Roma

1972 Director Federico Fellini

This is Fellini's autobiographical tribute to Rome. Narrated by Fellini himself it features a stream of consciousness made up of a mixture of real-life footage and fictional set pieces.

It flows from one episode to another, beginning with his early years in Rome in the 1930's during the time of Mussolini. At the age of 18, he 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 1970's 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 a long night sequence of a large group of motorcycles driving around some of the major landmarks of Rome.

This is a "sit back and let it roll over you" type of film. It is quite enjoyable providing you're not expecting a plot nor much cohesion between the various episodes.

Satyricon

1968 Director Federico Fellini

This film is a fabulous trip into a totally decadent civilization delivering a brilliant visual fantasy unlike anything you have seen before.

Step into the bawdy, erotic and titillating world of Rome during the days of Emperor Nero, where two competing teachers play tricks on each other while vying for the same lover's charms.  Paralleling the self-indulgence of modern society, these Roman citizens pursue their own gratification above all else, resulting in both intense pleasure and enormous despair displayed in visually seductive scenes that are both shocking , unprecedented and brilliantly stunning.

This is a visually stunning piece with elaborate sets beautifully filmed with the precision that is very like Fellini. The plot is complex and convoluted and sometimes difficult to follow if you're reading subtitles. Much of the Latin is not translated, which is odd since it's not far from Italian. But this means that some narrative appears unconnected and illogical at times. Nevertheless this is a visual feast of ingenious originality.

Amacord

1974 Director Federico Fellini

This is a delightful romp down Fellini's memory lane. It centres around the seaside village of Rimini during the Mussolini era and is more a stream of consciousness than a plotted story. The film's greatest asset is its ability to be sweet without being cloying, due in great part to Danilo Donati's surrealistic art direction and to the frequently bawdy injections of sex and politics. Fellini clearly has deep affection for the people of this seaside village, warts and all, and communicates it through episodic visual anecdotes which are seen as if through the mists of a favorite dream, playfully scored by Nino Rota and lovingly photographed by Giuseppe Rotunno.

It won the 1974 Academy Award as Best Foreign Film.

8½

1963 Director Federico Fellini

Fresh from the international success of La Dolce Vita, director Federico Fellini moved into the realm of introspective autobiography with what is widely believed to be his finest and most personal work. So named as it presented the count of films made to date.

Marcello Mastroianni delivers a brilliant performance as Fellini's alter ego Guido Anselmi, a film director overwhelmed by the large-scale production he has undertaken. He finds himself harangued by producers, his wife, and his mistress while he struggles to find the inspiration to finish his film. The stress plunges Guido into an interior world where fantasy and memory impinge on reality.

Fellini jumbles narrative logic by freely cutting from flashbacks to dream sequences to the present until it becomes impossible to pry them apart, creating both a psychological portrait of Guido's interior world and the surrealistic, circus-like exterior world that came to be known as "Felliniesque".