How has Rome been portrayed in contemporary literature and art and how well do these images reflect reality? Why has Rome been a popular subject and a dramatic scene in many successful films?
The interest of the European upper class in antiquity began not later than the end of the 18th century. In 1784, Edward Gibbon – sitting in his “deep thoughts” on the ruins of the Forum Romanum – decided to begin writing his great work The History of the Decline and the Fall of the Roman Empire.1 Around this time, the first archaeological excavations began in the area. The “noble simplicity and calm grandeur” of ancient ruins and sculptures were models of neoclassical art. Lord Byron regarded Rome as his home country, the birthplace of European civilization, and saw the Coliseum bathed in the moonlight as a symbol of ancient Empire.2
When Rome became the capital of a united Italy in 1870, it became an attractive destination and source of inspiration for many foreign artists and writers. The general public’s portrayal of Rome at that time was based not only on the proliferation of travel literature and the growing volume of newspapers, but also on Charles Dickens’ travel stories, poems by Byron and Keats, or works by David and Ingres on Roman mythology. In Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady (1881), a “pilgrimage to Rome,” getting there and returning from there is a common topic in fashionable society. The past splendour of ancient Rome is admired and contemplated at the Forum, at the Capitoline Museums, at the Coliseum, as well as sculptures that appear to be enchanted and driven by “the deep stillness of the past.”3
Towards the end of the century, in the era of mass tourism, more critical reviews are beginning to emerge. In addition to the ruins, both Mark Twain and James Joyce saw noisy tourist groups and souvenir sellers. In Twain’s view, the saints’ stories told by the guides were fooling the public.4 In his The Innocents Abroad (1869) Twain describes in detail things that tourist guides didn’t want to tell; The Coliseum’s bloody spectacles, gladiatorial battles, the feeding of Christians to the wild beasts, and the medieval Inquisition. On July 1906, Joyce says in a letter about his visit to the Forum: “Rome reminds me of a man who lives by exhibiting to travellers his grandmother’s corpse … I wish I knew something of Latin or Roman history. But it’s not worthwhile beginning now. So let the ruins rot.”5
The role of an outside observer (“Rome as seen by others”), taken by the writer or protagonist, was typical of 18th and 19th century English travel literature. In the 20th century, and especially after the Second World War, translations of Italian literature began to be published increasingly in Europe and the United States, which – like the Neorealist films – aspired to depict the various aspects of Italian society, also at the individual level, especially Rome and its outskirts, everyday life, politics, criminality, and social injustice.6
Rome has been a historical scene, but also the subject of many successful films that have interpreted its colourful past and present reality in many different ways.
Roberto Rosselini, Roma città aperta, 1945
Roberto Rosselini’s melodramatic film Rome, The Open City, depicts the everyday life of the people and the merciless power struggle between the resistance and the Gestapo in a German-occupied city. The dream of a better life is destroyed by the brutal German occupation policy. The film was filmed about a year after the end of the war at the real venues, with partially destroyed buildings in the background.
William Wyler, Roman Holiday, 1953
Princess Ann (Audrey Hepburn), who escaped from her palace for a day off, meets a scoop-hunting journalist (Gregory Peck). The couple speed along the streets of Rome, admiring the sights of the city, falling in love with each other, but finally having to say goodbye when the princess has to return to her palace. For the first time, Rome’s historic sites from the Roman Forum to the Coliseum will be known to the general public. Hepburn received an Oscar for her role, and both Hepburn films, Hepburn fashion and a Vespa 125 gained worldwide fame for a few moments.7
Federico Fellini, La Dolce vita, 1960
Journalist Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) wanders aimlessly at Roman nightclubs and in society circles. He falls in love with the famous actress star Sylvia (Anita Ekberg) followed by the paparazzi. Marcello and Sylvia’s celebration and strolling in the streets of Rome ends with the famous Fontana di Trevi scene, where Marcello already thinks he has found the love he has long sought. In the morning, the illusion disappears when Sylvia returns to her husband. Marcello continues to party with his friends. One of them, an author, who leads a seemingly happy family life, commits an inexplicable suicide. The film can be seen as well as a satirical depiction of the wealthy, but decaying upper class of the 1950s as an existential illustration of the longing for unattainable happiness and the meaninglessness of life.
