236 Mamma Roma

Discuss releases by Criterion and the films on them. Threads may contain spoilers!
Message
Author
User avatar
ando
Bringing Out El Duende
Joined: Mon Dec 06, 2004 6:53 pm
Location: New York City

Re: 236 Mamma Roma

#76 Post by ando » Wed Jul 27, 2011 2:19 pm

Is it just me or does the film seem to lack dynamism when Magnani's absent? I don't think it's just her performance that makes her scenes so compelling. Tonino Delli Colli's compositions seem to come alive when she's included. Perhaps it's merely that the other actors pale in comparison to Magnani's lumosity but Ettore's adventures without his mother lack such luster that they seem almost to belong to another film. It's always the thought of having to sit through his escapades that dissuade me from another viewing. But then I think of those beautiful (though dark) tracking shots of Mamma's confessionals through the streets of Rome and I'm pulled back in!

User avatar
zedz
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm

Re: 236 Mamma Roma

#77 Post by zedz » Wed Jul 27, 2011 5:09 pm

I think the film does have a balance problem as you indicate. Magnani's the source of the problem, since she's so overwhelming, but ultimately I feel Pasolini's at fault for not finding a way to better integrate her into the film.

He'd continue to cast callow BHLFs, but he wouldn't put them up against such theatrical performers - Silvana Magnano is a much cooler screen presence - and by the time he builds his way up to another diva, Callas, I think he tailors his material to her much more effectively.

User avatar
ando
Bringing Out El Duende
Joined: Mon Dec 06, 2004 6:53 pm
Location: New York City

Re: 236 Mamma Roma

#78 Post by ando » Thu Jul 28, 2011 12:00 pm

Quite. And in Callas' case it's hard to top a centaur. :)

User avatar
ando
Bringing Out El Duende
Joined: Mon Dec 06, 2004 6:53 pm
Location: New York City

Re: 236 Mamma Roma

#79 Post by ando » Sun May 14, 2017 8:23 pm

Yes, Mother's Day inspired me to pull out this one again, though it is one of my favorites.

I think one of the impressions that Pasolini wanted to leave was one of his own childhood. Perhaps when his mother wasn't on the scene life was less colorful, which may illuminate why the scenes without Magnani have a flatness, or at least a washed-out quality (the contrast is deliberately increased in the scenes without her). Certainly, there's a good deal of identification with Ettore. If you think about the way Pasolini met his end the narrative has a similar ring. Like Ettore, Pasolini seemed similarly in awe, devoted and simultaneously contemptuous of his "little bones" mamma. After his father died the young Pasolini and his mother made a similar move to suburban Rome and lived hand-to-mouth for a stretch. But the film seems less concerned with "story" than with an evocation of a post-war Rome among the poor. Perhaps if one receives the film as more of an impression of a boy's experience of his mother with bourgeois aspirations - and the life around them - than a conventional narrative it may yield more. At any rate, it encourages a film reading closer to poetry than the run-of-the-mill soap.

User avatar
ellipsis7
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 1:56 pm
Location: Dublin

Re: 236 Mamma Roma

#80 Post by ellipsis7 » Mon May 15, 2017 1:37 pm

This is an interesting interactive site put together by the Cinematheque Francaise for their PASOLINI ROMA exhibition in 2013, exploring his passage through the Italian capital through 50 dates & locations...

Also a new monograph (in Italian) on MAMMA ROMA coming imminently from the Cineteca Bologna...
Pier Paolo Pasolini
MAMMA ROMA
a cura di Franco Zabagli
Il volume rievoca l’ideazione, la realizzazione e le vicissitudini censorie
del film che nel 1962 segnò l’incontro fra Pier Paolo Pasolini e Anna
Magnani, con rari documenti d’epoca, annotazioni e disegni inediti del
poeta-regista. È il secondo volume della collana che esplora il laboratorio
creativo di uno dei più grandi artisti italiani del Novecento, un progetto
editoriale realizzato in collaborazione con Cinemazero di Pordenone.

