Mamma Roma

Screening on Film

Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini.
With Anna Magnani, Franco Citti.
Italy, 1962, 35mm, black & white, 110 min.
Italian with English subtitles.

Pasolini’s second film, reminiscent of his Accatone (1961), is a study of the sub-proletariat of Rome. Referencing her roles in the Italian Neorealist classics, Magnani is cast as a woman trying to escape her past as a prostitute as she harbors middle-class ambitions for her teenage son. Her former pimp, however, threatens to reveal to the boy his mother’s profession unless she goes back "on the game."