Film: Mamma Roma
Year of production: 1962
UK Release date: 25th April 2011
Distributor: Mr Bongo
Certificate: 15
Running time: 106 mins
Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Starring: Anna Magnani, Ettore Garofolo, Franco Citti, Silvana Corsini, Luisa Loiano
Genre: Drama
Format: DVD
Country of Production: Italy
Language: Italian
For some, the name of Pier Paolo Pasolini conjures up images from films such as Salo and Oedipus Rex, but his second feature, Mamma Roma, is beautiful, raw and poetic. Full of contradictions and imagery that can be read on many levels, it is a class tragedy that marked the end of Pasolini’s neorealist style.
We first meet Mamma Roma at the wedding of her pimp, ushering three pigs into the hall where the reception is taking place. She sings bawdy songs and cackles like a witch, but she is happy, for it marks the moment she is free to live her life with her son, a life away from prostitution.
Mamma Roma moves her son to Rome from the countryside to set up a market stall and start a new life, but her son, Ettore, is forming some unhealthy attachments to a local promiscuous girl, a group of thieves, and a fence for stolen goods.
In her many efforts to set Ettore on a path that will make him the man she wants him to be, Mamma Roma will stop at nothing, but her actions have tragic consequences…
Pier Paolo Pasolini has never been known for subtlety, as anyone who has seen Pigsty or Salo can testify, and Mamma Roma is no exception. The language is crude and colloquial, the shots of Rome show nothing of the city’s beauty and the characters are all deeply flawed. From the opening reception dinner and the entrance of Mamma Roma, escorting three pigs into the room where the diners are eating, it is clear that we are watching a richly layered film. The entrance of the pigs has significance not just in their presence at this particular wedding reception, but also their representation of Italy. Pasolini adds layers to the scene with close-ups of the bride and groom’s facial expressions throughout, juxtaposing them with the laughter from Mamma Roma and other guests. It gets more complex when we find out that the groom is a pimp, and Mamma Roma has, in that moment, been released from his service. The whole scene, complete with a singing exchange, is by turns funny, tense and uncomfortable, and we’re only five minutes in.
From there, we follow Mamma Roma as she moves with her son to Rome. It is clear that class is high on the agenda, and the characters we follow all occupy the lowest rung. As a former prostitute, it is almost tragic to watch as Mamma Roma tries to force her son to understand the need to climb the social ladder. Her obsession with money and what the people of Rome will be like shows us how low these characters are, for when we arrive in Rome, we find concrete towers and wasteland, but still they feel they are stepping up, away from being ‘hicks’.
Pasolini’s camera treats every scene with reverence, as though the characters inhabited the finest architecture, and operated in the upper echelons of society. His long takes, beautiful tracking shots of Mamma Roma walking her beat, chatting (or in some cases lamenting) with potential clients, show a great deal of respect for the characters, and the actors - the majority of whom were not professionals.
Every scene is shot with more attention than perhaps the situations deserve. Considering the position these characters occupy, you could be forgiven for thinking the director was overdoing things just a little. His use of classical music and the grand shots of the landscape, in particular the concrete jungle with a lone dome (symbol of hope perhaps, or the unattainable) show affection for their predicament, and, ultimately, the tragic consequences of Mamma Roma’s flawed attempts to direct her son are all the more powerful for the imagery used.
For all the artistic qualities of the director and the cinematographer, this is Mamma Roma’s film. Anna Magnani dominates every scene with sheer presence. She plays Mamma Roma as one of the great matriarchs in cinematic history, chewing her dialogue and towering over every other actor, deafening the audience with her maniacal cackle. To Ettore she is a dictator, and despite wanting only to make sure he has everything he could want, she goes too far. She sets up a local businessman for blackmail in order that Ettore can work, she asks a prostitute friend to sleep with her son to take his mind from the local tramp, Bruna, and desperately tries to shield him from her past. As with all tragedies, the past catches up, and Ettore is forced away from her by her actions and her attitude into a life of crime with the people he calls friends. This life ends badly, and the final scene of Mamma Roma being held back from an open window, staring out at the dome, past the concrete blocks, is a powerful moment.
It would be easy for such a presence as Magnani to overpower the film, and even unbalance it, but such is the power of the storytelling, the realism portrayed by the amateur cast, and the handling of the drama by Pasolini, that her presence here brings everything vividly to life.
It is at the ending that we begin to see a little more into the mind of Pasolini, as in a prison hospital we hear an ageing inmate reciting the Divine Comedy to fellow convicts. It is here that perhaps we should ask ourselves which circle of hell we have ended up in, and which ones we have travelled through to get there.
Mamma Roma is relevant, rich and beautiful. Somehow the ugliest of settings is cast in a beautiful light by Pasolini, and as an audience we feel for Mamma Roma and Ettore as they struggle on the bottom rung of society’s ladder. For fans of Pasolini’s later work, it is interesting to see where he started, and to see the difference in the ways he chooses to share his views. Before the forays into depravity, and the anger of his later works, we can see tenderness for those on the bottom. RM
