Mamma Roma (1965)

Just what I expected

best movie i've ever seen.

A Masterpiece!

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

I think that, along with "Accattone" and "The Gospel According to St. Matthew", "Mamma Roma" is one of the best films directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini, being one of his most moving works.The way in which this film portrays a hard and dramatic reality is remarkable in every possible way, making the story and the characters from the movie something very close to the viewer, having at the same a very poetical quality in each scene.I think that is shame that Pasolini is mostly remembered by the dull "Trilogy of Life" movies and "Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, 1975)" when he made such memorable and beautiful films like this one."Mamma Roma" is a heartbreaking (but also very inspiring and wonderfully made) film which I recommend to any viewer.

Mr. Pasolini wrote and directed, and this movie is an unbelievably great classic!... The film opens with a riotous prequel at the wedding of a pimp to another woman with his two year old son in attendance... the boy's mother played by Ms. Magnani enters with gift piglets dressed up like guests... it's an hilarious dinner party with singing, too.... then 12 years later we go up the stairs passed the loitering kids to a seedy apartment on the outskirts of town overlooking a graveyard? (The landscape of mystic old and sterile new -- vacant lots separating housing developments -- is a view to be found in many Italian films of the 60's...)In the apartment on a high floor with a view the teenage son and mother talk and tango, then the pimp returns to knock on the door... he needs her to earn a sum for him so he begs her to return to the streets when she was just about to get her son out of there... Apparently she bought an apartment in a development within Rome where people own businesses and even give a church-going appearance of respectability, but before moving there she has to work another two weeks. Here's where you'll see a continuously moving and incomparable beautiful nighttime street walk... The shot begins at the moment she's earned enough money and she's bidding a fond addio to the street... She takes us on a night walk on the big plaza with people entering in and out of the frame during her monologue story of her marriage at 14... This is a miraculous segment that happens in one continuous shot... She describes her childhood marriage and the listeners only catch a part of it... only the movie viewer gets to hear it all... (Unfortunately, she has to go back to that plaza later in the film...more amazing night walks.) Pasolini follows her with a moving light... the dotted electric lights of rome surround her... it's immeasurable how moving this scene is, and what a cinematic accomplishment it is... the film is in real time segments... The detail are easily referential. The full view they impart to the viewer are so much greater than the film's running time... anyway the imbalance of upwardly mobile survival and adolescent development does in her son... (He's bound to a bed. The camera is positioned at a low angle for a view that runs up his body to his head.) Her neighbors and colleagues are pretty heartless to her, but when she goes running off after hearing about her son's death ... you can bet we all follow say no, don't go. WE LOVE YOU ANNA MAGNANI!

Many years ago, I saw this film in a theater, and I remember the final scene: Mamma opens the window and shouts at the houses opposite "Where are the responsibles?", or something like that. Now, in the Spanish DVD (98 min. running time) she opens the window as if she were to jump and only stares at the houses opposite, but no shouting. Besides, in the Leonald Maltin book the running time is 110 min. Has this something to do with the "original" and "US" versions? I should be grateful if someone could explain me it. I know that in this commentary there are not 10 lines of text but, sorry, the next one will be longer, thank you.

Strong and tragic movie with an amazing Anna Magnani as the broken-down woman who fight for a dignified life in the slum of Rome. Uncompromising social realism and no one could like Pasolini use music as a consequent commentary to the themes in the film. In his movies the music is not isolated to the specific scene, but always to the film as a hole. He does this in a way so that the viewer is being compelled into the movie and becomes an "active" participant in the action. It is characteristic for Italian movies in general, but Pasolini achieved this in the most painfully and hypnotic way. Maybe with a tendency towards the rhetorical but that does not weaken the film. It is a masterpiece!