Anna Magnani

Anna Magnani (7 March 1908 – 26 September 1973) was an Academy Award-winning Italian stage and film actress. Magnani won the Oscar for her lusty portrayal of a Sicilian widow in The Rose Tattoo.

Biography

Born in Rome, she was brought up in poverty by her maternal grandmother in a slum district of the city. After some education at a convent school, she enrolled at Rome's Academy of Dramatic Art and sang in nightclubs and cabarets to support herself. Due to her work in nightclubs, Magnani was dubbed the Italian Édith Piaf.

In 1927 she acted in the screen version of La Nemica e Scampolo. She had also been in the stage production. She met Italian filmmaker Goffredo Alessandrini in 1933 and the two were married in 1935. He was one of the first Italian filmmakers to adapt the new sound technology used in American cinema. Her marriage to Alessandrini ended in 1950, and she never married again. Magnani once said, "Women like me can only submit to men capable of dominating them, and I have never found anyone capable of dominating me."

In 1941, Magnani starred in Teresa Venerdì, (“Friday Theresa”) which the writer and director, Vittorio De Sica, called Magnani’s "first true film." In it she plays Loletta Prima, the girlfriend of Di Sica’s character, Pietro Vignali. De Sica had called her laugh, "loud, overwhelming, and tragic."

International career

She had worked in films for almost 20 years before gaining international renown as 'Pina' in Roberto Rossellini's neorealist milestone Roma, Cittá Aperta. (also known as Rome, Open City, 1945). Her harrowing death scene remains one of cinema's most devastating moments. In Italy (and gradually elsewhere) she soon became established as a star, although she lacked the conventional beauty and glamour usually associated with the term. Slightly plump and rather short in stature with a face framed by unkempt raven hair and eyes encircled by deep, dark shadows, she smouldered with seething earthiness and volcanic temperament.

Magnani was Rossellini’s second choice to play the role of Pina. He had originally wanted Clara Calamai, the lead of Ossessione, (a part Luchino Visconti had originally offered Magnani) but she was already under contract and working on another film. Rossellini almost had to resort to his third actress choice because Magnani demanded she be paid the same amount of money the male lead Aldo Fabrizi was earning. The difference in salary was only 100,000 lire, and more about principle than price. Rossellini, whom she called "this forceful, secure courageous man", was her lover at the time, and she collaborated with him on other films.

Other collaborations with Rossellini include L'Amore, a two part film from 1948 which includes The Miracle and The Human Voice (Il miracolo, and Una voce umana). In the former, Magnani, playing a peasant outcast who believes the baby she's carrying is Christ, plumbs both the sorrow and the righteousness of being alone in the world. The latter film, based on Jean Cocteau's play about a woman desperately trying to salvage a relationship over the telephone, is remarkable for the ways in which Magnani's powerful moments of silence segue into cries of despair. One could surmise that the role of this unseen lover was Rossellini, and was based on conversations that took place throughout their own real-life affair.

In Luchino Visconti's Bellissima (1951) she plays Maddalena, a blustery, obstinate stage mother who drags her daughter to Cinecittà for the "Prettiest Girl in Rome" contest. When she realizes that the studio heads are laughing at her daughter's screen test, a shattering close-up of Magnani's face reveals rage, humiliation, and maternal love. She starred as Camille, a woman torn between three men, in Jean Renoir’s film Le Carrosse d'or (also known as The Golden Coach, 1953). Renoir called her "the greatest actress I have ever worked with".

As the widowed mother of a teenage daughter in Daniel Mann's 1955 film of Tennessee Williams's The Rose Tattoo, Magnani's adroit, mercurial performing offsets the hammy Method acting style of co-star Burt Lancaster. It wasn’t until then that she broke into Hollywood mainstream cinema with her first English speaking role. Playing Serafina Delle Rose in The Rose Tattoo, she won the Best Actress in a Leading Role Oscar. Tennessee Williams wrote it and based the character of Serafina on Magnani, since the two were good friends. It was originally put on stage starring Maureen Stapleton, because Magnani’s English was too limited at the time for her to star. Magnani worked with Williams again in his 1959 film, The Fugitive Kind, where she played Lady Torrance and starred opposite Marlon Brando.

