Life in Technicolor: Rome Through Fellini's Eyes

ITALY’S MOST FAMED FILM DIRECTOR, FEDERICO FELLINI, CAPTURED ITALIAN GLAMOUR AND GUSTO WITH UNPRECEDENTED POIGNANCY. ROME WAS HIS MUSE – AND WHAT BETTER WAY TO UNDERSTAND THE BAWDY ITALIAN CAPITAL THAN BY FOLLOWING IN HIS FOOTSTEPS?

By Jessica Gliddon

I came to Rome to follow Fellini. I looked for him in the vias and piazzas. I imagined the voluptuous actress Anita Ekberg strutting through the Trevi Fountain, the midnight eyes of ladies along Via Veneto, and the revellers of bawdy parties dancing through the plazas. Did this Italy, this Rome, really exist?

The title of the director’s posthumous biographical documentary – Fellini: I’m a Born Liar – hints that Fellini’s key attribute was his penchant for exaggeration, imagination and illusion. So, my mission to see Rome through his eyes was not to see Rome for what it is, but to conjure the director’s unique vision: a grotesque, fantastical city of ancient ruins and blasé and extravagant Italian glamour.

Fellini emerges in unexpected places; in a larger-than-life portrait of La Dolce Vita’s Anita Ekberg hung over a Guess shop, or in a slightly smiling tall man in the trench coat and sunglasses – could that be Guido from 8½, wandering the streets in search of meaning from his chaotic life? In Rome, Fellini is everywhere; as in Fellini’s films, everywhere is Rome.

Although he was born in the seaside town of Rimini, Rome was central to Fellini’s obsessive view of Italian life. He moved to Rome in his early 20s to study film, and it became the love of his life, next to his wife of 50 years, the pixie-like Giulietta Masina. Although he created one of the most introspective films in the history of cinema, 8½, his films were also social commentaries on his deep love / hate relationship with Rome. His greatest tributes to the Eternal City are his most famous work, La Dolce Vita, and Roma, his ode to the city.

Fellini’s night-time haunt was Via Veneto. It was the centre of Roman glamour in the 1950s, back when the city’s cheap production costs attracted the Hollywood elite. This was when Fellini built his Cinecittà studios. Today, they still stand at the metro station bearing its name, housed in a peachy-coloured, vaguely art deco building facing a rather dilapidated thoroughfare, with moody Roman cypresses in soft focus in the distance. It’s still a working studio, but not open to visitors.

Capped by the marquee of the Multisala Barberini cinema at Barberini Piazza, Via Veneto has taken on an air of faded glamour. The leafy boulevard is sedate during the day, preferring to occupy itself with nightlife, as it always has. It is lined with the grand old hotels of yesteryear; still, the glass-encased sidewalk cafés somehow seem a little artificial and tend to be packed with tourists rather than the likes of Anita Ekberg. Of course, one such café is named La Dolce Vita.

The director’s residence was not far away; on a pretty little terracotta avenue just beyond the Spanish Steps, with a narrow, intimate feel and vines winding everywhere. Via Margutta has been Rome’s artist quarter since the 1600s, and also has a cinematic history – it was the street in Roman Holiday where Gregory Peck’s character, Joe Bradley, resided. Today, Via Margutta is lined with art galleries and boutique shops, and holds an annual arts festival called 100 Painters of Via Margutta.

Fellini often spent time in the Piazza del Popolo. It was the site, in the beginning of La Dolce Vita, where Marcello drives with the bored socialite Maddalena, who has a habit of wearing sunglasses at night. Sitting in her chic roadster, the heiress professes her boredom with the city. “I like Rome very much,” counters Marcello. “Your problem is you have too much money.”

This square is also the location of one of Fellini’s favourite cafés, Canova. The piazza has a Felliniesque feel – the Egyptian obelisk from Heliopolis in the middle, the sphinx- like lions spouting water, and the elaborate classical monument entitled Rome between the Tiber and the Aneine. Dea Roma – the city’s ancient female personification – stands with a lance and helmet, looking out over the square while the she-wolf who nursed Romulus and Remus lies at her feet.

