Anna Magnani: Mamma Roma on TV, death, son, Rossellini

THESeptember 26th fifty years ago, at just 65 years old, the legendary Anna Magnani died in a Roman clinic. Extraordinary actress who, with her talent and her passion for acting, has become one of symbols of Italian cinema, and of the national character. There are many homages scattered across TV, with films and specials that tell the story, among many others today at 4.45pm it airs on Rete 4 Mother Rome by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Filmed between 1961 and 1962, and presented at the Venice Film Festival in competition, it represents one of the most beautiful and intense roles of the extraordinary Nannarella.

Anna Magnani, the emblem of an era

«The actress who changed Italian cinema». This is how Jean-Luc Godard summed up Anna, antidiva par excellence, fundamental figure of Italian Neorealism, symbol of a proud, popular and combative Italy which was preparing to be reborn from the Second World War. Non-classical beauty and passionate character, Magnani grew up in Rome in a very poor family. In the 1930s she was already a highly appreciated theater performer, while the cinema finds it difficult to give her important rolesrelegating her to small parts in comedies and musical films.

It will be Roberto Rossellini in 1944, with the role of the commoner Pina di Rome, an open city to give her fame and glory. In fact, Anna reveals a dramatic strength that is still little known, and the success of the film – released at a crucial moment in Italian history – together with the scene of her death, make her an extraordinary sum of charm, true spirit, sense of redemption.

From there on come the equally unique roles of Beautiful by Luchino Visconti and then disembarkation to Hollywood. Where he won an Oscar in 1956 for The tattooed rose with Burt Lancaster – role written for her by Tennessee Williams: she is the first non-English-speaking actress to win the statuette. After the American triumph, Anna returned to Italy where she continued to act for important directors until 1972. When she, already ill, she appears for the last time in Rome by Federico Fellini who insists on having it, as a symbol of the eternal city, in a lightning-fast, nocturnal apparition.

Mother Romethe plot of the movie

Mamma Roma (Magnani) is a prostitute finally free from her pimp, Carmine (Franco Citti), who is getting married. With the teenage son, Ettore (Ettore Grofolo), unaware of his mother’s profession and raised near Guidonia, Mamma Roma tries to change her life. And to give a decent one to her son, for whom she seems to be willing to perform acts of infinite love.

The way, for her a woman of great temperament and inexhaustible strength, is to earn honestly through a license to sell fruit. And to go and live in a decent apartment, together with good attendance, church on Sundays and study. Finally a job.

The boy, apparently cleaned up, immediately falls into a company of villagers who organize petty thefts and he falls in love with Bruna, a girl older than him and with a son, with whom he begins a relationship. To give her gifts she even steals her mother’s records and resells them; and later, when he defends the girl from rape, he receives a violent beating. Having learned about Bruna, Mamma Roma tries to make him forget her as best she can, but fate seems sealed. Even for her, an idealist who never seems to free herself from the past, to which she returns to ask a favor from a former colleague and because she does yet another favor for her old protector.

Initially, the character of Mother Rome it was not welcomed by Magnani. After two years of absence from the cinema, when Pasolini asked her to play Roma Garofalo, specifically conceived of her as «a female Accattone, who instead of redeeming herself by dying, redeems herself by living», the actress responded with doubts. «You must know that the public is demanding with me,” he told the director. «If I make a mistake, I can’t easily make up for it with another film, bringing out natural beauty. This is why I am cautious, and maybe even let two years go by without accepting a role.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usK1ml-lt_Y

Anna Magnani and her son Luca

AND the actress’s only son, born in 1942 from a brief relationship with her colleague Massimo Serato, who abandoned her as soon as she became pregnant. Because of her pregnancy, Anna he had to give up shooting the film Obsession by Luchino Viscontibeing replaced by Clara Calamai.

The actress managed to impose her surname on her son, just like her mother Marina did with her, one of the rare cases (for the time) of matrilineal genealogy which lasts for as many as three generations. At the age of four, little Luca was struck by polio and for almost a decade he lived in a Swiss clinic to undergo the necessary treatment and numerous operations.

After eighth grade, the boy (now an architect) returns to Italy and moves to Rome in an apartment adjacent to his mother’s. An unusual choice that the man explained in this way in an interview with the newspaper The print «We had two different lives. I went to school, got up early in the morning. She also worked until two in the morning and got up very late in the morning. We would see each other in the evening when I came home from school and from all afternoon repetitions. We were together at dinner.” Luca is the father of Olivia Magnani, an actress launched by Paolo Sorrentino in The consequences of love and today a highly appreciated theater actress.

The tormented relationship with Roberto Rossellini

Two years after the birth of his son Luca, in 1944, Anna Magnani is on the set of Rome, an open city, a masterpiece of Neorealism signed by Roberto Rossellini. During filming, a relationship is born between the actress and the director (At that time very married to Marcella de Marchis); a love story that ends abruptly in 1948. The reason? The arrival in Italy of Ingrid Bergman for the filming of the director’s new film: Stromboli.

In fact, the Swedish diva has, unknowingly, paraded Nannarella in the leading role not only in the film but also in Rossellini’s heart. Much to the actress’ anger and fury.

Mad with jealousy, Anna convinces a friend to enlist as an extra to spy on what is happening on set while in the meantime contemplating his revenge. That is to say make a film (Volcano) very similar to that of his ex-partner and beat him at the box office. In 1950 both films were presented at Venice Festival and the criticism, all on Anna’s side, pans it Stromboli (unfairly) and praises the film with Anna. Revenge accomplished. Even at the box office.

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