Fellini's Roma, Sweet and Decaying City

Someone suggested that Federico Fellini should make a movie set against an exotic journey, Fellini said in his memoirs. There was a boom in this type of film at that time. American television wanted to send Fellini to Tibet, India, or Brazil to make a film involving religion and local charm. "It was an attractive proposal, and I immediately agreed, but I knew I wouldn't go. I was fine staying here, so my answer was, let's make a movie about Rome because I live in Rome and I like this city." So in 1971, Michelangelo Antonioni travelled all over China between cities and rural areas to shoot "China" of that era. Federico Fellini used sets built at the Rome Film City to create his "Roma" in his mind.

It's not the real Rome, but a Rome that exists only in Fellini's heart and belongs only to him.

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The ending of "Roma" sees the camera panning to an American writer living in Rome, who is expressing his feelings for the city through the character. “Rome is a place full of fantasy, with churches, government, cinemas that make you dream. We are getting closer and closer to Armageddon because there are too many people, too many cars, too much medicine. Which city can compare to Rome that has been reborn so many times? Where is it more peaceful than Rome to welcome humanity's end? It's an ideal city for me to wait and see if it really will end.” For Fellini, Rome is an eternal city. It is complex and multifaceted.

“Rome, a horizontal city, stretched out, is the ideal platform for fantastic vertical flights.”

“Rome is a mother, and the best mother one could wish, she is indifferent. It's a mother who has too many children, so she can't dedicate herself to you, nor does she ask any thing of you. She doesn't expect anything. Rome receives you when you come, lets you go when you leave, as in Kafka's courtroom.”

“With her placentary belly, she prevents neurosis but also prevents a real maturity. Here there are no neurotics, but no adults either. It is a city of wilful children, sceptical and rude; even a little deformed, since to prevent growth is unnatural.”

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However, Fellini's first impression of Rome was a stone marker sticking out of the ground - "Rome: 340km". This clip appears at the beginning of "Roma." Obviously, this place is Rimini, Fellini's hometown.

Rimini is just the womb that gave birth to him, and Rome is where life truly begins. "When I saw Rome for the first time, I smelled the scent of home. I was born on the day I arrived in Rome. Since then, I've never wanted to leave Rome."

Rome Is A Film In His Heart

Fellini was born in a small town by the Adriatic Sea called Rimini. His father came from the countryside, while his mother was a Roman. He had a deep longing for Rome since he was young. He had the blood of Romans flowing through his veins, so he couldn't wait to rush to Rome when he turned adult.

In 1939, the year World War II erupted, Federico Fellini was set to enrol at the University of Rome when he fortuitously developed a heart condition, sparing him from conscription. Despite this, he faced further scrutiny during conscription checks imposed by the Germans. However, his conscription records vanished when the hospital that held them was destroyed, allowing Federico to evade conscription once more. During his university tenure, he crossed paths with Giulietta Masina, who had a role in one of his plays. Their relationship blossomed, leading to their marriage in 1943.

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Fellini spent the majority of his life in Rome, with only a brief period in Florence as an exception to his local residency. He seldom ventured outside of Italy, and when he did travel abroad, it was often under obligatory circumstances. Reporters chronicled his experiences upon arriving in the United States, portraying Federico Fellini as somewhat out of his element—a fish out of water. Despite any underlying exhaustion, he endeavoured to conceal it through polite gestures and surface-level interactions.

Fellini intricately weaved his life experiences into his films. The year following the release of "Roma," he returned to his hometown of Rimini to shoot "Amarcord" (1973), using it as a poignant farewell to both his youth and the place that held sentimental value in his life. In "I Vitelloni" (1953), one of his earlier works, Fellini poured his memories and emotions into the character of Molo, portraying the monotony and emptiness of Rimini through the eyes of an idle teenager. At the conclusion of the film, Molo boards a train in the early morning, leaving his destination ambiguous. The train driver in the movie asks viewers where Molo is headed, but Fellini deliberately left this unanswered. Nevertheless, it is widely believed that his intended destination was Rome.

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After the release of "I Vitelloni", Federico Fellini collaborated with two long-term co-writers to create the script of "Moral Tale". This script never had the opportunity to be filmed, but it became a source of inspiration for "La Dolce Vita" (1960). Federico Fellini finally arrived in Rome after "The Great Priest".

These stories are about Federico Fellini himself, and only "Roma" belongs to Rome. But before "Roma", Fellini actually wrote another story about Rome. In 1945, when Fellini was still an unknown filmmaker, he had the honour of serving as the screenwriter for the famous director Roberto Rossellini. That movie was "Roma, città aperta" (1945), which opened the 35-year "Golden Age" of Italian cinema (1945-1978).

