Analysis Of Woody Allen's To Rome With Love

The traffic policeman transfixes his eyes upon the screen, his words captivating an audience from the very beginning in Woody Allen's To Rome With Love. “In this city,” he declares, his accent both lilting and emphasizing his speech, “all is a story.” His words, predictably, open up to a movie which follows several independent vignettes, all of which render the movie to lack a single protagonist but encompass several supporting characters. The setting of these numerous storylines take place in the Eternal City, as implicated by the title. Rome itself is a prominent actor within the movie, for cinema, as David B. Clarke declares in his piece, “The Cinematic City,”, “works alongside the body and alongside the city.” Allen's film, by Clarke's

This love letter, of course, is devoid of the everyday graffiti which is so apparent to the inhabitants of the Eternal City; nevertheless, more localized areas, such as La Garbatella and Rione Monti, are also illustrated. These areas capture the nostalgia of authenticity, a sentiment lost by the more cosmopolitan influences in several neighbourhoods within Rome. La Garbatella, for instance, is a smaller village, with gardens, low-rise houses, and bars. Rione Monti, on the other hand, rampantly boasts artists, criminals, and prostitutes, but has become significantly safer throughout the years due to the strong influx of tourism. This type of character, though unconventional, is an anomaly when Allen's portrayal of Rome is considered. The liveliness of this beautiful city offers an anachronistic postcard brimming with nostalgia, brimming with romance and sex and adultery, brimming with tribute. As mentioned before, however, the crisp graffiti lining most walls and doorways, as well as any indication of the Italian financial crisis, is lacking heavily. Allen's perspective of Rome is idealized at best, a fantasy desired by foreigners, and an era long lost by locals. Regardless of its

Allen utilizes the city as a natural and a staged set in various ways, inspired by the maverick directors of past Italian cinemas. New York Times columnist Dave Itzkoff interviewed Allen in 2012, inquiring about those filmmakers that had so greatly influenced Allen's Italian pieces. One such movie was the The Bicycle Thief, directed by Vittorio De Sica in 1948. The simplicity of the plot, which involves a man's stolen bicycle and a journey to retrieve it with his son, examines the depth of the relationship between the father and son in the process. It left an effortless impression on its audience, and, Allen adds, “You didn't have to think about anything; you just watched the characters and their predicament.” De Sica likewise directed Shoeshine, another one of Allen's muses in Italian movies. The breadth of the relationship between the main characters, who start off as friends and end up as enemies, profoundly impacted the way in which Allen perceived emotion – dynamic and passionate. This is apparent with the abundance of sex and adultery within his movies, including To Rome With