Canova has not forgotten its most famous patron. Now a restaurant, bar and café, it honours the director in film stills and posters. It’s easy to imagine Fellini sitting here on the sidewalk, sketching the patrons and the passers-by, overhearing conversations that would become the meat of his films. What played before him must have inspired the animated scene in Roma, where a crowded street café is packed with rotund, heavily made-up women eating offal, a particular Roman specialty, and blasting strings of obscenities at their husbands and lovers.

There is no more famous marriage between Rome and Fellini than Anita Ekberg’s glorious romp through the Trevi Fountain in La Dolce Vita. It’s impossible to imagine today how such a thing could be possible – nearly all hours and all seasons, the place is mobbed by throngs of tourists. But it’s also hard to deny the sheer splendour of the Rococo sculptural masterpiece – the ancient god Oceanus looking on in his shell chariot as tritons conquer rollicking seahorses.

It’s easier, perhaps, to retreat nearby to one of Fellini’s favourite hideouts – Al Moro. Nestled down a lane, the restaurant is manned by attitude-filled, apron-bedecked Italian godfathers who will whisk you to your table. It feels like a Roman living room with charming old furniture and sketches and awards jumbled across the walls. The food is fresh, fast and no-nonsense.

Remembering another La Dolce Vita scene, I climb the steps to the top of St Peter’s Basilica as Sylvia did, but not like Sylvia did, as nobody could have the same Anita Ekberg buoyancy that saw the infatuated Marcello run after the giggling, blonde bombshell – the very antithesis to the serenity and sanctity of the Vatican grounds. As she glides up the stairs, an exhausted photographer in her entourage exclaims – “she’s like an elevator!” The Vatican can be visited without having a religious bone in your body – it is home to what is widely considered one of the world’s greatest work of art, Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. With neck craned backwards, it is impossible to comprehend the skill and patience deployed for the mammoth figures.

Roma casts a long, meditative glance at the city’s great monuments. In the film, the glowing Colosseum looms over a traffic jam late at night, as though its bloody past was being recreated in the honking horns. Traffic was a preoccupation for Fellini – Roma devotes a significant sequence to the autostrada, documenting a mad mix of horses trotting alongside cars, miscreants with bonfires, and faces – blurred, twisted, circus-like faces smeared in the rain and warped in wet glass. I see the same effect – in a freak hail storm, a sign of Rome’s increasing susceptibility to global warming, human forms seem to melt through shop windows.

There is a woman in my face, and she’s wearing what appear to be tea strainers over her eyes. Her skin is painted white, her lips black, and she’s making a buzzing noise. She’s a bee: she even has a stinger to prove it. This is Rome’s Micca Club, a world of decadent fantasy and circus antics housed in an underground cavern near Termini Station. Fellini was never more at home than at the circus or the theatre: his was a world of artifice. The Micca Club is all about this. People cram under the stone arches, sipping exotic cocktails, while a girl in black frills perches on a giant swing and an acrobat in gothic eye paint twists around a hoop hung from the ceiling. The female bee and her male partner buzz among the patrons. I offer the bee woman a flower and she buries her nose in it, and then proceeds to tickle me.

Rome is the perfect surreal city. It’s easy to see why Fellini couldn’t distinguish fact from fiction – nothing is as it seems in the hyper-real, statuesque world of Rome. The key to experiencing Rome as the director did – embracing its manic, sometimes grotesque, always animated pace – is by taking time to discover its eccentricities. Finding the secrets to Fellini’s Rome is as simple as walking the streets – even in the most pedestrian neighbourhood, turn a corner and find a giant, ancient Roman head with sightless sockets, staring from atop a column.

Rome’s public transport system, the Metropolitana, is only half useful, but it had its own romance for Fellini. He chronicled its building in Roma, as it faced constant hold-ups due to endless archaeological discoveries. “We merely wanted to solve the traffic problem with a subway like Munich’s or Dublin’s,” says the foreman in Roma serving as a tour guide to the film’s documentary crew, “but here the ground has eight strata.”

