviews:

Fellini's scenic trip through Rome.............2007-06-24

For those of you unfamiliar with the works of the late, great Italian director, Federico Fellini, ROMA is one of those films that gives you a small view of the pacing and style of his filmmaking. It is at once gaudy, bawdy, scenic, lovely and horrifying. Sometimes these feelings are simultaneous and other times they are sequential. For me, Roma felt like a series of animated postcards, taking a glimpse at "contemporary" Rome (the Rome of the 1970s, when this film was shot) in contrast with the Rome of decades before (the age of El Deuce and the height of Fascist rule). We see boisterous scenes from street life, a "typical" evening in an outdoor restaurant, shots comparing the "free love" attitude of the late 1960s and early 1970s with brothels of the 1930s, and just incidental shots of a colorful array of characters interacting with each other. Some of the venues include a burlesque theater, movie house and even a cathedral, where the cardinal pays a visit and stays for a one-of-a-kind fashion show, featuring the latest styles for priests and nuns (you just have to see the habits for yourself, to believe that they exist on film. I am thinking Flying Nun meets Flying Squirrel.).

I was really intrigued by Fellini's use of spontaneity, incidental connectedness with his subjects, and backhanded humor. For me, the narration at the beginning made the film feel like we were watching it from the unseen "third person" that often tells a story from the perspective of a fly on the wall. Our narrator makes a brief on screen appearance, but, otherwise, his narration his minimal throughout the course of the story. That really opens up the atmosphere of the film and allows us to really have our own experience with the visceral animated portrait we are presented with. It ends as suddenly as it starts, and you feel as though you have just went on the strangest journey to the "eternal city," except you aren't sure what kind of acid trip you went on to get there! But, however strong the drug concoction, it is ultimately a beautiful and interchangeably odd ride.

Fellini in his prime........2007-05-13

What can I say? It's Fellini doing what he does best. As with other european movies, it's the antithesis of a Hollywood movie, which is to say that it's thought provoking and demanding of the viewer.

Bravo, Maestro!, .......2007-04-06

Beautiful and colorful Fellini's Roma (1972) is a very enjoyable film with a subtle message and a lot of heart. The magnificent Eternal City, one of the most famous cities in the world is deservingly the main character of this very personal for its creator, Maestro Fellini, film that can be described as a montage of unrelated scenes.

"Roma" consists of three parts. In the beginning, young Federico, the student in his native Rimini, learns about Rome from movies, plays, works of art, and from school history lessons. Then, as a young man, he arrives to Eternal City, strange, loud, and confusing on the outbreak of World War II. The third part takes us to the beginning of 70th when Fellini, the famous master is creating a visually unforgettable, full of life and history portrait of Rome consisting of several vignettes that take us back and forth in time and director's memory.

I think the reason I enjoyed "Roma" is that its vignettes have so much heart and love, irony , and interest to the master's favorite city, its past and present, to its streets, palaces, and cathedrals, and to its people, their laughs, smiles, and tears. Some of the stories are amusing (variety show, first Federico's dinner in one of the outside restaurants where everybody knows everybody) while some are very emotional.

A powerful scene takes place in an underground tunnel where subway construction workers discovered an ancient palace filled with beautiful frescoes of Ancint Rome period that later slowly fade out and disappear before our eyes taking with them a mystery of times long gone.

I loved the fashion show of nuns and priests; I liked the sequence with the prostitutes on display - both are typical Fellini's surreal scenes, funny and sad in the same time.

"Roma" is one of the best documentary style movies that I have seen. The main character in all its stories is Rome and that's the only character we need here.

Gracie Federico!

4.5/5

Fellini's Rome --- A Commercial Collection of Stereotypes. .......2006-09-19

There is a lot of traffic in Rome.
Especially on the "raccordo annulare", where accidents
are also frequent.
The traffic is noisy and dirty, especially when it rains.
Romans swear when they drive and also when they don't.

There are many American tourists in Rome,
especially around the fountains in the piazzas,
where they cluster and sing American songs.
Italian men hit on women tourists, who resist their advances.

