Fly on the opening credits
Did anyone else notice the fly landing on the screen in the opening credits? Interesting- wonder if it happened during the transfer to DVD or was it from earlier and deliberate.
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MovieChat Forums > Mamma Roma (1965) Discussion > Fly on the opening credits
I, too, saw the fly. I haven't really worked out the symbolism if it's deliberate other than obvious seediness and decay (and the Dante's circle allusion towards the end of the film). Even if it is a mistake, I kind of like it. A happy mistake.
shareYes. I saw the fly crawling up the screen on the right side of the opening credits. Honestly, it's hard to say if it was intentional or not.
shareWe just screened this film in our arthouse cinema, and the fly was on the filmprint as well! Quite charming, if you ask me :P
sharePlease, people. There isn't intentional symbolism in EVERYTHING! A fly is a fly. It got into the shot by mistake, just like the fly that flew around Judy Garland in the final scene of "The Wizard of OZ," it was there by chance.
shareI suspect it was intentional. But even if it was a mere accident, audiences can perceive that as symbol. Roland Barhtes has argued that everything can be taken as symbols. I should perhaps run the head titles again and check on whose names the fly is resting...
shareI suspect it was intentional. But even if it was a mere accident, audiences can perceive that as symbol. Roland Barthes has argued that everything can be taken as symbols. I should perhaps run the head titles again and check on whose names the fly is resting...
shareIf it was intentional, what in the world does it have to do anything in the film? Why not an ant, or a cockroach? No, sometimes a fly gets in the way. Like I said, they can be seen in other films. Should we assume Dorothy Gale was swatting away King Vidor's symbolic reference to the starving dust bowl farmers in the Great Depression, or Dorothy's nagging suspicion that OZ really was a dream?
shareIf it was intentional, why do you have such a hard time accepting that it would have something to do with the film? A fly is a fly if it happened to land on the lens, but if it was directed to, then it's no longer just that. If it was intentional, then there was a purpose to it, whether to generally suggest decay or something more concrete. If you're so sure that it got into the shot by mistake, I'd like to see your proof. The chance of this occurring in the opening credits of a film concerned firmly with poverty and decay (and I can't recall such a blatant occurrence in any other film), directed by a conscientious filmmaker, and it being totally accidental is a more outlandish idea than that Pasolini simply smeared a bit of food on the lens and set a fly on it. Your hostility to the mere suggestion is odd, to say the least.
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I'm sort of hostile to the suggestion that everything in a film frame is symbolically placed there by the director and it means something. I'm more open to unusual and natural occurances on a film set or location that are included without reference to symbols. Sometimes flies get in the way. Sometimes they might be placed there. Sometimes scripts and characters are written for entertainment and plot and not symbolic references to Greek or Roman gods, sometimes they are. I choose not to see symbolic representation in every piece of art ever created. I go to film discussions and people sound immensely full of themselves as they burst forth with this stuff "What Hitchcock was symbolizing here was..." nonsense. I want to stand up and say, no, most of the time what he was doing was servicing the script and the suspense and the movie, and trying to make it tasty for audiences, no symbolic reference is implied, just applies in the mind of the audiences after the fact. "It's just a movie" - Hitchcock
And there are others hostile to the idea that mere entertainment = art. In my book satisfying another for money is prostitution; a director who fulfils this role is wanking his or her audience. They are unconcerned with art.
Anyway, Pasolini is not a director of mere entertainment. The fly is intentional. When a thing is posted as a symbol or metaphor it is a call to reflection and imagination.
A bird sings and the mountain's silence deepens.share
I recorded it off of TCM and the fly landed on the credits also. If it was always there it would be will known and would have been mentioned from the start in 1962. It must be during the restoration that it happened. They liked it so they kept in in.
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