It’s easy to imagine an intact Roman house hidden just behind the metro’s walls, like the one with eerie frescoes they discover in Roma. More Felliniesque, however, is that the Metropolitana carries its own cast of characters, a snapshot of the melee that so fascinated Fellini. Sitting across from me in a train carriage is a girl wearing heavy blue eye shadow, thick black liner and fake eyelashes – who could easily have come from the cabaret – making cooing noises at a cross-eyed curly-haired girl.

I try to find the International Museum of Cinema and Entertainment, but as the city’s 1950s cinematic glory has faded, the building has been replaced by scaffolding. Instead, I board a train for Fregene, the seaside town where Marcello retreats towards the end of the La Dolce Vita for a society sojourn. Silent, grand white villas still stand by the water, but winter mutes the seaside – the town seems forlorn, arranged around a simple grid bordering three streets. Its beaches are divided by tarps and lined with overpriced restaurants. Getting to Fregene is a nightmare, but that wouldn’t have been an issue for Fellini, who had a beach house and a sports car.

It’s an early morning after a week of downpours and the rain has decided to depart, leaving a crisp, clear sky in its wake. Already the crowds are clustering around the Colosseum, tittering with commentary – “Why is it so big? Where can I get a panini?” – like out of one of Fellini’s films. Standing quietly, I hear the patter of the multitudes – even if it is only tourists. Fake gladiators, dressed up in costumes, are looking for something to do. One middle-aged swordsman approaches a group of American tourists and yells: “Let me stab you, I’m bored!” and comically nudges one parka-clad woman in the side.

It seems it would be impossible to be Roman and not appreciate the awe of the ancients; the Roman Forum, the ancient ruins next to the Colosseum, is testament to the city’s former glory. Its sheer magnificence is humbling – columns rising here and there, with the horsemen of the Vittorio Emanuele II Monument hauntingly presiding over the scene. It’s not hard to imagine Fellini sneaking in here late at night, sketching out the sets of his dystopian ancient epic Satyricon or the opening scenes of Roma, with their flashing lightening, crumbling columns and the baying of Rome’s symbolic she-wolf – capturing the dark fantasies of a city that Italy’s greatest director called home.

EXPERIENCE ITALY

FOR SLEEPING: ROME CAVALIERI

With extravagance in abundance and a curio of unusual antiques such as clocks adorned with goddesses, dragon fountains, tapestry chairs and works by classical artists like Giambattista Tiepolo, the Cavalieri is a living museum. It also has killer views over the Vittorio Emanuele II Monument and the Vatican complex. The pool is like a Roman bath with a full wood fireplace. The panoramas are best enjoyed in the penthouse, a George Clooney favourite, with its own private deck and Jacuzzi. It also happens to house Rome’s best restaurant, La Pergola, by German celebrity import Heinz Beck.

FOR EATING: CANOVA

Fellini ate here and there’s an inhouse gallery devoted to the director. Plus, the food is fresh and fabulous, and available in sidewalk bistro form, fine dining in Canova Blu or as the piles of fine ravioli, asparagus and penne dished up in the “fast lunch” cafeteria. It’s all chic and sleek inside, and oh so Roman.

FOR LEARNING ABOUT CINEMA: ALTRO QUANDO

Just off Corso Vittorio Emanuele II is a marvellous street called Via del Governo Vecchio. First and foremost, it’s wonderful because of its plethora of unique shops by Italian designers that haven’t quite hit the epic prices of Gucci or Prada. Secondly, it hosts Altro Quando, a wonderful shop full of just about every book on every filmmaker ever made – though in Italian. Still, if you’re a cinemaphile it’s great fun – a real treat is Fellini’s dream journal, full of fascinating illustrations.

Etihad Inflight Cover Story, 2009. Published by ITP Media Group for Etihad Airways.