Back Home To Rome

Bizarre. Just bizarre.

I will admit that I love Fellini films. It goes back to when I was studying Italian, and they were the easiest Italian films to find. I would pop in a tape of La Dolce Vita and prep for my exams while trying to get myself in the proper Italian frame of mind.

Looking back, it's no wonder I never did very well in my Italian exams.

The thing is... his films are insane. Seriously, crazy. I like them, and think that they are fantastic in lots of ways, but they are fantastic the like the the insane cat pictures of Louis Wain to the left.

I just tripped across the clip below from Fellini's 1972 film Roma. I have to admit that though it is still bizarre, I still love it.

It's particularly interesting to think that this was created in 1972. It would have amazed Fellini in 1972 to think that a Catholic like myself (born in the early 70s) really wouldn't 'get' the satire of this piece because we were never exposed to any of the traditional Catholic pageantry that is being shown (and satirized) here.

I am sure that even Fellini could not have imagined a Catholic Church like the one I grew up in... Where the nuns wear polyester pantsuits, the priests rarely wear their collars, and the altar girls wear only an alb and surely have never carried a thurible (it was all bowls of incense all the time).

Fellini's Catholic Church Fashion Show is sort of fascinating as a window into the bizarreness of another time, but even more interesting as evidence that what the Catholic Church really did was beyond even the most bizarre imaginings of Catholics of the 60s.

posted by Mary Martha @ 12:14 PM