"Se vedi gente che lavora, allora non e` Roma".
Romans do not work.
No, some of them do, and, in fact, morning till night.

But Rome is not what it used to be.
Everybody knew each other and was polite,
while now everybody is rushed and rude.
Besides, the free love of today has substituted
the brothels of yesterday.
Yes, some of the brothels were chic, while others less so.

Rome was bombed in the Second World War. In fact,
bombing would sometimes interrupt a theatrical
performance. The public then proceeded to the
shelter, where flirting and lovemaking would ensue.

The Roman aristocracy is close to the Papal Court.
They run parties together, even fashion shows.
Cardinals complain that outsiders try to teach the Pope
how to rule the Church.

And, yes! Motoryclists can and do go around the
Colosseum, providing a tasteless final sequence.

One leaves the cinema with a heavy sense of wasted time.

Does Fellini really have nothing at all to say
about the Eternal City? After all his years there?
Nothing except the
standard collection of stereotypes
about Italians, stereotypes that occur in every
scurrilous joke, that are met on the pages of every trashy guide?

It is true that there are a few nice sequences, especially
the often mentioned one of the destruction of the frescoes.

And then, the great Anna Magnani appears for about 10 seconds to tell Fellini she won't talk to him.

That is perhaps also a scene worth watching.

But the rest is commercial cinema.

"Vai a dormi', Federico".

At the Top.......2006-08-25

Fellinis's Roma is the director's fanciful excursion into auto-biographical self-indulgence on a magical higher level. Filmed after his psychedelic "Satyricon", Fellini extends his series of dream-inspired visual classics. Make no mistake, at age 50, Fellini still had it. "Fellini Roma" is a plotless, visceral delight. It is perfect. From scenes of the Rome subway to Musolini's Fascist dynasty, "Fellinis Roma" encompases scenes from the director's life in 1931 up until the hippie onslaught around 1972. It doesn't make sense. It isn't supposed to. It's great art. It's eye candy. I'm going to put on the DVD again.

Roma, Città Aperta (Open City) in Original Italian

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A realistic tribute to Italy's freedom-fighters...

Roma, Città Aperta (Open City) in Original Italian

ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

World War II | Military & War | Genres | DVD | Video
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ASIN: B000CBVVZK

Product Description

One of the landmark films of the 1940s. The screenplay was written by Roberto Rossellini (with Federico Fellini and Sergio Amidei) while Rome was still occupied by German forces in 1943-44. Rossellini began filming in secret, using scavenged film stock without sound equipment, shortly before the city was liberated in June of 1944. Several key members of his creative team had been active in the Italian resistance movement. With its rough, documentary-style look, multi-layered narrative, the film captured the harsh and unforgiving textures of real life as few movies of its time had dared. It set the pace for Italian Neorealism as an influential postwar film style that combined outdoor light and location shooting with non-actors, a focus on simple stories of everyday life, and a concern for the poor and for social problems. It shows the lives of a group of people living in Rome during the Nazi occupation, after the Germans had declared it an "open city." Anna Magnani plays a woman in love with a member of a resistance group; in helping him, she risks not only her own life, but also that of her unborn child. Aldo Fabrizi plays a priest who aids the anti-Nazi cause and pays dearly for his activism. Marcello Pagliero is an outspoken communist who runs afoul of the Nazis. And Harry Feist plays a German officer who has taken an Italian lover, but whose affection for Romans does not run especially deep. While Roma, Città Aperta shows flashes of the melodramatic sentimentality that would mark much of Rossellini's later work, it still rings true as a chronicle of a city under siege and as the genesis of a powerful new film style whose influences include such later filmmakers, as John Cassavetes, Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, and Spike Lee. ++++ DVD FEATURES: This officially licensed release from South Korea is All-Region NTSC Code 0 with 4:3 Full Screen display in Black & White and Dolby Digital Surround Sound in the ORIGINAL ITALIAN with English or Korean subtitles.

