Mamma Roma

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Movie
German title Mamma Roma
Original title Mamma Roma
Country of production Italy
original language Italian
Publishing year 1962
length 105 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Pier Paolo Pasolini
script Pier Paolo Pasolini
production Alfredo Bini
music Carlo Rustichelli
camera Tonino Delli Colli
cut Nino Baragli
occupation

Mamma Roma is the second feature film by the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini from 1962. In the film, Pasolini paints the portrait of a prostitute ( Anna Magnani ) who tries to build a middle-class life for her son's sake.

Pasolini mainly relies on amateur actors, the only exception being Anna Magnani. The film took part in the Venice Film Festival in 1962 .

action

When her pimp Carmine, 17 years her junior, marries another woman, the years of dependency and oppression come to an end for the prostitute Mamma Roma. At the wedding she makes fun of Carmine's marriage with the help of three pigs decorated with bows and in a mocking song . Then she brings her 16-year-old son Ettore, who was born alone and without any schooling in the countryside, to live with her in Rome. With the money she has earned through years of prostitution, she wants to enable herself, but primarily her son, a decent civil life. To do this, she bought an apartment in a better part of Rome and invested in her new job as a fruit and vegetable seller. On the day of her arrival in Rome, however, her past catches up with her: Carmine seeks her out and asks her to get him 200,000 lire within two weeks - through prostitution if necessary. If Mamma Roma can raise the money for him, she'll never see him again, he promises her. The city-famous prostitute goes to buy one last time for him and then says goodbye to her colleagues on the street and moves with her son to a middle-class suburb of Rome.

While Mamma Roma is selling her goods at the market, Ettore joins a boy clique and gets to know the older Bruna, whom he wins over with gifts. This displeases Mamma Roma and asks him to stay away from women. In response, Ettore sells his mother's records to raise money. She then gets him a job as a waiter by blackmailing a restaurant owner. At the same time, she tries to drive him out of his love for Bruna by sending him to an old friend, the whore Biancofiore.

But luck doesn't last long, because one day Carmine appears again, who has separated from his wife and is now working with Ettore. He gives her a choice: Either she prostitutes herself for him again or he tells her son that she was on the street. Desperately she has to go back to work in the evening. When Bruna Ettore tells the truth about his mother, he drives inexorably towards doom. The relationship with Bruna and his mother falls apart, he quits his work and becomes a street crook who steals patients with his gang in the hospital. One day, Ettore is caught red-handed, ends up in jail, and is finally admitted to the psychiatric ward, where he dies tied to a bed. Mamma Roma wants to throw herself out of the window of her apartment, but is held back by other market people who have followed her.

Dramaturgy and visual language

The black and white film works with deliberate underinformation of the viewer, who learns neither about Ettore's origins nor about the reasons that prompted Mamma Roma to give him to the country at the time. Mamma Roma's prostitution is also largely excluded, she is only shown on the way home with various companions. The wedding is arranged in the form of a Last Supper , the dying Ettore is shown like someone crucified, baroque music underlines many scenes of loneliness and forlornness, the shots are long and indulge in the poetic ugliness of Rome's banished mile, recited in the first scene in the psychiatry Inmate from the Divine Comedy . The confrontation of the misery of the common people with high culture is a defining stylistic device of the film.

Reviews

“The moving social drama is elevated to an exemplary human tragedy by the artfully barren form. In addition to the performance of the main actress, the balance between direct sensuality and strict formal will as well as the bold but successful integration of Christian iconography into the film language is outstanding. "

“The Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini combined boldness of conception and high ethos to create a film of strong artistic intensity. Highly recommended from the age of 18. "

Awards

The film took part in the Venice International Film Festival in 1962 , but did not receive any awards.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Mamma Roma. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  2. Critique No. 23/1967