Monday,
October 30, 2006
Anna Magnani:
Enthralling, Commanding, Tempestuous
The
ANNOTICO Report
Los
Angeles County Museum of Art's (LACMA) presents "Mamma
Roma: The Films of Anna Magnani," a 14-film
retrospective that reveals why Magnani remains
one of cinema's greatest actresses.
The
retrospective will include the well known films like "Open City" (1945),
"The Peddler and the Lady" (1943), "Mamma Roma" (1962),
"Wild Is the Wind" (1957), "The Rose Tattoo" , "The
Fugitive Kind.", "Bellissima" (1952),
"Full Speed" (1934), "Volcano" (1950), "Teresa Venerdi" (1941), "The Golden Coach" (1952)
and will feature the new documentary "Anna Magnani
Portrait of an Actress."
By
Kevin Thomas
Special to The Times
October 29, 2006
"VOLCANIC" is the word for Anna Magnani
(1908-73), an icon of international cinema whose renown in the U.S. commenced
with Roberto Rossellini's "Open City" (1945), a raw, jagged,
shot-on-the-run panorama of Rome on the eve of liberation that also introduced
American audiences to the power of postwar Italian neorealism.
"Open City" (Friday) is the ideal film with which to launch LACMA's "Mamma Roma: The Films of Anna Magnani," a 14-film retrospective featuring numerous
unfamiliar titles and running
through Nov. 24 that will reveal
why Magnani remains one of cinema's greatest
actresses.
As part of "Open City's" large, mainly nonprofessional cast, Magnani stands out as an impoverished widow, along with
Aldo Fabrizi as a severely tested parish priest.
Remember, at the time "Open City" was released in art theaters, Betty
Grable and Rita Hayworth were
our reigning box office queens. By dizzying! contrast,
here was Magnani, playing an ill-fated pregnant
mother, with her hair a mess and circles under her eyes that would deepen with
the years to become as much a trademark as her tempestuous personality and
protean talent.
"Open City" will be followed by "The Peddler and the Lady"
(1943), in which Magnani first played a woman of the
people a lank-haired fruit seller
who bides her time while butcher Aldo Fabrizi pursues
a young beauty who will never appreciate all his acts of kindness.
We meet Magnani's heroine in Pier Paolo Pasolini's superb 1962 "Mamma Roma" (Saturday)
just as she has given up streetwalking, having scrimped and saved for years, to
open a produce stand in an open-air Roman market to reclaim her teenage son (Ettore Garofolo), who has been
raised in a small town and whom she overwhelms with an
almost seductive mother love. The film is marked by extraordinary tracking
sequences as Mamma Roma strides through the night, proudly announcing her ! dreams and feelings to a
chorus of passersby.
The second feature is George Cukor's "Wild Is the Wind" (1957), in
which well-meaning but obtuse Nevada sheep rancher Anthony Quinn returns to his
native Italy to bring back his late wife's sister (Magnani)
as his bride, assuming she will be "a nice quiet woman" like his
beloved Rosanna. Portraying a woman confused in a new world and in a new
language, hungry for love and acceptance yet insistent upon retaining her own
identity, Magnani is enthralling, ever commanding and inevitably drawn to Quinn's foster
son (Anthony Franciosa). (The retrospective will also
include Magnani's other two well-known American
films, both Tennessee Williams creations: "The Rose Tattoo," which
earned Magnani an Oscar, and
"The Fugitive Kind.")
The 1952 "Bellissima" (Nov. 10) is one of
the finest films in both director Luchino Visconti
and Magnani's careers. Magnani's
Roman working-class housewife is perfectly sensible until she's conned ! into believing that with
proper training, her woebegone little daughter (Tina Apicella)
can be turned into another Shirley Temple. She stirs up plenty of her trademark
bombast, yet there's far more to her stage mother than stereotype. There's
native wit and gentleness beneath the shouting and the familiar gestures.
There's a neorealist disillusionment to Visconti's view of postwar
Other known quantities in the series include Mario Mattoli's
"Full Speed" (1934), which will follow the Nov. 11 screening of
"Volcano" (1950). It's an urbane, sophisticated romantic comedy with
songs, starring Vittorio De Sica
as a shy, pampered professor who finally asserts himself
to catch the glamorous Dora (Milly). As Dora's maid, Magnani is all but unrecognizable with her plucked Merle
Oberon eyebrows and marcelled bob, but her vitality
still shines through her sleek facade.
After the Nov. ! 18 screening of De Sica's "Teresa Venerdi"
(1941), in which Magnani, herself a former nightclub
singer, has a bit as "the Queen of Jazz," another of Magnani's major films will screen, Jean Renoir's 1952
"The Golden Coach." Magnani plays Camilla,
or La Perichole, tempestuous star of a hardy Italian
commedia dell'arte troupe that has endured a five-month
voyage to 18th century
Just as the film seems no more than a light romantic comedy, a feast for the
eyes, its perspective broadens, revealing that the artificiality of court life
is making a mockery of the notion of civilization in whose name such oppression
is meted out to the native population a grim reality. Renoir's vision is too
profound to stop at protest and proceeds to offer a meditation on! art and life.
Note: There will be free screenings Saturday, Nov. 11 and 18 of the new
documentary "Anna Magnani Portrait of an Actress."
*
Mamma Roma: The Films of Anna Magnani
Where:
When: Friday
to Nov. 24
Price: $5 to
$9 per evening.
Contact: www.lacma.org/programs/FilmPrograms.aspxor(323) 857-6010.
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