Mamma Roma (1962)

One of the main things I noticed about Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1962 film is how many similarities it has with Fellini's 'Nights of Cabiria', which was made five years earlier.

Not least of all, the feisty Anna Magnani as the 40 something whore of the title, nick-named presumably after her reputation as the best working woman in the city. There's also the fact that she desperately wants to retire, set up a fruit and veg stall and finally, get to know her teenage son.

Then, there's the modern, on 'the edge of town' high-rise flats and wasteland that borders flanks them. Many Italian directors of the day used such locations, presumably as they were easy to film on and probably didn't require the expense and red-tape of getting permission to film in the City centre. But, those landscapes show a universal sort of hinterland, between poverty and modernism and their ugly sparseness helps concentrate on the human figures we're watching.

Giuletta Masina, as the protagonist Fellini's wife then, in comparison, also tries to retire but her romantic ideals go astray and she just heads for heartache, whilst Mamma Rosa wants to see the son that his father never saw and she feels guilty over her neglect of him and wants him to steer a course away from the way she has lived.

Unfortunately, these ideals slip a little, her persistent pimp notwithstanding, as she relies more and more on using her rather dodgy contacts and past liaisons to achieve that. Sickly as a young child, Ettore (Ettore Garofolo) is, frankly not a handsome lad and when he gets to know a local girl who doesn't quite meet his mother's high ideals, she asks another much younger and prettier call-girl to introduce him to women for the first time, if you get my drift and of course she wants to get him a job....talk about a mother's love for a child being blind!

Pasolini's approach is rather less dramatic and theatrical than Fellini's but is probably more consistent and it's more straightforward. You just have to love Mamma's offbeat approach to life, though not everybody does in the film, which is both amusing and entertaining. I understand that the cast were all amateur apart from Anna Magnani, as was common with films from the Italian neorealist movement and this makes it all the more natural and believable.

I noticed that Pasolini employed some lovely steady camera shots, like with a Steadicam, slowly moving along streets, which gives a graceful fluidity, adding to an often poetic poise. However, the emotional buttons don't get pushed quite as hard or readily as with the Fellini comparison but it's still an enjoyable film, that certainly adds to the list of notable Italian films of the 50s and 60s.

If you enjoy the straighter side of Fellini, such as La Dolce Vita, or any that depicts Rome in a contemporary way, then you'll enjoy this too. The 'Mr Bongo' release has a decent transfer with pretty good sound. A few subtitling spelling gremlins are just noticeable but never spoil the viewing pleasure.

Fmovies: If you think that you know the answer, just watch this masterpiece by the patriarch of the Italian "New Generation" whose work has changed the history of the Italian cinema (and literature). A marvellous poetic, neorealistic look on the pure maternal love and its interaction with the rotten feelings of the real world. The movie has the expressional force of a Greek tragedy, describing the impuissance of ordinary people to alter their fate by believing that "life is so beautiful, if you can think wisely".

"Mamma Roma"(1962) the second film directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini, is the brutally realistic in its depiction of life in the slums of Rome yet lyrical ode to mother's love. Mamma Roma (Anna Magnani), a middle-aged prostitute is ready to quit her profession and to start a new life with her teenage son who had spent his childhood in the country and does not know her well. She wants a better life for herself and a meaningful future for her son, and there is not much her Mamma Roma would not do for her son. Things don't go as planned, though...

Anna Magnani was renowned for her earthy, passionate, "woman-of-the-soil" roles and she is one of the main reasons to see the film. She is Rome's flesh and soul, its spirit and symbol, its loud laugh and bitter tears.

Mamma Roma fmovies. Wonderful performances, almost real. Beautiful black and white cinematography. It shows the real love of a mother, driving her to situations she doesn't want, to make her son happy. Melodramatic story that will make you weep. And will also make you watch every single italian film done in the 60's.

Mamma Roma, not released in the US until over thirty years after its original release in Italy, has the ingredients of melodrama but is not filmed exactly in the way that should conjure the usual aesthetic. It's filmed like in a trance much of the time, as its characters move along like they know what self-made hell they're in, and while it's not done in a semi-documentary way it doesn't exactly have the heightened sense of true urgency that a Rossellini film had either. The location sort of makes it in part a psychological crutch to live in; the buildings and even the rural decay as being symbolic (arguably) of Roma and Ettore's rock and a hard place situation as well as their torn relationship. But what's captured best is the passion of the characters- even if it's not exactly always well performed passion or expression- and the hardened melancholy directed by the musical score.

One of the best things Pasolini has going for him with his production is Anna Magnani as the title role. She's the kind of warm-hearted prostitute that's become a cliché in some films, but she passes cliché to make Mamma Roma a sublime array of what a hard-bitten woman of 43, who's been working the streets her whole life since hitting pubescence, and while she can have moments of tenderness and happiness and real abandon with odd hilarity (i.e. that wedding scene at the beginning), it's all very brief as if on a leash via pimp Carmine (Citti). Magnani is, to use a cliché, the heart and soul of the picture, or at least the best kind, as her intent for being compassionate for her son is undying, even when she scorns him for doing nothing with his life. There's a great scene where she and Biancofiore, a fellow prostitute, watch Ettore at a waiter job, and she breaks into tears for seemingly no reason, but there is a reason for how simple but effectively Pasolini shows Ettore being really innocent and pure at work, even child-like in his demeanor.

And if Ettore- played by an actor with the same name in his first movie role (not to be cruel but you can tell)- is sort of two-dimensional as an angry and dysfunctional and aimless youth, after women and money but with no direction at all- is an intriguing weak link, Pasolini and DP Tonino Delli-Colli's skills at filming everything is top-notch. In fact, I'd say even having only seen a few of Pasolini's movies to be a very important film for him as director. He has a care in filming what are conventional scenes like a wedding (via close-ups, naturally), and in church scenes, and even with a specific shot of Rome used more than once to establish, and with a beautiful ease in tracking shots along the streets and empty fields that is in fact poetic in tone. Best of all, as other critics have noted, are the night-time walking scenes, where Magnani walks along in front of the camera, the lights behind making it sort of ominous and evocative at once, with one man coming into talk and then leaving and then another woman or man coming in, as Magnani walks and talks like it's the most natural thing in the world. Simply put, they're some of the most beautiful moments in 60's Italian film.

As the film rolls along to the extraordinarily depressing ending, leading to a scene in a solitary prison cell with a character tied down to a bed with a horrible fever, the music also becomes a fascinating asset. It's hit and miss with how Pasolini utilizes Vivaldi in the film, sometimes with the soft and super sad notes being played in m

If Sarah Palin wants to support what she calls her "Mama Grizzlies," she should have Mamma Roma in her stable. This woman (Anna Magnani - The Rose Tattoo, The Secret of Santa Vittoria) is one tough grizzly, especially when it comes to her son, and trying to keep him on the straight and narrow.

She used to be a woman of the evening, until her pimp (Franco Citti - Accattone!, Godfather III) marries a country girl and retires, letting her reclaim her now teenage son (Ettore Garofolo in his first film) and move to Rome.

He soon falls for a loose woman and in with some unsavory characters. That's when the grizzly rears on her hind legs and goes to work.

Director Pier Paolo Pasolini (The Gospel According to St. Matthew, The Decameron, and the last before he was murdered, Salò) used Citti in many of his films. His films, while critically acclaimed, could draw moral outrage. Five minutes were cut from this film by the Italian authorities; although I can only guess where. He still was one of the best, and directed a winner here.