MAMMA ROMA

Famed for her seemingly spontaneous, volcanic displays of emotion on screen, Anna Magnani has perhaps her supreme role as the middle-aged sex worker nicknamed “Mamma Roma,” a footsore veteran of the street who lives only to imagine a better life for her teenage son who, newly arrived in the Italian capital from the country, begins to slip inextricably towards delinquency. Pasolini may have made greater films, but he never made one as awesomely moving—proof that the master of cinematic modernism was a magnificent melodramatist as well.

"It was in the precarious margins that Pasolini felt most comfortable—among hustlers, whores, petty thieves, and loafers. MAMMA ROMA, from 1962, essentially rewrites his previous film ACCATTONE from a female point of view, but it’s more structurally provocative, the first of many Pasolini pictures to hinge on dueling narratives. Anchored by a contentious, manic-depressive performance by Anna Magnani, the film contrasts the fates of a mother and son separated by gender and generation. Its finale is a heartbreaking coup de grâce, as is the pair of majestic tracking shots that conceive Mamma Roma as a celestial body circling a solar system of hookers, pimps, and streetlights—the poetic expression of a woman struggling to define her place in the world." - Ed Gonzalez, Slant