260 - Fellini's Roma, 1972, Italy. Dir. Federico Fellini.

Sunday, September 17, 2017

260 - Fellini's Roma, 1972, Italy.  Dir. Federico Fellini.

Caesar crosses the Rubicon.

Or in this case, the bandaged, barefooted Headmaster hobbles across the pebbled creek, leading his assistant and the uniformed boys behind him.

A statue of Caesar stands in the falling snow, its head and right arm partially missing, as a drunken homeless man hurls sexual insults at him in a poetic performance.

The headmaster brings the boys to see the statue.  They look up at Caesar.

Or possibly they are looking at the bottom of the large woman in the window above, singing in the window.

An amateur theatre group performs Julius Caesar.  "Et tu, Brute?"  Brutus kills Caesar.

The school students listen as the headmaster tells the story of the geese.  Or, they do not listen.  Some of them have bandaged heads.  The headmaster bops them on the heads.  Is he responsible for the bandages?

His assistant points to the geese outside the windows.  The boys run to the windows.  Little Fellini, a fictional character, runs to the window.

A couple years later the headmaster calls the now older boys from the cafeteria to the classroom where he will show a slideshow.  He shows slides celebrating Rome, the she-wolf, Catholic and Fascist images, a thonged woman.  What?  How did that slide get in there?  The boys sit in silence. Little Fellini smiles, stands, and claps.  The other boys follow.  The befuddled headmaster and his assistant attempt to tame the children.  They kneel and pray.  They stand and sing.  Change the subject.  Drown out the image.

A teen Fellini, another fictional character, moves into a boarding house.  He walks through the hallways and rooms, meeting the unusual people, old and young, large and small, who inhabit it.

He has dinner at a piazza.

Modern day.  Adult Fellini makes a film.  He passes through a tollbooth and drives down the modern Italian highway as rain begins to pour.  Fellini images bombard the road.  A white horse trotting riderless among the cars.  A man pushing a cart.  Hippies.  Whores.  Tanks.  Construction.  Fires. A protest.  Police in riot gear.  Traffic jam at the Coliseum.  Chaos.  Ever-increasing darkness and rain.

Nature.

A tall tree among trees.  A girl chasing a ball down a hill.  A tour bus arriving.

A smoky Vaudeville-like theatre.  Dancers.  An impressionist.  Laurel and Hardy and Chaplin in a trio.  The audience is restless.  Raucous.  Men shout for performers to leave the stage.  Performers argue with them from the stage.  A mother lets her toddler pee in the aisle.  A young man throws a wet rag onto a sleeping man's face.

This is Fellini.  The world is bawdy.  Carnal.  Ribald.  Irreverent.

Men enter tunnels to work.  They bring a cutter.  It cuts through the underground mud wall.  They penetrate into the other tunnel.  A catacomb.  They crawl through.  Ancient frescoes!  As clear as new. The fresh air immediately begins to corrode them.

A cheap underground whorehouse.  The men sit and watch as the women parade by, barking insults at them, shouting at them to come upstairs.  Like Ed Debevic's in a basement.  The men appear passive. Do they know what to do?  Do they even know why they are there?  The women have Fellini faces--long and narrow, excessively round, large eyes, large teeth.  Putting on a freak show.

A high-class escort service.  Like Christie's upstairs.  The men sit on luxurious chaise lounges in an art-filled room.  Exquisite decor.  Tasteful behavior.  The matron might be auctioning off a Ming vase.  The women come down and insult the men just as before.  The environment is different.  The behavior is the same.

A Catholic fashion show featuring priests and nuns.  A Woody Allen comedy.  A Saturday Night Live skit.

Fellini's Roma is a hodgepodge of short stories and travelogue.  Parts of it feel like a television documentary.  Parts feel like Fellini sketches.  It rambles.  It wanders.  It borrows from La Dolce Vita and 8-1/2.  It precedes Amarcord, which came out the next year.

Roger Ebert wrote, "Fellini's Roma was attacked in some circles as an example of Fellini coasting on his genius.  I find this point of view completely incomprehensible."

One might disagree with that point of view, but it is not incomprehensible--it is quite comprehensible; it is even obvious--nor is it an attack.  It is an observation.

The film lacks strongly defined characters and a cohesive narrative structure.  At first glance, Fellini merely rambles around Rome.  Is more going on?  Maybe.

Frank Burke provides a well-written commentary, asserting that this is his favorite Fellini film, and he makes a compelling case for its quality.

However, as vignettes go, the next year's Amarcord was an improvement.  This film seems like the seed that gave birth to that one.  Nor does Roma surpass the masterpieces, La Strada, La Dolce Vita, and 8-1/2.

It is Fellini, though.  And it is Rome.  At least his Rome.