Fellini is totally autobiographical but unproblematic: like those Renaissance painters who filled the walls and ceilings of innumerable villas and palaces with exuberant portraits of their mistresses and friends, barely disguised as figures of classical or biblical allegory.

Such reflections are brought to the fore by Fellini's latest film, Roma, which presents a dual portrait of the city and the cinéaste. The confrontation of these two runs as a unifying thread throughout the film. All great baroque art is a cry of defiance against death, and Rome, seen as a dying city eaten away from within, provokes Fellini to some of the most dazzling sequences of his career. The opening is deceptively idyllic: Rome as it is seen from the provinces…. Above all, it is a paradoxical mixture of past dignity and present temptation…. Fellini's handling of these sequences—recreating his Cinecittà epic as well as his...