Page 4 of 4
Re: 236 Mamma Roma
Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2011 4:00 pm
by ando
Quite. And in Callas' case it's hard to top a centaur.
Re: 236 Mamma Roma
Posted: Mon May 15, 2017 12:23 am
by ando
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.
Re: 236 Mamma Roma
Posted: Mon May 15, 2017 5:37 pm
by ellipsis7
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
Re: 236 Mamma Roma
Posted: Mon May 15, 2017 8:08 pm
by ando
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.
Re: 236 Mamma Roma
Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2022 10:06 am
by Stefan Andersson
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."
Re: 236 Mamma Roma
Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2022 10:33 am
by ellipsis7
Stefan Andersson wrote: Tue Jan 18, 2022 10:06 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».