Initially banned upon its release for obscenity and later reappraised as an homage to the golden age of Italian neorealism, Pier Paolo Pasolini's second feature Mamma Roma caused significant uproar among both the right and left in Italy. (The director himself was seen throwing punches against neo-Fascists at the film’s Roman premiere.) Anna Magnani features as the titular mother, a tough and charismatic sex worker who will do whatever it takes to keep her son Ettore (Ettore Garofolo) off the streets and away from hooliganism. Ettore only halfheartedly indulges his mother's middle-class aspirations, having been so well protected by her from the harsher details of their poverty. Any suggestion of sentimentality is brutally contained within an undeniably potent psychosexual tension and a sober-minded view of the state as having the final say in all matters of human freedom. Despite the noble efforts of Mamma Roma to vindicate herself and her son, her life more closely resembles a Greek tragedy than a biblical parable.