roma

I play video games to the point where it's hard to tell whether I do it for fun or because I don't know how else to spend my free time. The point is that I've reached the point where I know exactly what a game needs to be totally awesome - chainsaws, titties, and characters with ridiculous accents. I've always wondered if my criteria also applied to movies - violence, sex, and characters with ridiculous accents - and I think Felini confirms it quite effectively in Roma (1972).

Sex-
The cover currently shows the busiest whore from Felini's hometown dressed as a great Roman lover. I think the old poster was more informative.

The entire point of the film is to show contrast. There's the contrast of the Rome of today with the Romes of 30, 40, and 2000 years ago; between the chaos of dinnertime and the dead quiet of midnight; and between the common whores and the classy whores and then the whores with the dirty free loving hippies.

Felini's reason for having about 20 minutes of aged titties wandering around in circles is to drive home the point that, as the old man at 12:29 says, "no need to play with yourself. That's what's nice about Rome." It's a city where rampant sexuality clashes with the hardline Catholic attitude, but that's OK because the pope is apparently too senile to realize he's been dressed up as a Japanese sun god. Felini's childhood years of learning about the glory of Rome and the Vatican can't compete with the apparent headlock the spirit of Carnival has on the Church, the people, and the city.

Violence -
Rome is a city of illusion where little girls (28:30) and old hags (1:19:30) can curse and hate on their families and customers with equal effectiveness. Where hippies camp out and pray to Gaia/whatever the hell until their jackbooted peers come along and bring some old fashioned smackdown at around 1:52:00. The curses and insults are outstanding and range from dirty little songs to good old fashioned dick-and-fart jokes. Romans still have a bit of bloodlust left over from the Caesar and Colosseum days and when it doesn't spill out as some quip about genitals, they enjoy a nice back alley boxing match.

Ridiculous Accents-
Felini set out to make a film that states what it means to be Roman and not just Italian. From what I can gather, being Roman means food, women, Church and architecture.

The dinner scene at around 20:00 is epic without any focus other than food and family. After years growing up in a quiet, prayer-filled eating environment, young Felini is thrown into a place where a public dining table is the most happening place to be. As the patrons stuff themselves with every dish availible, there isn't a single point where the action and noise slowly simmers down. At one point the tables are full happy, shouting people who never seem to get full and then there's nothing but a few hapless dogs and a welder.

The women in Felini's Rome, like everything else, have no in-between. They are either overtly sexual and loud or completely silent and reserved. In addition to the copious amounts of whores, Felini defines the Roman woman with the quick, seconds long scene with the actress near the end of the film (1:55:00). She is, according to Felini, "She-wolf and vestal virgin, noblewoman and fishwife, somber and festive..." In 10 seconds Felini tells us exactly what he's been trying to say for the past 2 hours, which I thought was extremely polite of him.

At 1:36:30, the film goes from a complex line by line reading of the city to a David Lynch escapade as a Cardinal who looks suspiciously like the fat guy from Dune watches a papal fashion show that turns weird as soon as the two nuns shake their hips at the audience. It's all a downward spiral from there with roller skates, bikes, rosy-cheeked balding men wearing frilly nightgowns, and, of course, armor plated pope robes. All of this is to make way for the gold plated father hmself, who smacks his lips and watches the transvestites march by with an odd smile on his face.

The architecture of Rome, if you haven't guessed by now, is a contrast of the old and the new. Crumbling ruins of the empire slowly crumble as highways and workers politely work around their culture and heritage. In the final shots of the film we see the city of Rome without the Romans in quick flashes of structures and ideas that simply refuse to let time take its course.