Fellini’s work is one of dualities: the poetic and the vulgar, the past and the present, the sacred and sacrilegious. Rome, as city and subject, is already rich with overlapping contradictions, compiled together and surfaced through Fellini’s hand, in his 1972 film Roma. Different sequences linger in place, or are action in motion, a gap mirrored by the divide of performance and the luxury of time, versus the necessity to migrate and move along: longer, more settled scenarios crafted by and intended for Romans, juxtaposed by the faster-paced scenes, of action and movement to or from Rome. Beginning and ending with scenes of movement, the film’s entry and exit from Rome make the audience a spectator and outsider, to visit but not to remain.

In broad strokes, the film has two interweaving timelines: one of the past, spanning the 1920s-40s from Fellini’s childhood to young adulthood, and one of the present, the Rome of the contemporary 1970s. As the story moves through physical locations of Rome, the timeline oscillates between both eras, sometimes within the same spaces, to explore multiple versions of the same city.

Within this time structure, there are two general categories of scenes: ones in motion, moving from Point A to Point B, and others that are more snapshots in time, often extended sequences within one space, where an overall trend or characteristic plays out, through an ensemble, in a statement that feels more like an aggregate observation than some one-time plot occurrence. Often the scenes of movement are by outsiders, non-Romans traveling to, through, or away from Rome; and the scenes staying put are of Romans, a sort of performance to an audience of their neighbors and community, not to outsiders.

The scenes in one location are like spectacles on display, a variety of acts, perspectives, and alternate takes, taking place on stages both literal and implied. The first is an actual stage, where a wartime variety show parades out comedians, singers, and dancers before a somewhat prickly audience, catcalling and booing at the various performers. Next comes a pair of brothels, one common and one upper-class, playing out like circuses as their confident workers jeer and egg on their potential customers, making laps around the parlor like a circus ring. The most memorable show is that of the iconic “ecclesiastical fashion show,” an outrageous sequence at an old palazzo where an elderly aristocrat has invited a Cardinal to her home to showcase the latest in religious fashions. Clergymen and nuns parade the catwalk wearing increasingly wild attire, from light-up robes to bird-shaped veils to blindingly reflective mosaic tiles, all culminating in one esteemed priest, presumably the Pope, set atop a high throne as a glorious metallic sun shines behind him. Throughout these sequences, the setting in one location, for a captive audience of Romans, performances play out in full with beginning, middle, and end, as full statements on the different scenarios and commentary performed by, and for, Romans.

These sequences held in one place are juxtaposed by the scenes in motion, typically by travelers, outsiders, or passers-through – the role we, as the audience, play, encountering this work.

Roma opens in the dark, facing a dry field with dead trees and a broken stone tablet from antiquity, and ends in darkness, following a band of motorcyclists after they zoom into town and then exit. As much as Rome itself is a character, as the energy and inspiration flowing through this film, it is also presented somewhat from an outsiders’ lens, as was Fellini’s (who moved to Rome in young adulthood, after growing up in coastal Rimini): Rome as a place to enter and eventually exit, to study as a journalist, or film as a camera crew.

The disconnect, the absence of completion or full knowledge, feels like a parallel, if not immediate response to, the final moments of Fellini Satyricon (1969): a scene of dialogue interrupted, cutting to a partially destroyed wall of painted frescoes. The text of Satyricon itself is incomplete, and its final image is peppered with gaps; there is an inevitable unknowability, and can never be fully understood. The first shot of Roma contains a broken tablet, broken words rather than the broken images of Satyricon, but again evoking the partial story – only so much is left for us to grasp, make sense of, and reconcile.

One scene – a highlight of the film – transcends the divide between insider and outsider, motion and stagnation, as young Fellini, a new arrival in town, stumbles upon a lively piazza for dinnertime, and is invited by a family to sit with them. The sequence that unfolds is effortlessly charming, a piazza stuffed with crowded tables, restaurants stacked alongside each other, neon signs, and colorful characters shouting and calling to one another. In the background is the green sign for Da Giggetto – a real restaurant, still open today – constructed here within a movie set, a dreamy approximation of this corner of Rome. Within the geographic stillness of one single piazza, is the motion, vivacity, and energy of everyday Romans. It is a vision of the city at its most enchanting, where young Fellini, an outsider, and by extension we the audience, are invited to join in.