Bellissima aka Beautiful

Mother Maddalena and daughter Maria

If it’s a performance you want – and I mean a performance – look no further than Luchino Visconti’s 1951 comedy Bellissima (Beautiful to English speakers), in which Anna Magnani turns on the acting flamethrower in the film’s opening moments and runs it at full intensity until fadeout. She plays the mother with aspirations that her little girl shouldn’t live the same impoverished, largely hopeless, male-dominated life that she’s had – Maddalena (Magnani) strains every sinew in her body to get her girl into the movies. A casting call goes out on the radio in the film’s opening moments and from here we follow Maddalena and seven-year-old Maria (Tina Apicella) as they prepare for … Read more

Rome, Open City

Anna Magnani runs after her fiancee in Rome, Open City

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 2 June The sack of Rome, AD455 On this day in the 455th year of the Christian or Common Era, Rome was sacked. Actually, this is a touch ambiguous, because Rome had already been pillaged twice before, in 390BC by the Gauls fighting the Roman in the Battle of the Allia; and in AD410, in the attack of the Visigoths led by Alaric. In AD455 it was the Vandal king Genseric who marched on Rome, claiming a peace treaty between himself and Emperor Valentinian III had been violated when Emperor Petronius Maximus had usurped Valentinian and seized the throne. Out of … Read more