Anna Magnani

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Roman native Anna Magnani was in the 1930s one of the mainstays of the capital’s variety shows, a singer and actress among the many comedians who entertained the less affluent audiences in the shabby theaters of the city’s poorer neighborhoods. Trained in that school of adventurers and natural talents of the stage, she had the opportunity to showcase her intensely passionate acting skills, as a true woman of the people, already emerging at the time as a positive symbol of the lower classes—those accustomed to surviving by “making do” and enduring the setbacks of fate with resignation, yet also capable of determined, strenuous, and courageous resolutions.

Starting in 1939, she brought her temper to the service of cinema, particularly alongside Rome’s other quintessential actor, Aldo Fabrizi (for example in Campo di fiori, by Bonnard, where she plays a humble, honest, hardworking, affectionate, and apprehensive spinster, and he a vain man with a heart of gold who falls for a refined city woman but ultimately understands where true feeling lies). After the 1945 liberation of Rome, she was involved by Rossellini in the impossible project of making a film with no resources, financed modestly by a countess who wished to commemorate a priest tortured and killed by the Nazis; the story was drawn from newspaper articles and recollections of events that actually occurred during those years. While Rossellini desperately seeks funds, selling everything he can and even courting a wealthy pastor or a fabric merchant, the highly paid stars Magnani and Fabrizi adapt to the improvisational climate and, stepping down from their pedestal, become passionate about that endeavor, which takes shape day by day before their eyes, without a predetermined plan, following the whims of fate that prevent some things (the climate is still warlike) but favor others (the scenery is Rome as it is), without the possibility of rehearsing the scenes beforehand because film stock is scarce, and using as townspeople actual locals from the neighborhoods, and as Germans real Germans taken from the American prison camp. The emotive Magnani finds in this natural setting her ideal dimension, abandoning the diva airs of the 1920s, dressed in rags, with deep dark circles under her eyes, speaking in her dialect, creating the prototype of the postwar Italian diva, capable of celestial smiles but also visceral laughter, moral collapses, and vehement outbursts of anger. Such a heartfelt performance launched Magnani’s “human” and moving face to the entire world. The same emotional thread, explored in L'onorevole Angelina (1947, Zampa) and Bellissima (1961, Visconti), confirmed her extraordinary dramatic qualities, while an unfortunate private life mythologized her in the eyes of her fellow countrywomen.