the impact of Rome and the language of colour, the strength of film

It disturbs me that many people who flow through Rome run between famous things and do not see the city, do not allow the colour of the city to impact upon them. They seem to want to filter through the colours of home. What's the point of that then?


....Rome is full of colour. As is much of Italy, except where things are made of stone or carved of stone or made from baked clay.


The colours of Tuscany and Umbria also reflect the historically available palette of earthy colours. Look in a child's paint box and see Burnt Sienna and Light Umber. The paints are traditionally applied without the fixatives that would make them permanent, that prevent fading and streaking. That inhibit beauty evolving, that prevent ageing such as is normal in organic life.

You see on those walls, photo at left or left above on your browser, the street where we are in Rome, with diverse messages, some angry, some about football teams, some with bad words... and the very cute figures in the right foreground of the photo, by a graffitist whose works bring us to a halt here and there as we wander.

That scene comes into our minds now with sounds: the sound of the metal worker in the first door down there on the right, the sounds of coming and going from the market in the door behind the camera, and the crash-bang-screech-squeeze of the garbage truck at 3 in the afternoon or 6.30 in the evening. The sounds of the wheels of travellers' suitcases on the cobblestones before dawn, hastening for far away places at the end of time here... reminding us sometimes of frogs in the ponds at home when it rains, planes leaving...reminding us other times of the sounds of, of...of suitcases of travellers.

It is not all travellers here. There was, just along the street, a combined unions festival two weeks ago, three nights, about the role of women, focused on three of the women from here: Anna Magnani, Monica Vitti and Gabriella Ferri. The sounds of which floated to us, here my camera out the window. See again the colour, colour in the night, inseparable from mood.

To understand a little about colour, 

attend to the great master of colour in cinema of the twentieth century, 

Vittorio Storaro.
Do continue through to where he speaks of discovering who you are.
And speaks of his discovery of his own ignorance and self-discovery
as a path to maturity.

This week we ventured into the crowds at Piazza di Spagna. A place of great beauty, though it's so easy to be swept up in the mood of the crowd, see only the crowd, my crowd or the crowd of others.
This occasion very happy, not too crowded.
Colour shapes the crowd and mood, shaped by the sky, whatever mood. See what I mean.

This next embedded movie is set a tiny bit in Africa, a lot next to the Spanish Steps,
and very very deeply in the heart. There is a lack of special effects and Hollywood:
It goes mysteriously and gently: a magic of light and colour and two special actors.
Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci

Storaro as a gift to the world

and
Moravia + Bertollucci + Storaro
taking the anti-fascist novel Il Conformista of Alberto Moravia, 

the major Roman writer of the twentieth century

to show how people can slide graciously into fascism.

WARNING, THIS IS NOT FOR ALL

The insidious process of that story – the violent outcome of a refined man's pursuit of "fitting in" with power – has lessons for us now. 

Norman Mailer said, in a speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, February 2003, just before the invasion of Iraq:

Fascism is more of a natural state than democracy. To assume blithely that we can export democracy into any country we choose can serve paradoxically to encourage more fascism at home and abroad. Democracy is a state of grace that is attained only by those countries who have a host of individuals not only ready to enjoy freedom but to undergo the heavy labor of maintaining it.