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.

night from window in Rome

Last night, on the first of three nights of the Ottobrata Monticiana, a union organised festival in Monti, 12, 13 and 14 October 2018, I held the camera out or window for two minutes and recorded this... life below and live music floating from the Piazza di Santa Maria ai Monti.

A festival to discuss and celebrate the role of women, with photo exhibitions of the Roman actresses Anna Magnani and Monica Vitti and the singer Gabriella Ferri. With children's entertainments during the day and films featuring those women at the Monti Seniors Centre in the evening. 

Anna Magnani flew Italian neorealist cinema to the sky with her 1945 performance in Roberto Rosselini's Roma: Città Aperta [Rome: Open City]. When Italian cinema went in a completely different direction from Hollywood or British cinema, into portrayal of the realities of life for ordinary people. This book review in The Guardian provides context. This is not without relevance to the present state of Italian-German relations.

Here is Wikipedia's account of Roma: Città Aperta. We are staying 2km on foot from the Museum of the Liberation of Rome, in a small building used by the SS for torture in 1944. The middle aged Germans sitting drinking around the fountain of the Piazza (live performance floating again in the window tonight 13 October) are likely uncomprehending. As a woman in impromptu political essay in the rain two nights ago said: "The Germans are strong, organised and rich. They come here but they don't love us. Merkel brings her husband to Italy for summer holidays, but she does not love us. They will not help us recover. They resent us now as they resented us 500 years ago (Luther)."

This three minute fragment of Roma Città Aperta has no subtitles. The quote in the film title says that it seems this winter can never end. Read the Wikipedia entry at link above to need no translation. Use YouTube to find more by Anna Magnani. There is despair in Italy now that the winter of the past decade, of entrapment in non-recovery and decline from the Global Financial Crisis, is an unending winter. 

Monica Vitti, a generation later, made serious films with Michelangelo Antonioni, turning afterwards to performance in comedy. Her performances in either direction leave a permanent imprint.

and in Teresa the Thief

The music floating in the window tonight is of the same cloth, or the same musicality, as of Gabriella Ferri and her era. This bunch of movies/musical recordings begins with photos from Rome street scenes in 2009, just the same today. This is the city of our affections.

Before we stop the movies we have to offer this tribute to his home district, Monti, by the late Mario Monicelli, leading Italian film director, in his 93rd year:

This afternoon after a lunch in Trastevere at a trattoria with a menu that has not changed in fifty years, so totally Roman, we came home on the 75 bus and so had a very privileged run through army's barriers enclosing at either end the crowds who know Rome consists of things 2000 years old, to be seen in three days, max.

Esercito = Army

.... but the story of Italy is far from finished.