"You never have to jerk off; that's what's nice about Rome."

Though his previous film (The Clowns) had been a relative disappointment for Federico Fellini both critically and with audiences, the early-1970s still represented a period of international ascendancy for the Italian maestro. This outpouring of veneration would reach its zenith with 1973's Amarcord, a series of bawdy episodes depicting Fellini's early years in the provinces during the nascent era of Italian fascism. But just before Amarcord Fellini would first tackle Roma, a love poem to his adopted home whose depiction in La Dolce Vita had made him a household name a dozen years prior. Like Amarcord it is structured in vignettes, though Roma is an altogether more experimental film—merging…

Monument versus motion appears to be a central theme to Federico Fellini’s Roma, an abstract homage to the city itself that contains characteristically semi-autobiographical and self-deprecating elements in its amorphous narrative and episodic structure. More of a highly-personal, coming-of-age vision of the Eternal City than anything as directly self-referential as his more lauded works like 8 ½ or La Dolce Vita, Rome in all its contradictory glory is the true star of this endearingly bizarre, encoded love letter. Though I’ve only seen 3 ½ Fellini films, I’m not prepared to say it isn’t my favorite of them so far—while still exemplifying hallmarks of grotesquerie and hyperbole, Fellini also manages to flesh out his relationship to Rome and its identity as…

Fellini's "Roma" is a homage to the city the director dreamed of as a boy, discovered as a youth, and experienced fully in a lifetime of filmmaking. It is at once a history and a fiction, a tribute and a rebuke, a love story and a tragedy. For Rome to Fellini is not one city, but the city, "The Eternal City," for better and for worse.

Here we see scenes of Fellini as a child (Stefano Mayore), growing up in the country and learning of Rome through books, lectures, slide shows at school and the idle chatter of adults. He goes to the cinema and sees how ancient Rome is portrayed in silent moving pictures, and he imagines going there…

Federico Fellini's Roma sees the authoritative Italian director turning his cameras on Rome to deliver an impressionistic and dazzling portrayal of Italy's capital city: the Eternal City. Based on the director's life during the Mussolini years, the comedy-drama features a loose, nonlinear structure where the ever-shifting vignettes evolve in some measure into a travelogue designed by relentless recollections and myth.

It features a scarcity of the coherence that differentiates Fellini's more distinguished work such as La Dolce Vita or 8½, and more like a continuance of his visualisations from Satyricon. Through an unrestrained and periodically turbulent succession of scenes, the filmmaker inevitably puts together some visionary, extraordinary, and yes, self-indulgent moments during the films two-hour-plus runtime.

The director offering up…

Honestly it seems Fellini’s more surreal and abstract films are hit or miss for me. The main differentiator seems to be whether I feel there’s still thematic connections or a very subtle plot that I can follow, one that comforts me and allows me to transverse the bizarre, exuberant, and nostalgic journeys Fellini puts his audience through. With Roma, it was hard for me to get much out of it other than it’s individual pieces. The church fashion show, the hecklers in the theater, and the brothel are all amazing scenes, but I question whether they fit well together in the film, even in an abstract or loose manner. Films like Amarcord, which is similarly structured, work much better for…

Roma is Fellini’s amalgam of fantasies, memories, nostalgias, desires, dreams, theories and commentaries about the city that made him what he was. The result is a powerful and stunning experience, somewhat overextended and definitely unbalanced, but whose components, good and bad, are part of the charm and puzzlement of what it is to watch a Fellini picture.

As Fellini has proven dozens of times, he is a visual painter above all, shooting here some of the most intricate and striking sequences in his career. The underground scene where antique frescoes are discovered and then destroyed by the modern city’s air is absolutely impeccable and crammed with symbolism; the traffic sequence is beautifully photographed, using lights, angles and movements to compose…

The disjointed line between embrace and mockery

Fellini’s Roma is one of the most delightful films I’ve seen. At least one of the most I’ve continually smiled ear to ear for it’s entire runtime. It’s a film. Fellini wants to make sure you understand that. He deliberately builds a fantastical world (as he does best) full of strange faces, extravagant costumes, set pieces and, of course, Italian behaviour. But he will occasionally take off his “Fellini lens” and show you reality. 

Each face tells a story, and each story is a part of a bigger story. The story of Rome, a city so notorious that even Fellini was scared to capture its reality. So he didn’t, he made his own,…

Included In Lists:
Criterion Collection - #848

Injected with the same passion that Woody Allen captures New York in his films, Federico Fellini’s Roma is a love letter to Italy’s capital; the city that defined his life from young adulthood. Divided into stories that take place in the past and present, both a reflection of Fellini then and now, showcases the city with all it’s flaws and virtues.

It is nostalgic in it’s treading of the past, exploring the realms of dining, prostitution and show business with such romantic strokes, amplifying nuances that feel both at times mythical and honest, qualities that permeate throughout his filmography. Segments that take place in the present showcases Rome in a state of conflict…