Mama Mia

The first time
I laid eyes on the great Anna Magnani was on a Friday
night from the smoke filled
balcony of my neighborhood Loew’s 46^th street theater in Brooklyn. It was 1955 and I was eight years old. I was of course with my mother. Friday nights was our movie night, and she would take off from her night shift at my father’s luncheonette leaving the running of it to my sweet but simple uncle Natie. Needless to say my father knew nothing of our movie nights because if he did all hell would break loose. The film was “The Rose Tattoo” and I loved it. I immediately fell in love with Magnani who in some ways reminded me of my mother. Tennessee Williams originally wrote the play for Magnani, but she thought her English not good enough so she turned it down.Happily when it came time to put it to film she agreeded to do it and won a well deserved Oscar that year. The reason I bring this up is that last week me and a friend went to the BAM (The Brooklyn Academy Of Music) to see a rare screening of Luchino Visconti’s Bellissima starring Magnani. The film was being shown as part of their wonderful series Signore & Signore: Leading Ladies of Italian Cinema. The BAMRose Cinemas are without a doubt and to my mind the best place to see movies in the entire city and I go there as much as possible because the theaters are comfortable with great projection and sound, and generally the audiences are very well behaved and I rarely have to tell people TO SHUT THE FUCK UP. I had seen Bellissima a few times on a bad video transfers, and my friend had never seen it. “Oh I really think you’ll love this film” I told him. He did and I am happy to report that I too still love this movie. The film was made in 1951 by the great Italian director Luchino Visconti when he was still in his neo- realist period. He had already made ‘Ossessione” his gritty take on “The Postman Always Rings Twice” with the incredibly sexy Massimo Girotti and “La Terra Trema” about poor fishermen in Sicily using non-professional actors. The plot of Bellissima is simple but the emotions complex. Magnani plays a stage mother to end all stage mothers who will do anything to get her sweet little daughter the leading role in a movie being made at Cinecitta. After the film my friend said that he didn’t even have to read the subtitles, because everything was there in Magnani’s face and body language. Visconti uses very few close-ups of her saving the two that I recall till the very end of the film. In this summer of silly sequels and tacky Hollywood comedies this film is a standout and I would hope that some distributor would grab this masterpiece and put it back in release. I would also love it if Criterion would pick up this film for their company so that I could have a copy of it for my ever-growing DVD collection.
The photos used in this post are 1) a scene from Bellissima, 2) Magnani with her Oscar, 3) My Mama Mia (on the right) with her friend Mary. (Love the shoes) 4) A portrait of my mother.