Architecture in Cinema

Fellini's Rome

Author(s): Hikmet Temel Akarsu * .

Pp: 16-21 (6)

DOI: 10.2174/9789815223316124010005

* (Excluding Mailing and Handling)

Abstract

Fellini's Rome is one of the mature works of the famous Italian director Federico Fellini. Fans of Fellini's films find high artistry in his cinematic style, which does not follow coherent fiction, combines extraordinary façades with sad humor, and, with contradictory and audacious focus, excites every human emotion. Although most of the critics have described him within the neorealism movement in cinema, it should be noted that he has an extremely original style that does not fit into this category. It would be more accurate to say that he has a sui generis expressionist style that sometimes borders on fantasy and surrealism, requiring a separate definition. The movie “Fellini's Rome” is one of the refined examples of this new expressionism style.

Fellini paints Rome with a completely different color in his highly impressive film, and this new color is a very, very different place from the laboratory of architectural history, which includes that familiar array of monuments. This new Rome is now completely painted with Fellinian poetry and transports us to other realms with its richness of image and irony. So, Fellini's Rome gives us an unfamiliar feeling. It allows us to see the city, which has the world's greatest architectural heritage, from a completely different perspective. What should it mean for us to shift away from architectural-monumental structures and turn to different images in such a city that served as the capital of the Roman Empire for centuries and imprinted itself in the memory of mankind with extremely powerful images? There, the philosophical and metaphorical messages of a great director come in the most artistic and mysterious way and find us. Even if you create the world's most magnificent architectural universe, your thinking, and even your life will be completely in vain if you cannot grasp the truth and validity of the human spirit.

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