Beautiful, colorful and entertaining.
Added 11/22/2009
If you like looking at pictures, here is a fabulous movie for you. Every frame has a story, a character, a movement. Each one is a surreal painting, mysterious, unnerving and beautiful. A smirk, a leering maid, a huge landlady, a beggar with a leg in a cast, a greasy father, a man running with a handcart, a bus full of football fans, the sweaty unruly audience at the theater. Each one of these images holds more in a few seconds than most movies put into an hour. Or you can watch abstract compositions of mud on windshields, the golden radiance that surrounds the pope, the swirl of translucent fabric following a figure made out of skeletons, reflections of light on the plastic canopy over the camera, the shadows of welders on the walls of Renaissance buildings.
If all of this is a bit rich then you you can sit back and think about the ways in which Fellini is putting together not just a string of autobiographical sketches but also commenting on his own movie making. His camera, mounted on a boom, keeps coming back into the movie with questions about what can be seen, what this movie could be about be about; hippies, politics, the Roman Empire. Or should it be about the ways in which we destroy the past when we try to resurrect it? The air of the present destroys 2,000 year old frescoes.
This is a great movie, worth watching again and again.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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Fellini's Roma
Added 11/1/2009
As obtuse and out there as Fellini can be, I love him and his films. Roma is a classic.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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older Fellini flick-more or less documentary
Added 1/30/2009
I remember seeing this movie many years ago when I was in the UK. When I realized it was still available, I bought it. It was really only one scene that I remembered and liked and sure enough, I was right.
0 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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Interesting
Added 9/17/2008
The 1972 film Roma, by Federico Fellini, lies somewhere between his 1968 film Satyricon and his 1973 film Amarcord, not only chronologically, but creatively (The Clowns, from 1970, is a minor work, by comparison). It is a picaresque film, as both the other films are, and has some of the heightened imagery and poesy of Satyricon, while possessing Amarcord's humor and jabs at Fellini's Fascist era youth. That said, it is not as good a film as the two films that sandwich it for the very reason that it sits on that fence the two other films eschew. Whereas Satyricon was a freestyle adaptation from an ancient Roman work of art, with recurring characters in its vignettes, Roma is more of a travelogue crossed with memory, and the only constant within it is the city of Rome. The film was written by Fellini and Bernardino Zapponi, who collaborated on Satyricon, and, like that film, it is a visual orgy, filled with color and spectacle.
The two hour film is divided into a series of hallucinogenic vignettes admixed with golden memories that recount Roman history, Fellini's past, and the present of the city. These narrative streams and themes bounce back and forth, as Fellini tries to embody the very concept of Rome as `The Eternal City' of mythos (as opposed to the `city of illusions' that American writer Gore Vidal calls it, in a late cameo appearance proclaiming Apocalypticism as a vision).... Of course, the film would not be Fellinian without whores and midgets, and a slew of other oddities- human or not. This parade of grotesques is not limited to the material, but also to the very habits of the Romans from all eras, such as a scene at an outdoor restaurant, where the lower classes practice vulgarianism unabashedly. The film also has a number of uncredited cameo appearances, aside from Fellini and Vidal- mostly by Italian filmic luminaries such as Anna Magnani, Marcello Mastroianni, Feodor Chaliapin, and Alberto Sordi. The DVD, put out by MGM, is spare in the extreme, with the only bonus being the original theatrical trailer. The film is shown in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio, and is a fine print- the colors really show what a great cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno was; especially in the shots taken at night, where the lighting and the colors literally blaze in their contrast to the pitch. The art direction and costuming by Danilo Donati also shines, even more so than in earlier Fellini color films- especially during the stellar Papal throne sequence, which seems almost the antithesis (or genial parody) of Francis Bacon's Satanically satiric painted portrait of Pope Innocent X- replete with a throne that seems to explode in color and neon. That said, the only one of the Fellini regular crew who seems to be doing subpar work is the normally fantastic Nino Rota, whose soundtrack is barely an influence on the images. Whether this is because the music is deliberately understated or because the imagery is so overwhelming is debatable, but it's still a notable absence.
Overall, Roma is a solid film with great moments, but one that has more value as a work of art that bears scrutiny for its reflection of its creator, rather than standing on its own artistic merits. It is not as daring as Satyricon, not as ribald nor tightly edited as Amarcord, not as probing of the human condition as Nights Of Cabiria, not as intellectualized as 8½, nor is it as all-encompassing as La Dolce Vita. But, after all, how many films are? It is akin to dissing a drama of Eugene O'Neill because it falls short of The Iceman Cometh, Mourning Becomes Electra, or A Long Day's Journey Into Night. If it is best as a baedeker to those greater films in the Fellini canon, so be it, for it is a sojourn worth the undertaking.
3 out of 3 people found this helpful.
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Hard to appreciate
Added 12/16/2007
Roma is a film about Rome by one of the most revered film directors who ever lived - Fellini. As a piece of simple cinema entertainment this has little to offer; there is no plot and no characterisation, which makes it tough going if you are used to traditional Hollywood films. To have some understanding of the history of Rome will certainly help, but even then you may find this difficult to take. Where the film succeeds is Fellini's amazing direction and stunning use of images and colours. If you approach this film like you would a brilliant painting then it begins to make sense. However two hours is a long time to stare at a brilliant painting!
My initial reaction is perhaps a little negative compared with previous reviewers, however, I suspect that this is a film that will improve with repeated viewings. Nevertheless if you mainly watch mainstream movies I'd advise caution before buying - rent it or watch it on TV first.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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Beautiful, colorful and entertaining.
Added 11/22/2009
If you like looking at pictures, here is a fabulous movie for you. Every frame has a story, a character, a movement. Each one is a surreal painting, mysterious, unnerving and beautiful. A smirk, a leering maid, a huge landlady, a beggar with a leg in a cast, a greasy father, a man running with a handcart, a bus full of football fans, the sweaty unruly audience at the theater. Each one of these images holds more in a few seconds than most movies put into an hour. Or you can watch abstract compositions of mud on windshields, the golden radiance that surrounds the pope, the swirl of translucent fabric following a figure made out of skeletons, reflections of light on the plastic canopy over the camera, the shadows of welders on the walls of Renaissance buildings.
If all of this is a bit rich then you you can sit back and think about the ways in which Fellini is putting together not just a string of autobiographical sketches but also commenting on his own movie making. His camera, mounted on a boom, keeps coming back into the movie with questions about what can be seen, what this movie could be about be about; hippies, politics, the Roman Empire. Or should it be about the ways in which we destroy the past when we try to resurrect it? The air of the present destroys 2,000 year old frescoes.
This is a great movie, worth watching again and again.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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Fellini's Roma
Added 11/1/2009
As obtuse and out there as Fellini can be, I love him and his films. Roma is a classic.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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older Fellini flick-more or less documentary
Added 1/30/2009
I remember seeing this movie many years ago when I was in the UK. When I realized it was still available, I bought it. It was really only one scene that I remembered and liked and sure enough, I was right.
0 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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