A fluid, unconnected, and sometimes chaotic procession of scenes detailing the various people and events of life in Italy's capital, most of it based on director Federico Fellini's life.
As a young man, Fellini (Peter Gonzales) leaves his small Italian town to go to the big city of Rome, live in a boarding house, and cavort with the natives in the 1930s and '40s. In an alternating storyline, the older Fellini (Federico Fellini) goes back to make a movie about Rome, filming things like traffic jams at the Colosseum and the subway system, which hides underground crypts. By inter-cutting this footage, Fellini the director draws comparisons to the old Rome and the new. [120 min; comedy, drama; Italian with English subtitles]
"A dizzying assault of radically stylized, pure cinema." — Chris Shields, Screen Slate
"Fellini isn't just giving us a lot of flashy scenes, he's building a narrative that has a city for its protagonist instead of a single character." — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
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