Mamma Roma (1962)

Mamma Roma is an Italian film first released in 1962, directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini.  The film stars Anna Magnani, Ettore Garofolo, Franco Citti, Silvana Corsini and Luisa Loiano.  Our overall rating for this film is: very good.


In her forties, Mamma Roma decides to make a break with the past.  She moves to another part of her town, with her adolescent son Ettore, and exchanges her life as a prostitute for that of a market trader.  Despite her best efforts, Mamma Roma in unable to make a better life for herself or her son.  Whilst she is forced back into prostitution, to make money to pay off a former lover, Ettore becomes mixed up with a gang of youths who turn him into a criminal...

Mamma Roma, Pasolini’s second and perhaps most important film, shows some marked similarities with his first, Accattone (1961).  Both are keenly observed and intensely poignant portraits of Italian poor people trapped in a life from which there is no escape, filmed using a starkly neo-realist yet alluring style of cinematography.

Post-war Italian film icon Anna Magnani stars as the tragically framed lead character, Mamma Roma, giving a characteristically gripping performance, full of emotional power yet totally believable.  Thanks to her contribution, the film leaves a lasting impression on the spectator, in spite of (or perhaps because of) the simplicity of the narrative and the harsh melodramatic ending.

© James Travers 2002

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