Masters of Cinema released one of their first Fellini discs with the underappreciated Il Bidone, now comes their second release in as many months – the director’s esoteric microcosm of Roma and one of his most acclaimed films of the 1970s. The film drafts historical moments from pre-and-post war Italy, with a young Fellini (Peter Gonzales) lost in this new world. Education, food, community, sex, art and war inform these episodes. Each passage is staged with the gorgeous attention to detail, passion and social shrewdness that has made Fellini one of the most renowned directors of all time.
Of these episodes, the one to draw the most attention is a passage where a pageant is staged for religious figureheads. Staged with a fantastical range of colours and visual invention this act presents the religious elite as unreal entities. It’d be more noticeably satirical if it wasn’t so stunningly to look at. Fellini’s Roma pageantry is a procession of shots, scenes, happenstances that function on the premise of visual poetry throughout, with the added bonus of the occasional bout of biting satire. As the film opens, we are introduced to a young Fellini in school with all the religious trappings and the school headmaster screaming that the children will all ‘go to hell’ if they look at a rogue slide that shows the bottom of a woman. It’s with that upbringing that the aforementioned scene shines so brilliantly and otherworldly.
… the scale of the operation that Fellini was afforded would also make any Hollywood set-builder weep with envy. It’s a beautifully poignant moment made all the memorable by its reliance on visuals.
FELLINI’S ROMA
Moving from this world interested only in the pure intentions of religion, we are introduced to Rome with a scene in a cinema where a fight for a row of seats becomes a source of comedy. From that hint, we are introduced into a Rome which can only be described as a state of pure chaos, bodies everywhere with each one trying to be the loudest in the room. Something eloquently depicted in a scene around a series of dinner tables, the figures of speech and the voracious appetites turn something as simple as an evening meal into a huge deal. It is in those hilariously blunt, made up on the spot, adages that we find the spine of what defines Fellini’s Roma, it’s not the beautiful historical architecture but the stereotypical Italian male. This is at least true with an outsider’s perspective.
Ironic it is then that the films at its best in an episode of near-perfect visual storytelling. Deep under Rome, the Roman authorities are looking to build an underground railway like those dotted across Europe, a task made more difficult by the construction team stumbling across long-lost bygone monuments every few hundred yards. Visiting the site is the Fellini cypher and a female companion, as we join them they’re chugging along a rudimentary rail line on their way to a recently unearthed catacomb. The pair are speechless at the treasure-trove they’ve found, a state that is interrupted by the fresh air from the surface calcifying the art, destroying it forever. In all its crudeness of message, it’s a perfect visual presentation of the way old Rome and new Rome cannot exist together. Not only that, but the scale of the operation that Fellini was afforded would also make any Hollywood set-builder weep with envy. It’s a beautifully poignant moment made all the memorable by its reliance on visuals.
There can no bones made about it, this isn’t a typical review for the simple reason that Roma isn’t a simple film. For everybody who meets the film with a wide-eyed sense of wonder, there will be another person frustrated by a lack of story, character development or any other cues found in narrative or even documentary film. Look past those irregularities and the film presents itself as a poetic, visual painting of Roman life.
Fellini’s ROMA was released on Masters of Cinema Blu-Ray
UNFORTUNATELY, FELLINI’S ROMA IS NOW OUT OF PRINT
