LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Anna Magnani: La Magnani
built 615 days ago
Anna Magnani is a crazed peasant woman who claims her pregnancy is the result of immaculate conception. Rosselini intended this film to be a study of personal faith in the face of social ridicule but the film was denounced by the New York Catholic League as "heretical", Protests, bomb scares and the threat of fines and jail terms (possible at the time since films were not protected as free speech under the first Amendment) forced the distributors to withdraw the film and initiate a landmark lawsuit. The case, which went to the Supreme court, established --- for the first time --that film was, in fact, a form of speech and was protected by the First Amendment. An entertaining and historically important film.
Source:
Compared to Anna Magnani, most film actresses look half-dead. Erupting with lust, laughter and carnivorous pleasure, the great Italian star had a diva's hauteur, a peasant bawd's temperament and a knack for obliterating any actor who dared to share the screen with her.
Source:
Magnani returned to films in 1934, for what some consider to be a legitimate film debut, in La cieca di Sorrento (The Blind Women of Sorrento). In 1935, she married film director Goffredo Alessandrini. Although Alessandrini did not consider Magnani a strong film actress, he gave her a supporting role in his 1936 film Cavalleria. The marriage was unsuccessful, and the couple went through a long period of separation that finally ended with an annulment in 1950. They had one son, Luca.
Source:
Anna Magnani's persona was, above all, that of "great actress"; yet, in relation to her career, that description has to be understood in a very particular way. Conventionally, "actor" and "star" have been defined in an opposing manner: the latter is defined in terms of "presence," of an authentic and immediately recognizable personality, often glamorous and permitting identification on the level of fantasy-fulfillment; the former is defined in terms of the ability to transform the self, to "be" different characters. Magnani was always, irreducibly, Magnani, yet she lacked the most obvious attributes of the female star: though she had a remarkably expressive face, she was by no means conventionally beautiful; neither did she have a body that could be conventionally fetishized; her roles were never of the kind to encourage fantasy-identification. For American audiences, she represented exactly what Hollywood had consistently failed to produce: "reality," the nonglamorous human being. Hence, she could never be successfully promoted in Hollywood beyond a certain point (soon reached); for audiences conditioned by Hollywood expectations, "reality" is exotic, a striking novelty that swiftly palls.
Source:
Pasolini opens the film with Magnani's arrival at the wedding reception of her pimp, Carmine (Franco Citti), a good-looking heel whose marriage spells emancipation for her. Laughing raucously, she leads three pigs on a leash,
Source:
MORE ABOUT
La Magnani