Bellissima **** (1951, Anna Magnani, Walter Chiari, Tina Apicella, Gastone Renzelli) – Classic Movie Review 5715

Anna Magnani stars as Mamma Maddalena Cecconi, who fights other mothers to get her pretty child Maria (Tina Apicella) into a new movie being made at Cinecittà, in co-writer/ director Luchino Visconti’s 1951 Italian neo-realist serio-comedy. But Maddalena’s struggling husband Spartaco Cecconi (Gastone Renzelli) has no time for it all.

The great Italian director attends to chronicling the details of Rome’s slum life as carefully, even obsessively, as he did later with the aristocracy he knew much better, as he was born into one of Northern Italy’s richest families as one of the Duke of Modrone’s seven children.

This impressive showcase for the wonderfully fiery Magnani offers much entertainment value, many insights and, perhaps most valuable of all, an insider’s view of the Italian movie business and the Cinecittà studios in Rome in its prime. Walter Chiari is Magnan’s notable co-star as Alberto Annovazzi.

Also in the cast are Alessandro Blasetti, Arturo Bragaglia, Tecla Scarano and Linda Sini.

It is co-written by Suso Cecchi D’Amico, Francesco Rosi and Cesare Zavattini, shot in black and white by Piero Portalupi, produced by Salvo d’Angelo and scored by Franco Mannino.

It runs 129 minutes, with cut versions at 95, 100 and 112 minutes.

It is Visconti’s third film after Ossessione (1943) and La Terra Trema (1948).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5715

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