Mamma Roma - Or Pasolini in general?

1895-1999
Post Reply
User avatar
Johnny Guitar
Assistant
Posts: 509
Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2003 5:14 pm
Location: Chicago

Post by Johnny Guitar »

Magilla, that must have been where I read it--thanks for checking!
ITALIANO
Emeritus
Posts: 4076
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 1:58 pm
Location: MILAN

Post by ITALIANO »

I'm glad to know from you all that our Nannarella is known even in America for her Italian movies. I must say that her winning an Oscar (and in a rather competitive year) was, back then, a matter of national pride for post-war Italy, and for Italian cinema. But even at the time it was clear that in The Rose Tattoo Magnani was, while undeniably powerful, not as great as in her Italian movies. Still American cinema came at the right moment for Magnani's career - a moment when her strong, too strong personality, and her intimidating character were kind of preventing her from getting good roles in her own country. She was a living legend, and as such a bit frightening to some directors (the fact that she was famous for never waking up before 2 p.m. was also a factor). So yes, in America she was typecast, true, but I think one can find beautiful Magnani moments even in those performances - certainly, as Magilla pointed out, in the now forgotten (and not very good) Wild is the Wind, but even in the infamous (and maybe not completely bad) The Fugitive Kind - only Santa Vittoria is honestly completely embarassing. But please watch her in Visconti's Bellissima and you will see a rare example of sublime movie acting.
Big Magilla
Site Admin
Posts: 19319
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 3:22 pm
Location: Jersey Shore

Post by Big Magilla »

The booklet accompanying the Critierion DVD of Mamma Roma includes a 1969 interview with Pasolini by British journalist Oswald Stack. In it, he refers to Magnai in Mamma Roma as his only casting mistake. He says "if I'd got Anna Magnani to do a real petit bourgeois I would probably have got a good performance out of her; but the trouble is that I didn't get her to do that, I got her to do a woman of the people (popolana) with petit bourgeois aspirations, and Anna Magnani just isn't that....although Anna Magnani made a moving effort to do what I asked of her, the character simply did not emerge."

I think he puts too fine a point on it. She is magnficent in the role, a revelation for me. Too bad the film was not shown in the U.S. until 1995 and then only in limited release.

I was one of those Americans who knew Magnani primarily from her Hollywood films, Open City the only Italian film I had seen her in until the last few years. It is something really quite wonderful that the real Magnani has emerged at last as the one Americans, as well as the rest of world, now knows. Too bad it wasn't the case during her lifetime or for decades after.

The American film that most captrues her persona is not The Rose Tattoo, but Wild Is the Wind, which I re-watched recently. In it, she plays a middle-aged woman brought to the U.S. by a rich rancher (Anthony Quinn) after the death of her sister, his wife, to take her place. Quinn has an adopted brother (Anthony Franciosa) who he expects to marry his daughter (Dolores Hart), but Franciosa has the hots for Magnani and she for him and they get it on while Quinn is away on business and Hart is away at college. The story line is similar to They Knew What They Wanted, in which Charles Laughton, Carole Lombard and William Gargan make up the volatile triange. The difference is that the Hays Office would not allow the cuckolded rancher (Laughton) and the straying woman (Lombard) a happy ending in 1940, but did allow Quinn and Magnani one seventeen years later. It's a shame that this film isn't better known.
Big Magilla
Site Admin
Posts: 19319
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 3:22 pm
Location: Jersey Shore

Post by Big Magilla »

ITALIANO wrote:As for Magnani, I'm Italian so I probably shouldn't say this, but I really think that she's one of the ten best actresses of the XX century. In Europe of course most people would agree with me, but those Americans whose knowledge of her is only based on her four American movies (of which The Rose Tattoo is the best of course, yet definitely inferior to her Italian work) will never know how right I am.
Those Americans are probably all dead by now. As Zach and Aakash point out, she is better known to today's American cineastes for Open City and Momma Roma. Americans under 50, who are not cineastes, and who do not frequent Oscar boards most likely don't even know who she was. If they've seen her in any of her American films it is more likely the godawful Fugitive Kind which gets shown fairly often on cable TV, probably because of Brando. The Rose Tattoo is rarely shown any more and Wild Is the Wind and The Secret of Santa Vittoria are all but forgotten nowadays.
Akash
Professor
Posts: 2037
Joined: Mon Oct 02, 2006 1:34 am

Post by Akash »

ITALIANO wrote:As for Magnani, I'm Italian so I probably shouldn't say this, but I really think that she's one of the ten best actresses of the XX century. In Europe of course most people would agree with me, but those Americans whose knowledge of her is only based on her four American movies (of which The Rose Tattoo is the best of course, yet definitely inferior to her Italian work) will never know how right I am.
Marco, I'm not Italian (though I often wish I was) and I would agree with you that she's one of the best actresses ever captured on film. Her work in Mamma Roma is one of the finest performances -- she really commands the screen, you can never take your eyes off of her. I think Zach is correct that she's more well known for the films he mentioned than The Rose Tattoo.

Oh and Ettore Garofolo was appropriately beautiful :)

Pasolini the director, the poet, the novelist, the sociologist, the political analyst, the critic, the teacher, the homosexual, the communist, the christian, the murder victim - this man of a thousand faces (yet of only one intellectual integrity) is still, more than thirty years after his death, a key figure in Italy's contemporary history, and a sort of symbol against which Italy's many contradictions collapse. And anyway, even those few who for some reason don't like his books or his movies can't avoid to be amazed by his incredible, truly rare intelligence.


