Fellini Primer

By * Jay Cocks

FELLINI'S ROMA

Directed by FEDERICO FELLINI

Screenplay by FEDERICO FELLINI and BERNARDINO ZAPPONI

This is a Fellini movie for people who have never seen a Fellini movie. The images spill in torrents from the screen; the air of a carnival turning into a bacchanal is everywhere. So, alas, is the sense of dej`a vu. Fellini has taken us all on this guided tour of his tumid nether world too many times before.

"This is the story of a city, a portrait of Rome," Fellini's voice instructs as the credits flash by, "a mixture of strange, contradictory images." If only it were. There are two sequences that are virtuoso feats even by Fellini's elaborate standards: a weird, bloody and cacophonous entrance into a rainy nighttime Rome along a crowded highway, and a boisterous, affectionate re-creation of a night in a music hall during World War II, the audience far more vigorous and creative than the amateur talent passing in review. Fellini is at his best here, which makes the disappointment of the remainder of the film all the more acute.

Roma is not a narrative but a mosaic of phantoms from Fellini's memory and fantasy. The scenes of Fellini's childhood in Rimini have none of the insight of I Vitelloni, made 20 years ago and still far more immediate. A long fantasy about an ecclesiastical fashion show had its far more effective beginnings in La Dolce Vita, when Anita Ekberg galloped up to the dome of St. Peter's dressed in a parody of a priest's outfit. Fellini even teases us by reprising a melody from La Dolce Vita as the clergy parade in their outre regalia.

Fellini obviously intended this film to be a kind of ironic travelogue of the collapse of Rome. Visiting a subway tunnel under construction below the Roman streets, the film makers (in a scene lifted from A Director's Notebook) encounter a remnant of the ancient past--an old house with statues intact and frescoes that look, unfortunately, like WPA murals. Air from the outside is eating rapidly away at the paintings, turning them to dust. Later Fellini recruits Gore Vidal, perhaps the closest living descendant of Epicurus, to discourse ironically on Rome's inevitable disintegration. The film ends with shots of helmeted motorcyclists roaring over dark, deserted streets.

Fellini is the first major director to insert himself into the very title of a film. He neglected, however, to put much of himself into the movie. Lacking a sense of strong commitment or interest, Fellini's Roma becomes an aimless sideshow.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.