Film Review 1974

Prospectus: Parkland Community College  - Illinois’ Finest Juco

Federico Fellini’s ‘Roma’
The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1932–1972

Film review
By Ken Segan
Published spring 1974

During and after seeing this film, I thought, Christ, I should’ve read several reviews beforehand. Now having read several reviews, I’m still walking down a dark road. And if all roads lead to Rome, well, then, I’d better move out.

The film is a “portrait of Rome,” as Fellini discovers it as a youth forty years back and how he finds it now. On the screen, he changes from past to present several times. I will present several episodes of the “story” along with my immediate reactions as I wrote them while viewing.

During Fellini’s arrival in Rome in the 1930’s, we see a hodgepodge of family and city life with all of the idiosyncrasies, including ceaseless fighting, gawking, sexual allurement (via eye seduction), shoving, play and mass gluttony. It is absurdly presented, designed to revolt. A momentary highlight occurs when Fellini says the fascists won two battles: the war against the flies, and to make the trains run on schedule. This may be true, but overall it isn’t good
social commentary at all.

From here we go to the present, with a better scene, one similar to, or a remake of the traffic jams of Godard’s Weekend. This as good, as I’m down on the high reproductive level of cars, anywhere. He shows, in a constant rain, a highway of massive traffic, demonstrators, horses, police, carts, accidents, pollution, flooding, fires, angry commuters, hitchhikers, construction, and dead bodies. This reaches a crescendo and peak with an epic visual scene of all that against the Coliseum in the background with an intense red glow from within its crumbling features, in a pitchblack night.

Back again to a wartime vaudeville theatre. The audience is composed of “thugs, degenerates” and people just hanging out, all desiring an escape from the drudgery of their existence. And there is havoc. Fellini’s closing in on the violent behavior, the faces and mindlessness of the
theatre audience and performers gets grossly repetitious and trite. One sequence in this quagmire was the interruption of the acts for an announcement. All the audience rises, and we hear of a German -Italian military victory on Sicily. Several minutes later (after a resumption of the show and then an air raid call) we hear a  man in the bomb shelter decry defeatism at home and applaud the heroism of the soldiers and the greatness of their leader, Il Duce.

Fellini later contrasts the ever changing past versus present in Roman life as workers build a subway. Some good underground visual scenes, especially of machines.

We then see longhairs lounging around ruins in the sun, with Fellini saying, “they make love openly and all day long – but, when he was young…” and he takes us to two brothels of the past. One is a workingman’s: There are hoards of men waiting, eyeing the women, and some go off together. It's like a factory, a circus, a zoo. And then the aristocratic, luxury-class brothel: there’s no difference except for the expensive clothes and posh surroundings. There’s the same gawking, parading, body advertisement, desire to make the bread, want of fulfillment. He presents it like a stock exchange – eager sellers and hassled buyers. Everything stops (in the upper class brothel), when someone of importance arrives who wants to see all the women before he makes a selection Fellini asks, who is it? A cardinal, a general,  a fascist minister?

The ecclesiastical fashion show, looking like it’s set at a Vatican Council session, was a definite highpoint. We see priests and nuns all parading around in various costumes. There is a Model No. 3 – “Little Sisters of the Temptation in Purgatory,” all walking around and shaking themselves. Model No. 4 – two priests dancing around together. Model No. 5 – two priests on bicycles, showing the latest in clerical sportswear. The procession of empty cardinal’s robes and
cloaks all resplendent in gold and jewels, including a black robe with flashing bright electric lights, was beautiful. A religious figure, looking like the pope, is in shades, sleeping. Some luxuriously robed cardinals – all old, and looking half-dead and stoned, march around. The display is like an immense pagan ritual. Finally the incarnation of God in the pope appears, bathed in a yellow sun and gold. The pope looks like an Incan sun god.

People are wining and dining in an outdoor restaurant, the tourists parade, there’s traffic. Gore Vidal talks at his table saying the end of the city is imminent due to the overpopulation,a phalanx of cops arrives, they chase and beat upon demonstrators, while everyone continues stuffing and gorging themselves. You have to see the film to believe it.

What is this anyway? Fellini, where the heck* is your head at these days? This is a morass of your internal images. I’m not certain if your direction is well placed or not.

And to use the word decadent – I get the feeling that either the film is, or what your showing, the city of Rome is. The continual, incessant portraits of grossed out people (as in the vaudeville theatre and in the brothels) seems to serve no purpose, as the film wasn’t presented as a documentary. If you’re trying to save Roman civilization rose, fell, re-rose, and is falling (or has fallen already) you’re right. The flick was at times: good bad, bulls—t,** absorbing, sleep producing, and I liked it, but I can’t recommend it. 

~
[Author note, Dec. 24, 2019: * The text of the published column had a four-letter curse word. On retyping the review today from a photocopy of the original newspaper issue, I decided to use cleaner language for posting in my website’s Bibliography section. ** same; the original published review had a four-letter curse word]