The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Mamma Roma (1962/Italy/dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini) appeared at #25 on my original list.
What it is • Mamma Roma (Anna Magnani) has paid her dues, sacrificing her son to another family and surviving on her own through prostitution. Now she feels that she has earned the right to a steady, legitimate job in Rome, providing for her adolescent son in the hope that he will achieve a prosperity and happiness. It is not so easy. The past haunts them in various forms, including Carmine (Franco Citti), Mamma Roma's former pimp who claims to have been corrupted by her. Ettore drifts from his mother into the arms of a lively young woman (Silvana Corsini) and a dangerous crowd. We can feel the threats emerging from all directions, as a mother attempts to shield her son from the forces that shaped her own life. This was only the second film by the prolific Pasolini, who would rack up twenty-five credits in his fourteen-year career, cut short by his notorious, shady murder in 1975. It was variously condemned and banned like many of his other movies, although today it seems like one of his most accessible and universal stories (if he was new to directing, he wasn't to writing - this was his twentieth screenplay including the similarly-themed Nights of Cabiria which you'll see covered soon). The film exists at a crossroads (which Pasolini's scripts for Fellini had helped construct) between the grounded, socially-concerned neorealist films of the forties and fifties and the more abrasive, flamboyant features of the sixties by young directors like Marco Bellochio (Fists in the Pocket) and Bernardo Bertolucci, who trained under Pasolini. This context fits the film's narrative, caught between the search for economic security and the temptation of youthful rebellion, and also its style, characterized by sharp cutting and fluid camera movements. There is grace and anxiety in Mamma Roma, released in equal measure by the film's final moments.
Why I like it •
