Mamma Roma (1962)

The Story

With a fervent yearning for respectability and enough money to buy herself a brand-new life in Rome, the uninhibited, fearless, determined former streetwalker Mamma Roma renounces her ignominious past to reunite with her loafing 16-year-old son Ettore. Free at last from her disgusting pimp and ex-lover Carmine, Roma is bent on making an honest living running a humble vegetable stall, but a malicious extortion scheme and the equally insidious menace of exposure threaten to put an end to her zealous aspirations for a decent bourgeois existence. For his own sake, Ettore must be spared the violence of the adult world; nevertheless, can a lone single mother protect her only son from the same snares that wounded her youth?

Film introduced by Associate Professor Giorgia Alù, Chair of the Italian Studies Department at the University of Sydney. Her research interests include modern and contemporary Italian literature, Italian cultural and social history, comparative literature and visual studies. Publications include: Journeys Exposed: Women's Writing, Photography, and Mobility and Beyond the traveller's gaze: expatriate ladies writing in Sicily (1848-1910).

Rating

M

Language

Italian

Cast

Anna Magnani, Ettore Garofolo, Franco Citti, Silvana Corsini, Luisa Loiano, Paolo Volponi

Director

Pier Paolo Pasolini