Mamma Roma's Jubilee
On August 31, 1962, Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Mamma Roma" premiered at the Venice International Film Festival.
The idea for the film was born from a combination of two circumstances. In December 1959, a 19-year-old youth named Marcello Elisei died in Rome's main prison, Regina Coeli, while tied to a prison table. This event caused a huge resonance among communist intellectuals, which included Pier Paolo Pasolini, and he decided to reflect this case in one of his future scenarios. In 1961, Pasolini made his first film as a film director - "Accattone" - which was a great success with the audience, film critics, and the film community. The great Italian actress Anna Magnani, having seen Pasolini's debut picture, turned to the debutant director with a request to make a film with her in the title role. Within three weeks, Pasolini wrote a script in which he combined his idea with the implementation of Magnani's request. So the script for the film "Mamma Roma" was born.
Immediately after completing the script, Pasolini began filming the picture. Adhering to the principles of Italian neo-realism, Pasolini invited non-professional actors to participate in his film who had never acted in films, or starred only in his film "Accattone", such as Franco Chitti. Chitty again had to play the role of a pimp. It is likely that this role went to Franco Chitti not by chance, but for the reason that he was familiar with the criminal world of Italy. So during the filming of the film "Mamma Roma" Chitty received a prison term for some petty crime, however, a short one. Pasolini, who did not want to change the actor he had become accustomed to since the filming of "Accattone", suspended filming and patiently waited for the release of the actor.
Anna Magnani was the only professional actress on the set. And not just a professional actress, but a real world-class star. By the time of the start of work on the film "Mamma Roma" in the filmography of Anna Magnani, there were more than 40 film roles, including roles in such masterpieces as "Roma, città aperta (Rome, Open City)" by Roberto Rossellini and "Bellissima (Beautiful)" by Luchino Visconti. Pasolini, by this time, had a fairly rich experience as a screenwriter - by this time he had participated in creating scripts for 13 films, including Federico Fellini's masterpieces "Le notti di Cabiria (Nights of Cabiria)" and "La dolce vita". But Pasolini's directing experience was measured by only one film.
This imbalance of cinematic experience led to certain difficulties, in particular, to the fact that Magnani interfered in absolutely all aspects of the film's production and, at the same time, did not accept anyone's opinions regarding the interpretation of the character she played. Almost all film critics paid attention to this. In particular, The New York Times film reviewer Janet Maslin began her review with the words: "Hell hath no fury like Mama Roma, the virago played so stormily by Anna Magnani in Pier Paolo Pasolini astonishing 1962 film. "
Be that as it may, despite all the difficulties, the film was completed, but was almost banned even before the release. On August 13, 1962, some fascist organizations filed a court complaint alleging that Pasolini's film was "offensive to good morals" and "contrary to the common sense of morality because of obscene content, contrary to public decency". For five days, while the complaint was being considered in court, the film crew was in suspense. In the end, the complaint was dismissed by the Justice of the Peace.
At the Venice Film Festival, the film "Mamma Roma" was nominated for the main prize - the Golden Lion. But the jury of the film festival, chaired by the Italian cinematographer Luigi Chiarini, considered two other films more deserving of this award: "Cronaca familiare (Family Portrait)" by Valerio Zurlini and "Иваново детство (Ivan's Childhood)" by Andrei Tarkovsky. The company of relative losers in Pasolini's picture was, among others, Jean-Luc Godard's film "Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux (My Life to Live)".
Fascists, who were unable to obtain an injunction against the film, tried to take revenge on its creator. During the film's Italian premiere at the Quattro Fontane Cinema in Rome on September 22, 1962, Pier Paolo Pasolini was attacked by fascists protesting the film. Then it worked out. But years later, the Italian fascists, who did not abandon attempts to physically destroy the communist director, achieved their goal. In 1975, four fascists first beat the director until he lost consciousness, and then drove over his body several times in a car. The last name of one of the killers was Pelosi. Isn't it a relative?
According to IMDB, the film by Pier Paolo Pasolini "Mama Roma" was shown in almost all countries of Europe and America. It is indicated that in the United States the demonstration of the film began on January 18, 1965. But here's what's weird: the aforementioned Janet Maslin, in her review dated January 18, 1995, notes: ""Mamma Roma," which opens today at the Film Forum, is a fascinating rarity, a film not even presented at museum screenings in America until 1988."
One could assume the ignorance of the film reviewer of the largest and most authoritative American publication. But Maslin's information is actually confirmed by another authoritative American film critic - Mark Savlov. In his review dated June 23, 1995, he writes: "Pasolini's 1962 film has finally (!) made it stateside, and it's about time. Well-known on the continent as one of the eccentric director's early masterpieces, Mamma Roma has been curiously overlooked in America. ... Pasolini's document of an aging prostitute's love for her teenage son and her misguided attempts to control him is a punchy, gorgeous masterpiece, filled to bursting with the director's trademark dialogue, early neo-realism, and enough beautiful cinematography ... to bring most any lover of films to his or her knees." - MARC SAVLOV, FRI., JUNE 23, 1995
However, in the communist Soviet Union, the film of the communist director, who paid for his beliefs with his life, was also not shown. The official premiere of the second film directed by Pasolini in Russia took place only at the Moscow International Film Festival in 2011. Although, of course, perestroika and technical progress (VHS) allowed Soviet lovers of real cinema to get acquainted with this picture much earlier.
Several decades after the release of the film on the screens, ordinary moviegoers rate it very highly. 67% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users rated this film from 8 to 10. Taking into account this indicator and the above, the rating of Pier Paolo Pasolini's film "Mamma Roma" according to FilmGourmand version was 7.875, which allowed the film to enter the Golden Thousand and occupy 906th Rank in it.