Federico Fellini, Roma, 1972
Fellini’s Rome is a director’s autobiographical tribute to the eternal city. Modernity (early 1970s) blends with the director’s memory of Rome (1930s) in his youth. The film follows a group of filmmakers who make a movie in the city. It has no actual plot, but a series of episodes, scenes that move through different time levels. The tension in the film comes from the opposites. For Fellini, Rome was a mixture of past and present, beautiful and ugly, sleep and reality, “like a charming sleeping woman … indeed, a whole series of women, both a mother and a mistress at the same time.” It is no coincidence that the constant showing up of nuns and courtesans is characteristic of the film. Contrasting with the imaginative characters borrowed from ancient mythology, a modern, industrial metropolis is in a state of constant change. In the metro tunnel you will find a fresco of an ancient villa, but a fresh air makes the paint slowly disappear. The Coliseum is surrounded by a noisy autostrada, where cars flow in a continuous stream. For the director, Rome is not just a place on the map, but a dear mother figure, a highly personalized experience filled with memories and fantasy.
Ron Howard, Angels and Demons, 2009
Conclave, the cardinal meeting is electing a new pope. However, the Illuminati, a Catholic secret society, has kidnapped four of the Pope’s successor candidates and placed a timed bomb in the middle of the Vatican. Professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) and CERN researcher Vittoria Vetra (Aylet Zurer) collide along the dark Vatican corridors as they investigate a case that has tentacles extending to the highest levels of the Catholic Church. Until midnight, the couple has time to decode the secret code and save the Vatican from total destruction. The film skilfully draws on images of the Vatican dating back to the Renaissance as a venue for conspiracies and political intrigues.
Paolo Sorrentino, La Grande Bellezza, 2013
Aged cultural journalist Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo) celebrates his birthday in Rome overnight. There are his friends, celebrities (past and present) of cultural life and the entertainment world. In the midst of the celebration, the news of the death of protagonist’s beloved one makes him reflect on the meaning of life and seek for himself in his youth. The film has no actual plot, beginning or end, only visually stunning views of Rome, continuous celebration, one funeral and endless quasi-intellectual debates. In this respect, the film is reminiscent of Fellini’s earlier version of more than forty years; love and death, the searching for the meaning of life amidst the superficialities. In the final scene, the dead beloved returns to the protagonist’s image alive, “in flashes of fleeting beauty … buried under the confusion of existence.”
References:
1 Gibbon Edward, Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon, Esquire. Edited by John Baker Holroyd. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge 2014 [1796]. Volume I, p.129.
2 Pinto, John, City of the Soul: Rome and the Romantics. The University Press of New England. Hanover 2016, p.11.
3James, Henry, The Portrait of a Lady. Wordsworth Editions Limited. Chatham, Kent 1999, p.262. See also pp.263, 264, 307, 391,393,431,432.
4 Twain, Mark, The Innocents Abroad. H.H. Bancroft and Company. San Francisco 2011 [1869], pp.274, 277, 298.
5 Pierce, David, Joyce and Company. Continuum. MPG Books Ltd., Bodmin, Cornwalls.London & New York 2006, p.108; Spoo, Robert, James Joyce and the Language of History. Dedalus’s Nightmare. New York & Oxford 1994, ss.15-16; https://epdf.pub/james-joyce-and-the-language-of-history-dedaluss-nightmare.html (searched October 8, 2019)
6 Alberto Moravia, The Woman of Rome, 1947; Pier Paolo Pasolini, The Ragazzi, 1955; Elsa Morante, History: A Novel, 1974; Giuseppe Genna, Caput Mundi in Rome Noir collection, 2009; Ennio Flaiano, Via Veneto Papers, from Rome Tales, stories translated by Hugh Shankland, 2011.
71952 Vespa 125, V30T. Italian Ways.