Customer Reviews:

A realistic tribute to Italy's freedom-fighters..........2007-01-12

The experience of defeat and occupation with the daily humiliations, was happily not one that the Americans or British had to undergo... But for those countries which did suffer under the frame of foreign oppression--France, Italy, Czechoslovakia and Poland--the experience left a heritage of bitterness deeply evident in their films...

Italy, however, was a special and unusual case: it was occupied by two opposing armies--the German and the American-- at the same time... And as neither side trusted the Italians they were left to get on with their own internal political quarrels of partisans versus fascist, within the limits, of course, of occupation...

It was these experiences that Roberto Rossellini recorded in his trilogy about war-- 'Rome, Open City', 'Paisá,' and 'Germany Year Zero.'

Rossellini called 'Rome, Open City' a film about 'fear, everyone's fear, but above all my own.'

Made under difficult a penurious circumstances towards the war's end, the film captures with an astonishing consciousness the whole experience... There is no need to recreate anything for it is all there, in the ruined buildings and in the people's faces... Rossellini had 'planted the camera in the middle of real life' and so spearheaded the Neo-realist film revival...

But Rossellini did more than just film things as they were... His creative genius molded what existed into a film of overpowering impact, an impact which does not recede with the passing of years... Out of his own particular situation he has created a magnificent story of resistance both concrete and spiritual which could not be broken by force... And in fact, it is only broken by the promise of luxury: Marina betrays her lover because she has been caught up in the decadence of the oppressor's world... But Manfredi when caught does not crack under the brutal torture...

Rossellini endows all those who resist, whether Communist or Catholic, with a special kind of purity... Manfredi, Francesco, Pina (played by the magnificent Anna Magnani), and the children all seem to have drunk of the same deep and clear well of faith... We see this especially in the priest, Don Pietro (Aldo Fabrizi), a kind man, wedded to a faith which obviously based on a true Christian humility... His humble activities as resistance worker only underline what he is already... 'It is my duty to help those who need it,' he answers when asked why he is taking such great risks... And when he is captured and tortured by the Gestapo he accepts his fate: 'It is not difficult to die well. It is difficult to live well.'

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Fellini's Roma DVD
Director: Federico Fellini
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Art House & International | Genres | DVD | Video

General | Foreign & International | Stores | DVD | Video
Product Features:

* The ultimate cinematic escape
* A collection of interesting and arresting scenes and images from Rome throughout history.
* Moments of great amusement with character

ASIN: B000M932SQ

Product Description

A virtually plotless, gaudy, impressionistic portrait of Rome through the eyes of one of its most famous citizens. blending autobiography (a reconstruction of Fellinis own arrival in Rome during the Mussolini years; a trip to a brothel and a music-hall) with scenes from present-day Roman life (a massive traffic jam on the autostrada; a raucous journey through Rome after dark; following an archaeological team through the site of the Rome subways; an unforgettable ecclesiastical fashion show)

Gente Di Roma (People of Rome) [Non-US Format, PAL, Region 2, Import]

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Gente Di Roma (People of Rome) [Non-US Format, PAL, Region 2, Import]

ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Art House & International | Genres | DVD | Video

General | Foreign & International | Stores | DVD | Video
Product Features:

Region 2 encoding (Europe, Japan, South Africa and the Middle East including Egypt).
Requires multi-system DVD player in the US.
Italian Audio, French Subtitles, No English Subtitles.

ASIN: 8388558919

Average customer rating:

Fellini's scenic trip through Rome......
Fellini in his prime.
Bravo, Maestro!,
Fellini's Rome --- A Commercial Collection of Stereotypes.
At the Top

Fellini's Roma [Region 2]

ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Comedy | Genres | DVD | Video

( F ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video

ASIN: B00008OP6L

Amazon.com

Customer Reviews:

Fellini's scenic trip through Rome.............2007-06-24

Fellini in his prime........2007-05-13

What can I say? It's Fellini doing what he does best. As with other european movies, it's the antithesis of a Hollywood movie, which is to say that it's thought provoking and demanding of the viewer.

Bravo, Maestro!, .......2007-04-06

Fellini's Rome --- A Commercial Collection of Stereotypes. .......2006-09-19

At the Top.......2006-08-25

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