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Federico Fellini entered Italian neo-realism into film from his masterpiece "Trilogy of loneliness" - namely, "La strada" (1954), "Il Bidone" (1955), and "Le notti di Cabiria" (1957) - and practiced the creative principles of neo-realism. However, his viewpoint that "Realism also includes internal reality" differed from other neo-realist filmmakers. Nevertheless, starting from "La Dolce Vita", he transitioned from neo-realism to symbolism and modernism. His approach of downplaying narrative tension, extensive use of mobile photography, pursuit of gorgeous sets, meticulous casting of all actors, and deliberate character design determined the watershed position of "La Dolce Vita".

In reality, Federico Fellini rose rapidly and made cinema his lifelong pursuit, making the film city his home. Rome is a film in his heart. Years later, when discussing this turning point in his life, Fellini appeared carefree: "I don't think I have much to explain. I was born in Rimini, then I came to Rome, then I got married, and later I went to work in the film city."

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A Peculiar Film About Cities

The original title of the movie was "Fellini's Roma". Adding the director's name to the title does not make it seem arrogant or pretentious; someone else might feel differently. Most of Fellini's movies are actually his personal thoughts and confessions. If we really compare "Rome" to a real city on a map, we would be making a big mistake. As film critic Roger Ebert said, "Fellini is like cutting his hair in Rome and trimming the suburbs at the same time."

All city movies are selective. From "Berlin-Die Sinfonie der Großstadt"(1927) to "London - The Modern Babylon"(2012). They choose specific locations and times for shooting, based on reality. However, Fellini's "Roma" is different. It blends multiple forms of filmmaking, with both memories and fantasies; with both reality and surrealism; with both the past and the present. There is even a clear narrative thread-the young Fellini's first experience in Rome.

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This is the most peculiar film about cities you've ever seen. It pieces together a jumbled collection of fragments like a puzzle, and these fragments are not independent but rather infiltrate and enrich each other. Sometimes in one shot, multiple eras of Rome coexist (young Federico Fellini at the train station where he went to church school, Roman soldiers from different eras wandering).

Three Fellinies appear in the movie: the Fellini of his childhood, who went to church school; the Fellini of 19-years-old when he first arrived in Rome; and the Fellini of today, who brings his crew to shoot in Rome.

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Fellini had not made such an open and loose film before, but "Roma" is more open-minded fundamentally. If we compare it with "Amarcord," which was also made up of a series of fragments connected by links, we can easily find the differences between them. "Amarcord" was also composed of a series of clips but overall had a compact arrangement with relatively close relationships between the narrative sections, highlighting the main characters and a lot of dialogue. Although there are some clear narrative paragraphs with clues in "Roma," the mixture of long stories and Montage-style city sightseeing challenges and experiments with the audience.

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Collision Between Ancient Civilization And Modern Culture

The degeneration of Rome is one of Fellini's favourite themes. In the scene in the park, a student wonders if the film will address major issues facing today's society, such as education, factories, and family. "We no longer want to see an old, haphazard Rome," Fellini responds: "I think a movie should remain true to its essence when shooting."

What is the Rome in Federico Fellini's mind like? It's sacred and desire-filled, eternal yet decaying. These two contradictory qualities not only exist simultaneously but are interconnected. Thus, Fellini uses desire-filled scenes to symbolize divine things, and vice versa. After the scene of the street dinner, nightfall descends on Rome with dim blue lights illuminating the set, and a prostitute stands in the rubble outside the city. Typically used to symbolize fleeting time and shallow experience, she becomes eternal here. Conversely, churches are often used to symbolize eternity becoming rubble with time.

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The eternal city is crumbling. An angry man in the park blames the director for capturing the ugly side of Rome: "This is no longer Rome, everyone is too crazy and in a rush, they have become despicable, real Romans are disappearing! Look around, all you see are filthy hippies, playful students, transvestites, and all sorts of social outcasts. Don't forget this film will be shown abroad. How will they view our lovely Rome!"

In "La Dolce Vita", Ferrini uses apocalyptic revelry to portray the spiritual and moral decline of Rome. He says, "The film is like an oil painting or mural, it depicts a catastrophic disaster, a luxury collapse: the decline of the Catholic Empire."

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The collapse depicted in "Roma" is indeed shocking. In the film, the construction team stumbles upon a Roman underground palace, uncovering vibrant portraits frozen in time, which seem eternal within their hidden confines. However, once exposed to the air, these portraits instantaneously disintegrate. "There're disappearing! We have to do something!" exclaims a member of the film crew in desperation. Yet, despite their urgency, they find themselves powerless to halt the vanishing artworks. This poignant scene symbolizes the fading of history, signifying the gradual disappearance of Rome's spirit.

This scene symbolizes a collision between two Romas: ancient culture and modern culture. It echoes the ending of "Satirem Lucidus", where live people are presented as portraits on the cliff's crumbled wall, subjected to wind and rain.

In his memoirs, Federico Fellini said with regret: “In this movie, I had an unusual feeling that I hadn't touched the surface of the city at all. The material wasn't depleted, it was intact. Like always, I was enthusiastic about preparing for the shoot, searching for the most secret corners, only to realize that the locations and human characters I thought I had mastered were still unexplored - complete and whole. Rome remained pure and untouched by my movie about her.”

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