Roma · reception & legacy
1972 · Federico Fellini
How Roma has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
Greeted in 1972 as baggy, plotless self-indulgence by critics who wanted another 8½, it's since been reclaimed as late-Fellini at his freest — the setpieces now get cited as some of the best things he ever shot.
What's debated
The eternal split: is this 'minor Fellini' travelogue padding, or is the plotlessness the whole point — a film where nothing happens and everything happens?
Its footprint
The ecclesiastical fashion show — cardinals on roller skates, neon-lit vestments — is one of cinema's most referenced sequences, invoked everywhere from Sorrentino's clerical pageantry to the discourse around the Met's 2018 'Heavenly Bodies' Catholic-fashion exhibit. Also the source of endless Letterboxd confusion with Cuarón's 2018 Roma, which people log by mistake constantly.
Where it stands
A cinephile's Fellini — rarely anyone's entry point, but the one fans push on you with 'just watch the fashion show scene,' and a fixture of city-symphony and hangout-film lists.