A virtually plotless, gaudy, impressionistic portrait of Rome through the eyes of one of its most famous citizens.
Ratings
Curator score: 4.4/10
IMDb: 7.3/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 61%
TMDB: 7.2/10
Director
Federico Fellini
Production
Les Productions Artistes Associés, Ultra Film
Cast
Peter Gonzales Falcon, Fiona Florence, Pia De Doses, Marne Maitland, Renato Giovannoli, Elisa Mainardi, Norma Giacchero, Stefano Mayore, Galliano Sbarra, Anna Magnani, Ginette Marcelle Bron, Gore Vidal, Feodor Chaliapin Jr., Dennis Christopher, Franco Citti, Federico Fellini, Eleonora Giorgi, Alberto Sordi, Alvaro Vitali, Cassandra Peterson
Curator Review
Verdict
A dazzling, highly personal Fellini mosaic that trades conventional plot for spectacle, memory, and social satire. It’s rich in visual invention and atmosphere, but the loose, episodic structure will feel indulgent or meandering if you want narrative momentum.
Best for
Fellini completists
Viewers who enjoy dreamlike, essayistic cinema
Fans of city symphonies and autobiographical films
People drawn to decadent pageantry and social satire
Skip if
You need a clear story arc
You dislike episodic or improvisational structures
You prefer restrained realism over baroque excess
You’re impatient with long, digressive set pieces
Overview
Roma is Fellini at his most expansive and untidy, turning the city into a living memory palace. Rather than tell a conventional story, he assembles impressions: childhood recollections, urban decay, erotic spectacle, political theater, and absurd social rituals. The result is less a narrative than a procession of moods, images, and provocations.
Worth noting
What gives the film its force is the tension between reverence and ridicule. Fellini loves Rome, but he also sees it as noisy, corrupt, theatrical, and endlessly performative. That contradiction keeps the film alive even when the structure wanders; every sequence feels like a fresh angle on a city that can’t be contained by realism.
Bottom line
It’s not the easiest Fellini entry, and some viewers will find the looseness exhausting. But if you respond to cinema as memory, collage, and spectacle, Roma offers a uniquely rich experience: unruly, funny, melancholy, and full of visual invention.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Richard Chandler (5★) · 211 likes
"You never have to jerk off; that's what's nice about Rome."
Though his previous film (The Clowns) had been a relative disappointment for Federico Fellini both critically and with audiences, the early-1970s still represented a period of international ascendancy for the Italian maestro. This outpouring of veneration would reach its zenith with 1973's Amarcord, a series of bawdy episodes depicting Fellini's early years in the provinces during the nascent era of Italian fascism. But just before Amarcord Fellini would first… more
chavel (4.5★) · 166 likes
He directed a fine number of bona fide classics (I would need two hands to count them), but his essay-mosaic, part drama / part documentary / part dreamscape Fellini's Roma is the only one of them that I crave watching repeatedly. You can call it my favorite of his.
Through the course of a dozen or so vignettes, Fellini pores over the good, the bad, the ostentatious -- key example of that is a Vatican fashion show where the costumes… more
Rafael "Mister Movie" Jovine (3.5★) · 151 likes
RESEÑA EN ESPAÑOL
As both the profile and the film itself reveal, this is not a traditional narrative but rather a mosaic of loosely connected sketches—fragments drawn from Fellini’s own memories of growing up in Italy, especially Rome. These pieces blend his personal experiences with stories he absorbed along the way.
Like any film of this nature, some vignettes shine brighter than others. I suspect many would agree that the nun and priests’ fashion show near was the standout scene… more
jacopo (3.5★) · 130 likes
dov'è totti 😓
Sam Jalali (4.5★) · 106 likes
Fellini just kind of lets the city wash over you. Given the episodic nature of it all, it feels incredibly similar to Amarcord in certain regards, just swapping out a nostalgic childhood town for the chaotic sprawl of Rome itself. For Fellini, everything about this movie is really just an excuse to capture the messy, unfiltered soul of Roman society. He spends plenty of time mining the waste, the casual sex, and the rampant prostitution that defined the eras he’s… more Fellini just kind of lets the city wash over you. Given the episodic nature of it all, it feels incredibly similar to Amarcord in certain regards, just swapping out a nostalgic childhood town for the chaotic sprawl of Rome itself. For Fellini, everything about this movie is really just an excuse to capture the messy, unfiltered soul of Roman society. He spends plenty of time mining the waste, the casual sex, and the rampant prostitution that defined the eras he’s… more