Il  invente ainsi plusieurs séquences iconoclastes (la plus célèbre restant un délirant défilé de mode pour prêtres et religieuses) et fait reconstituer aux studios Cinécitta les quartiers populaires qu’il aime tant mais aussi bien d'autres décors plus fantasmatiques, ce qui fait de  « Roma » un enchantement visuel de chaque instant. Une œuvre foisonnante, surprenante et délicieuse.

© DR-Olivier Bitoun

                                              Défilé de mode écclésiastique au Vatican

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Bravo, Maestro!

Author: Galina from Virginia, USA
21 March 2005
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 Ancient 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.

In improvement from "Satyricon," this time, Fellini, did not have any central characters presented in every vignette; and result is more satisfying: this 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!

Life Has No Plot

Author: Wendy Darling from Atlanta, GA
16 September 2000
Some people would complain that this movie has no plot, but does life have a plot? No, of course not! And so this movies goes from scene to scene,through memories,collages,documentary footage,hallucinations, with only one continuous character but hundreds of faces, bits of conversation, music, all flowing around just like life when you are very drunk and everything in life makes sense, no matter how absurd.

This movie contains some stunning scenes: the "ecclesiastical fashion show"; the Roman traffic jam in the rain; the deli-style whorehouse; the family style meal; the discovery and destruction of Roman ruins during the construction of the subway system. You can walk in at any moment on this movie and it doesn't matter, you don't have to follow it to enjoy it. Perhaps this is true of all Fellini movies, I'm not sure -- certainly it's true of another favorite of mine, Satyricon.

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17 out of 20 people found the following review useful:

A non-traditional film which exceeds all expectations.

Author: Tgrain from New York
21 November 1999
ROMA is not the kind of film you may want to watch if you are in the mood for a made for TV movie, but perfect if you want to get away from one. The ultimate cinematic escape, it is a collection of interesting and arresting scenes and images from Rome throughout history. It does not concentrate on history per say, but excerpts Italian society and it's lifestyles from the conformity of Mussolini's time to the hippy dippy days in a non narrative, non-documentary way. Some things change, others stay the same. Don't expect to find much of a plot, but rather moments of great amusement with character and sometimes very involving images. ROMA doesn't insult it's viewers with it's unconventional liberties, and that alone makes it a worthwhile trip to take - even if only once.

 A portrayal of a love for a city

Author: Matt Whittle (mattreviews) from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
16 January 2005
At the opening credits of "Roma", we are informed by our narrator and director Federico Fellini that this is not a normal film in the traditional storytelling sense, but more a perception of Rome, the way Fellini sees it. Sounds interesting? Well, it is, in that one must be so in love with their city to want to show it to the world through a series of small stories and shots of random happenings. I can relate: I have the same love for Melbourne.

We shift from a portrayal of Fellini as a schoolboy with dreams of going to Rome, to a depiction of Fellini as a young man, moving to the city he always wanted to live at. There's also scenes of early 1970s theatre attendance, the almost ritual-like eating habits of the Romans, and then we move onto a documentary-like part of the film where we get to see Fellini's camera crew struggle as they try to capture the hustle and bustle of the entrance into Rome via a major highway, filled with drifters, animals, trucks, hitch-hikers, bikes, and more.

The constant changing in scenes and stories is a bit messy, and could possibly confuse those not understanding what Fellini is trying to do with the film. At some times, I found myself questioning whether what we were being shown was a realistic dramatization of Fellini's past experiences, or some kind of farcical take on Roman culture (see the religious clothing fashion show scene!). The film is quite intriguing, taking in the sexual revolution of the era and putting it up against a city full of tradition. We are also exposed to some of the city's dirty little secrets, such as the surprising popularity of their whorehouses.

It can't be denied that there is something endearing to "Roma" that allows Fellini to get away with a film that doesn't really give you much to take home with you, other than an idea of what Rome was like for someone in 1972, and what kind of life was lead to come to those perceptions. It is somewhat self indulgent, but Fellini does put across the impression that he has something to show you, something he'd like to share with you, because he has loved it for so long, and it still fascinates him on a daily basis.

A guide to Roma, Fellini style, go see it!

Author: Atavisten from Tellos
6 April 2005
Whereas a film like 'Bueno Vista Social Club' depicts a poor city in a charming and loving way this depicts the not so charming aspects of a relatively rich city, still with lots of heart and irony though. We get several episodes in this non-documentary like one about traffic, one about whorehouses, one about peaceful hippies being beaten by the police, one about the digging of tunnels for the metro system and so on. There is a frame story about Fellini, first about the young Fellini learning about the old Roma, then about how Roma is now, its not so important, but its well integrated into the whole story and shows how personal this film is.

We get bombarded with the rude,the noisy and the chaos,as usual for Fellini a lots of things are happening all the time so don't watch it while not up and awake so to speak. The implications are many, the comments likewise. Its never sentimental, but it still opts for change.Wait a minute, isn't the Vatican in Roma(in double sense)? Well, check for yourself.

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6 out of 7 people found the following review useful:

One of the best non-fiction films ever

Author: dromasca from Herzlya, Israel
12 April 2008
This is not a fiction movie. it needs to be seen with a different perspective. This is a movie about a city, one of the most beautiful and fascinating cities in the world. Fellini describes here the city, his feelings about it, his memories, the history and the people who live in it. One needs to look at this film like looking at a painting of an old master, not like at a fiction film. Then what is exposed to the viewer is a the full world of characters, some of them appearing on screen for a few seconds but stay in memory forever. It is the landscape of today, the memories and the history, the history that when touched by the air of the present melts under our own eyes as it happens in the fabulous underground scene. From the many films of Fellini this is one of the most personal, and a touching one. I loved it.