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Roma



Travelogue, memoir, and outrageous cinematic spectacle converge in this kaleidoscopic valentine to the Eternal City, composed by one of its most iconic inhabitants. Leisurely one moment and breathless the next, this urban fantasia by Federico Fellini interweaves recollections of the director's young adulthood in the era of Mussolini with an impressionistic portrait of contemporary Rome, where he and his film crew are gathering footage of the bustling cityscape. The material delights of sex, food, nightlife, and one hallucinatory ecclesiastical fashion show are shot through with glimmers of a monumental past: the Colosseum encircled by traffic, ancient frescoes unearthed in a subway tunnel, a pigeon-befouled statue of Caesar. With a head-spinning mix of documentary immediacy and extravagant artifice, Roma penetrates the myth and mystique of Italy's storied capital, a city Fellini called "the most wonderful movie set in the world."

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Audio commentary featuring Frank Burke, author of Fellini's Films
• Deleted scenes
• New interview with filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino on the lasting influence of director Federico Fellini
• New interview with Italian poet and Fellini friend Valerio Magrelli
• Images from the Felliniana archive of collector Don Young
• Trailer
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: An essay by film scholar David Forgacs

Never seen this but I'm a Fellini fan. How does it stack up to his other works forum? I've read that some people think it's a masterpiece others say it's "Fellini coasting on his genius".

I think it's a steaming heap, but I'm probably an outlier.

I like it well enough. It's not great, but as a fun, little bit of nothing repeating some of Fellini's other sequences it's worth a watch.

zedz wrote:I think it's a steaming heap, but I'm probably an outlier.

nope. I had a hard time watching this movie and never seen the last 20 minutes. Don't feel I need to.

I like ROMA a lot -- a strange grab bag of a movie, if something's not to your liking hang on for a few minutes and something new will appear. The Papal Fashion show alone lifts it into essential status -- and that final motorcycle trip through the real Rome is a stunner, one of the loveliest things Fellini ever did, I think. I'm eagerly looking forward to this one.

Unlike much of Fellini's post-Juliet of the Spirits work, I think Roma is an inspired and graceful effort; easy to enjoy, even as a narrative-free collection of vignettes. Produced in between Satyricon and Amarcord, the film feels like a natural transition between those two works but, fortunately, is free of the heavy-handedness of the former and the sentimentality of the latter. If you're looking for the various ideas presented to coalesce into something profound, you'll be disappointed. For me, all of the sequences have worth and contain the most stunning visuals of any of the Fellini films shot in color.

I'm not the biggest fan of Fellini, but it is always fascinating seeing another (new to me) film from him. Roma is better than Satyricon, and although I barely remember it, better, I think than Amarcord. It's disjointed, anthology esque like those films, but the sequences all feel more fully formed and sometimes are just so spectacular (emphasis on the spectacle) that I just can't get bored by this film (as I did by the latter).

In particular, the sequence on the freeway was absolutely stunning, and the sequence in the subway construction, culminating in the frescos being eradicated by the atmosphere was also amazing. Two of my favorite moments in any Fellini films easily. The renowned fashion show was more of an anticlimax for me, but it also is a spectacle, and fun in it's own right.

More of a bauble (and in that sense the cover art is perfect) than a bouquet, Roma is a refreshing and satisfying additional Fellini film, for me.

Is Criterion edition's 1.85:1 the original theatrical aspect ratio? Some websites gives 1.66:1 as a theatrical aspect ratio and some of the other home video releases have been in that ratio.