From, literally, the film’s opening title cards, Roma announces itself as something of a visual feast. A blood-red screen introduces us to the proceedings, with the four letters making up the Italian name for the nation’s capital of Rome fading in in all of their grand, pitch black glory. It’s a bombastic introduction to one of director Federico Fellini’s most esoteric and yet deeply personal motion pictures.
Also known in some circles as Fellini’s Roma, film critic Vincent Canby was right in suggesting that that specific title might be the real way we should look at this picture. While taking the title from the real capital city of Italy, this is not a Rome anyone recognizes at first glance. Seemingly a journey through the streets of a Rome from a universe just adjacent to ours, Fellini all but neglects anything truly resembling a coherent narrative,...
Also known in some circles as Fellini’s Roma, film critic Vincent Canby was right in suggesting that that specific title might be the real way we should look at this picture. While taking the title from the real capital city of Italy, this is not a Rome anyone recognizes at first glance. Seemingly a journey through the streets of a Rome from a universe just adjacent to ours, Fellini all but neglects anything truly resembling a coherent narrative,...
- 12/15/2016
- by Joshua Brunsting
- CriterionCast
Federico Fellini’s best non-narrative feature is an intoxicating meta-travelogue, not just of the Eternal City but the director’s idea of Rome past and present. The masterful images alternate between nostalgic vulgarity and dreamy timelessness. Criterion’s disc is a new restoration.
Fellini’s Roma
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 848
1972 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 120 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date December 13, 2016 / 39.95
Starring Peter Gonzales, Fiona Florence, Pia De Doses, Renato Giovannoli, Dennis Christopher, Feodor Chaliapin Jr., Elliott Murphy, Anna Magnani, Gore Vidal, Federico Fellini.
Cinematography Giuseppe Rotunno
Film Editor Ruggero Mastroianni
Original Music Nino Rota
Written by Federico Fellini and Bernardino Zapponi
Produced by Turi Vasile
Directed by Federico Fellini
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Federico Fellini stopped making standard narrative pictures after 1960’s La dolce vita; from then on his films skewed toward various forms of experimentation and expressions of his own state of mind. Most did have a story to some degree,...
Fellini’s Roma
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 848
1972 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 120 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date December 13, 2016 / 39.95
Starring Peter Gonzales, Fiona Florence, Pia De Doses, Renato Giovannoli, Dennis Christopher, Feodor Chaliapin Jr., Elliott Murphy, Anna Magnani, Gore Vidal, Federico Fellini.
Cinematography Giuseppe Rotunno
Film Editor Ruggero Mastroianni
Original Music Nino Rota
Written by Federico Fellini and Bernardino Zapponi
Produced by Turi Vasile
Directed by Federico Fellini
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Federico Fellini stopped making standard narrative pictures after 1960’s La dolce vita; from then on his films skewed toward various forms of experimentation and expressions of his own state of mind. Most did have a story to some degree,...
- 12/13/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
“Roman Holiday?”
By Raymond Benson
One of the great director Federico Fellini’s more curious motion pictures is his 1972 part-documentary/part-fictional collage that consists of “impressions” of Rome, both past and present. In many ways, it is the middle chapter of a trilogy that comprises Fellini Satyricon (1969) and Amarcord (1973), although not many film historians view them as such.
Roma is a love letter, so to speak, to Italy’s capital city. The film takes place in three time periods—sometime during the 1930s, the war years, and the present (i.e., 1971-72, when the movie was made). It is also very much a product of its time, when the counter-culture movement was still in full swing. The modern sequences of Roma are populated by “hippies” and long-haired youth, as well as motorcyclists, intellectuals (Gore Vidal makes an appearance as himself), and Fellini as himself. The sequences cut back and forth...
By Raymond Benson
One of the great director Federico Fellini’s more curious motion pictures is his 1972 part-documentary/part-fictional collage that consists of “impressions” of Rome, both past and present. In many ways, it is the middle chapter of a trilogy that comprises Fellini Satyricon (1969) and Amarcord (1973), although not many film historians view them as such.
Roma is a love letter, so to speak, to Italy’s capital city. The film takes place in three time periods—sometime during the 1930s, the war years, and the present (i.e., 1971-72, when the movie was made). It is also very much a product of its time, when the counter-culture movement was still in full swing. The modern sequences of Roma are populated by “hippies” and long-haired youth, as well as motorcyclists, intellectuals (Gore Vidal makes an appearance as himself), and Fellini as himself. The sequences cut back and forth...
- 12/7/2016
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
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