Libro
Collana Pasolini, un cinema di poesia
Uscita: primavera 2017

User avatar
ando
Bringing Out El Duende
Joined: Mon Dec 06, 2004 6:53 pm
Location: New York City

Re: 236 Mamma Roma

#81 Post by ando » Mon May 15, 2017 4:08 pm

Thanks - the interactive map is fun and informative. This bit is from the Casal Bruciato (a district emblematic of where much of Mamma Roma was shot) page:
pasoliniroma.com wrote:With this second film, Pasolini acts as an anthropologist and sociologist, not only as a poet. The choice of shooting locations reflects the real social situation in the country. Unlike the miserable Pigneto of Accattone, the neighbourhoods in Mamma Roma are those of Roman urban development. Casal Bruciato, for example, is emblematic of Italy's new expansion at the time.

In the end, Mamma Roma and her son will not manage to integrate into this new social order and the neighbourhoods that symbolize it, but will remain on the fringe. For Pasolini, this failure has the value of exemplarity – for him who was always against 'qualunquismo' or conformity.
I love Magnani's walking rant against Mussolini who pulled funds from a grand housing development scheme and left La Letrina (city of latrines). Pasolini had to back nearly 20 years for that dig and it certainly didn't win him friends among the neo-conservatives (or outright fascists) of the time.

Stefan Andersson
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2007 1:02 am

Re: 236 Mamma Roma

#82 Post by Stefan Andersson » Tue Jan 18, 2022 6:06 am

Mamma Roma, restored from the OCN, is showing at this year´s Berlinale:
https://www.berlinale.de/en/news-topics ... 21096.html
Interesting quote:
"By integrating some sections from a print held in the CSC – Cineteca Nazionale that had been missing from earlier versions, it was possible to reconstruct the original version of the film."

User avatar
ellipsis7
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 1:56 pm
Location: Dublin

Re: 236 Mamma Roma

#83 Post by ellipsis7 » Tue Jan 18, 2022 6:33 am

Stefan Andersson wrote:
Tue Jan 18, 2022 6:06 am
Mamma Roma, restored from the OCN, is showing at this year´s Berlinale:
https://www.berlinale.de/en/news-topics ... 21096.html
Interesting quote:
"By integrating some sections from a print held in the CSC – Cineteca Nazionale that had been missing from earlier versions, it was possible to reconstruct the original version of the film."
4K resto too. This sounds fascinating & ideal for a Criterion BR upgrade ASAP...

Interesting exhibition of photos of the MAMMA ROMA shoot -
Mamma Roma di Pier Paolo Pasolini nelle fotografie di Divo Cavicchioli e Angelo Novi
- with downloadable pdf of the catalogue...

CSC @ Berlinale on the same new restoration...
La prima mondiale del restauro digitale (4K) di Mamma Roma di Pier Paolo Pasolini (1962), realizzato da CSC – Cineteca Nazionale a partire dai negativi originali 35mm e dalla colonna ottica messi a disposizione da RTI-Mediaset in collaborazione con Infinity+ e Cine34, «inaugura – spiega Alberto Anile, Conservatore della Cineteca Nazionale – l'anno del centenario di Pasolini con uno dei suoi film più belli e struggenti, quello in cui l'autore di Accattone incontra la protagonista di Bellissima. Mamma Roma è una condanna del razzismo classista e insieme dell'individualismo di un sottoproletariato che aspira egoisticamente alla piccola borghesia, in un racconto imbevuto di riferimenti pittorici e di sacralità. Ma è anche una delle interpretazioni migliori della Magnani, mater dolorosa stretta nella morsa fra calcolo e sentimento, condannata alla tragedia dalle ambizioni con cui vorrebbe riscattare suo figlio e se stessa. Il nostro restauro ha fra l'altro recuperato pazientemente tutti i frammenti che nel tempo si erano perduti, colmando piccole lacune e scoprendo modifiche arbitrarie, così da riportare per la prima volta il film alla forma, integra e smagliante, che aveva alla sua prima uscita in sala».

Post Reply