Subject
In the 1987 film “Intervista” (Interview), Federico Fellini portrays a scene on a blue tramcar of the old Società delle Tramvie e Ferrovie Elettriche di Roma (Rome Electric Tram and Railway Company). Riding the tramcar, Sergio Rubini, playing the young director Fellini, arrives in Rome to interview a matinee idol. Along the way the tram follows Via degli Olmi, alongside a stretch of the Acquedotto Alessandrino, passes a medieval tower, and then arrives on Via Appia Antica near the so-called Mausoleo di Casal Rotondo.
This imposing tomb, circular with diameter of about 35 metres, originally sheathed in travertine blocks, dates to the end of the 1st century BC. Around the 13th century a defensive tower, possibly pertaining to the Savelli family, was built in extension to the tomb. This was later adapted as a small private dwelling. In 1850-1853, next to the tomb, Luigi Canina raised a brick wall as an architectural backdrop, inserted with marble fragments he attributed to the monument itself. Having discovered an inscription among these, Canina further declared that the mausoleum had been dedicated to Messalla Corvinus, consul in 31 BC, by his son Marcus Valerius Messalinus Cotta. Today, scholars believe that the marble fragments embedded in the brickwork would instead derive from a funerary monument of smaller dimensions than Casal Rotondo. Unfortunately, accumulated acts of vandalism have considerably reduced the number of walled-in marble fragments. Fellini imagines the tram running on rails along the Appia Antica towards the centre of Rome. As the tram proceeds, Rubini, the young Fellini, takes encouragement from the words of a Fascist hierarch and the smiles and laughs of a young woman. As the tram passes the villa of Emperor Maxentius, Fellini waves to a woman shaking out a sheet from a window of a substantial farmhouse. This is in fact the Casale or “manor house” built by the Torlonia family during the 1820s and 1830s precisely over the site of the entrance to the monumental Mausoleum of Romulus, son of Emperor Maxentius, who drowned in the waters of the Tiber in 309 AD.
Director
Federico Fellini
Year
1987
