At the wedding of her pimp, Carmine (Franco Citti), ‘Mamma Ro’ (Anna Magnani) announces her retirement from prostitution. She first returns to her poverty-stricken native village to reclaim her estranged son Ettore (Ettore Garofalo) and then moves into a newly constructed apartment complex in Rome. Mamma’s tragicomic attempts to create a new life for herself meet with a variety of obstacles: her struggle to pay her bills, the return of Carmine into her life, Ettore’s listlessness and his friendship with lowlifes and vagabonds. Set among Rome’s borgate, a counter-culture of Rome’s lower depths, Mamma Roma depicts the social impact of emerging middle-class values in its ironic story of a mother’s love for her child.
Pier Paolo Pasolini’s iconoclastic vision renders the world of the borgate - a world of criminals, prostitutes and pimps - with the sacred elegance of religious paintings by Renaissance masters. This seeming lack of judgment towards society’s reprobates made his work deeply controversial. Equally subversive is the casting of Oscar winning actress Anna Magnani. An Italian national treasure, her brilliant performance endows her character with the mythic dimension inherent in the name Mamma Roma.
Forget Black Swan's smothering mother and the helmet-haired harridan of The Fighter; when it comes to maternal messiness currently at a theater near you, these women can' t hold an altar candle to Anna Magnani's Mamma Roma -- Time Out
Compared to Anna Magnani, most film actresses look half-dead. Erupting with lust, laughter and carnivorous pleasure, the great Italian star had a diva's hauteur, a peasant bawd's temperament and a knack for obliterating any actor who dared to share the screen with her -- San Francisco Chronicle
Hell hath no fury like Mamma Roma, the virago played so stormily by Anna Magnani ... seethes with the sensuality and dark iconoclasm -- New York Times
1962
102 minutes
Italian with English subtitles
Mono audio
1.33 : 1 Black & White
DVD PAL Multi Region
MRBDVD038
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