Synopsis
Mamma Roma (1962) is Pier Paolo Pasolini's drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Anna Magnani plays the aging woman known as Mamma Roma, a former prostitute scraping together money for a single dream: to pull herself and her son into a decent, respectable life.
With enough saved for a fruit stand, she moves to a new flat on the edge of Rome and takes in sixteen-year-old Ettore (Ettore Garofolo), the boy she abandoned as an infant. She makes plans — a little business, the right neighbors, a future scrubbed clean of her past. But the past won't let go. Her old pimp threatens to expose everything, and Ettore, sullen and adrift, drifts toward street kids and petty theft. The harder Mamma Roma clings to her scheme, the clearer it becomes that the world has no intention of letting her change her class.
A cornerstone of Italian neorealism, shot by Pasolini with nonprofessional actors on the real wastelands of postwar Rome. The closing image echoes Mantegna's Lamentation of Christ and lands like a blow. Magnani is a force here — coarse, tender, overwhelming. Not a casual evening's viewing, but essential for anyone who cares about the history of world arthouse cinema. Stream Mamma Roma (1962) online on iFILM.
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