The Wild, Wild Women (1958) is notable for pairing Magnani, as an unrepentant streetwalker, with Giulietta Masina in a women-in-prison film. In Pier Paolo Pasolini's Mamma Roma (1962), Magnani is both the mother and the whore, playing an irrepressible prostitute determined to give her teenage son a respectable middle-class life. Mamma Roma, is one of Magnani's critically acclaimed films, yet it wasn’t released in the United States until 1995, for having been deemed too controversial.

It was after this role along with her many other parts of playing poor women that Magnani was quoted in 1963 as having said, "I’m bored stiff with these everlasting parts as hysterical, loud, working-class women".

Magnani made her final film performance as Rosa in The Secret of Santa Vittoria (1969) except for her uncredited appearance as herself (within a dramatic context) in Fellini's Roma (1972). Towards the end of her career, Magnani was quoted as having said, "The day has gone when I deluded myself that making movies was art. Movies today are made up of…intellectuals who always make out that they’re teaching something"

She died at the age of 65 in Rome, after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. A huge crowd gathered for her funeral in a final salute that Romans usually reserve for Popes. She was provisionally laid to rest in the Roberto Rossellini's family mausoleum, her favorite director and longtime friend. She now rests in the Cimitero Comunale, San Felice Circeo, Lazio, Italy.

Family

• Francesco Magnani: Father
• Marina Casadei: Mother
• Luca Alessandrini: Son
• Olivia Magnani: Granddaughter

Relationships

• Goffredo Alessandrini (husband 1935-1950)
• Massimo Serato
• Roberto Rossellini
• Walter Chiari

Filmography and awards

Year	Film	Role	Other notes
1928	Scampolo
1934	La Cieca di Sorrento	Anna, la sua amante
	Tempo massimo	Emilia
1935	Quei due
1936	Cavalleria	Fanny
	Trenta secondi d'amore
1938	La Principessa Tarakanova	Marietta, la cameriera
1940	Una Lampada alla finestra	Ivana, l'amante di Max
1941	Teresa Venerdì	Maddalena Tentini/Loretta Prima
	La Fuggitiva	Wanda Reni
1942	La Fortuna viene dal cielo	Zizì
	Finalmente soli	Ninetta alias "Lulù"
1943	L'Ultima carrozzella	Mary Dunchetti, la canzonettista
	Gli Assi della risata		segment "Il mio pallone"
	Campo de' fiori	Elide
	La Vita è bella	Virginia
	L'Avventura di Annabella	La mondana
1944	Il Fiore sotto gli occhi	Maria Comasco, l'attrice
1945	Abbasso la miseria!	Nannina Straselli
	Roma, città aperta	Pina	National Board of Review Award; Italian National Nastro d'argento
	Quartetto pazzo	Elena
1946	Abbasso la ricchezza!	Gioconda Perfetti
	Il bandito	Lidia
	Avanti a lui tremava tutta Roma	Ada
	Lo Sconosciuto di San Marino	Liana, la prostituta
	Un Uomo ritorna	Adele
1947	L'onorevole Angelina	Angelina Bianchi	Nastro d'argento; Venice Film Festival - Volpi Cup
1948	Assunta Spina	Assunta Spina
	L'Amore	The Woman/Nanni	segment "Una voce umana")/segment "Il miracolo" Nastro d'argento
	Molti sogni per le strade	Linda
1950	Vulcano	Maddalena Natoli
1951	Bellissima	Maddalena Cecconi	Nastro d'argento
1952	Camicie rosse	Anita Garibaldi
1953	The Golden Coach	Camilla
1955	The Rose Tattoo	Serafina Delle Rose	Academy Award for Best Actress; BAFTA Award; Golden Globe; National Board of Review Award; New York Film Critics Circle Award
	Carosello del varietà
1957	Wild Is the Wind	Gioia	Berlin International Film Festival - Silver Berlin Bear; Nominated - Academy Award for Best Actress; Nominated - BAFTA Award; Nominated - Golden Globe
	Suor Letizia	Sister Letizia	Nastro d'argento
1959	The Fugitive Kind	Lady Torrance
	Nella città l'inferno	Egle
1960	Risate di gioia	Gioia Fabbricotti
1962	Mamma Roma	Mamma Roma
1969	The Secret of Santa Vittoria	Rosa	Nominated - Golden Globe

External links

• Anna Magnani at the Internet Movie Database