He's one of my favorite directors of all time. I don't know how popular he is in US film school circles (I can't stand most film students -- Zach and Steph are huge exceptions obviously) but to me he was clearly one of the great artists.
User avatar
Johnny Guitar
Assistant
Posts: 509
Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2003 5:14 pm
Location: Chicago

Post by Johnny Guitar »

ITALIANO wrote:
Johnny Guitar wrote:It's strange because Magnani's performance (which is indeed great) was one of the few things Pasolini was unhappy about in the film--it's not that she was bad, but he felt she was the wrong type to begin with (too bourgeois).

Really? I had never heard of this - I knew that relationships between them were not easy at the beginning - Pasolini being a shy, introverted intellectual from Northern Italy and Magnani being, well, Magnani. But I never knew that he was unhappy with the final result. It is, of course, a magnificent performance - though it is true that Magnani, while probably not exactly "too bourgeois", was, unlike the rest of the cast, a star, and the first star actress Pasolini dealt with as a director (the first professional actress even).

Yes, that is part of the case, too. "Too bourgeois" was my highly reductive summary of what I'd read (for which I've been looking in vain the last few minutes--I think it may be in the Rhodes book somewhere, though). It was more like an inadequacy of casting rather than an inadequacy of performance that Pasolini observed, if I recall correctly.

Anyway ... who ever talks about The Rose Tattoo? I'd say at this stage that cinephiles from all over know her first as the woman from Open City, The Golden Coach, and Mamma Roma. I think the truism that she's "best known to Americans for The Rose Tattoo," which was often trotted out in, say, recent reviews of the Criterion Collection DVD release of Mamma Roma, are simply obsolete at this point. That's my two cents.
ITALIANO
Emeritus
Posts: 4076
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 1:58 pm
Location: MILAN

Post by ITALIANO »

Johnny Guitar wrote:It's strange because Magnani's performance (which is indeed great) was one of the few things Pasolini was unhappy about in the film--it's not that she was bad, but he felt she was the wrong type to begin with (too bourgeois).
Really? I had never heard of this - I knew that relationships between them were not easy at the beginning - Pasolini being a shy, introverted intellectual from Northern Italy and Magnani being, well, Magnani. But I never knew that he was unhappy with the final result. It is, of course, a magnificent performance - though it is true that Magnani, while probably not exactly "too bourgeois", was, unlike the rest of the cast, a star, and the first star actress Pasolini dealt with as a director (the first professional actress even).

But these are among the two most talented artists Italian cinema ever had. Together they produced a fascinating movie, and I'm glad that Americans are starting to know and understand Pasolini's work - complex movies by a complex man, but also, I think, the proof that a work of art can be intellectually profound, complicated, multi-layered, still at the same emotionally involving, even, I'd say, simple in many ways, "pure" - an adjective I'd never normally use, yet there is a kind of purity in Pasolini's work. And this is why his death, and the mistery which still surrounds it, are so absurd (and so depressingly Italian).

Pasolini the director, the poet, the novelist, the sociologist, the political analyst, the critic, the teacher, the homosexual, the communist, the christian, the murder victim - this man of a thousand faces (yet of only one intellectual integrity) is still, more than thirty years after his death, a key figure in Italy's contemporary history, and a sort of symbol against which Italy's many contradictions collapse. And anyway, even those few who for some reason don't like his books or his movies can't avoid to be amazed by his incredible, truly rare intelligence.

As for Magnani, I'm Italian so I probably shouldn't say this, but I really think that she's one of the ten best actresses of the XX century. In Europe of course most people would agree with me, but those Americans whose knowledge of her is only based on her four American movies (of which The Rose Tattoo is the best of course, yet definitely inferior to her Italian work) will never know how right I am.
Akash
Professor
Posts: 2037
Joined: Mon Oct 02, 2006 1:34 am

Post by Akash »

Thank for the suggestion Zach. Consider it done.
User avatar
Johnny Guitar
Assistant
Posts: 509
Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2003 5:14 pm
Location: Chicago

Post by Johnny Guitar »

It's strange because Magnani's performance (which is indeed great) was one of the few things Pasolini was unhappy about in the film--it's not that she was bad, but he felt she was the wrong type to begin with (too bourgeois).

Aakash, I'd recommend you get ahold of a copy of a slim but rewarding book by John David Rhodes called Stupendous, Miserable City, which deals with Pasolini & Rome, topics like urban planning, neorealism, and not only Pasolini's cinema but his writing. Rhodes' reading of Accattone and Mamma Roma is superb.
Akash
Professor
Posts: 2037
Joined: Mon Oct 02, 2006 1:34 am

Post by Akash »

I just rewatched Mamma Roma (which I've always loved) and this time I was even more impressed by Anna Magnani's performance. The religious imagery is kind of obvious (the last shot of the church, Ettore's "crucifixion") but haunting nevertheless, and there are numerous cool shots of Magnani up close that suggest a vampiric presence -- a parisitic relationship between mother and son and between women and patriarchal society? What a terrific actress! I really love this film.

Was this film well received at all? I know it was banned for a while but what about afterwards?




Edited By Akash on 1199354564
Post Reply

Return to “The First Century”