Fellini's Roma is a virtually plotless autobiographical tribute to Rome, Italy, featuring narration by Fellini himself and a mixture of real-life footage and fictional set pieces. It flows from episode to episode, beginning with the director's early years arriving in Rome in 1931 during the time of Mussolini. Played by Stefano Mayore as a child, he visits the city with classmates and becomes infatuated. Played by Peter Gonzales at age 18, the young Fellini moves in to a tenement building and explores the wild characters living in neighborhood. The events that follow switch between the past and contemporary times, including a story line that involves a 1970s film crew making a movie about Rome. He also incorporates segments of Roman history and problems in the government, including an improvised speech from Gore Vidal. Throughout this journey there are visits to an outdoor restaurant, a movie theater, a music hall, and a brothel. In one famously surreal segment, groups of clergymen gather together for a Catholic fashion show spectacle. After a visit to a street festival and some on-camera interviews, the film concludes with shots of motorcycles driving by the Colosseum. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
Review
Fellini's Roma is precisely the kind of cinematic valentine to the Eternal City that only Federico Fellini could create. Fellini's personal journey through the city of his 1930s youth and the freak show, traffic-clogged 1970s present, Roma fondly lingers over the Felliniesque carnival of characters populating family dinners, theater audiences, brothels, and street parties. Fellini himself appears on film orchestrating the contemporary crew. Accurately summed up on camera by Gore Vidal as "the city of illusions," Fellini turns Rome's Catholic ritualism into an opulent ecclesiastical fashion show, while the subway construction sequence and the final, nocturnal tour of the ruins via motorcycle find surreal beauty in the potentially destructive juxtaposition of ancient and modern Rome. Reportedly disdained by Romans, Roma was nevertheless greeted by critics as a welcome return to the nostalgia and astute commentary of such early masterworks as I Vitelloniand La Dolce Vita. Fellini would merge nostalgia and surrealist fantasy even more fruitfully in Amarcord. Anna Magnani's cameo as herself, urging Fellini to go home and go to sleep, was her final screen appearance. Cameos by Marcello Mastroianni and Alberto Sordi were cut from the English language version. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
Pia de Doses - The Princess; Angela de Leo; Mario del Vago; Fiona Florence - Young Prostitute; Renato Giovanneli - Cardinal Ottaviani; Pedro Gonzales - Fellini at age 18; John Francis Lane; Elisa Mainardi; Marne Maitland - Underground Guide; Stefano Majore - Fellini as a Child; Marcello Mastroianni - Himself; Galliano Sbarra - Music Hall Compere; Alvaro Vitali - Tap Dancer Imitating Fred Astaire; Anna Magnani; Cassandra Peterson; Alberto Sordi - Himself; Gore Vidal; Mimmo Poli
