Plot Intro
Serafina Delle Rose (Anna Magnani) is a Sicilian seamstress living in the south of the US with her husband and young daughter Rosa (Marisa Pavan). When her husband is killed in a sudden automobile accident, Serefina descends into depression and reclusivity over the following years, exacerbated by the discovery that her late husband was both a criminal and an adulterer. But hope shines for both mother and daughter when Rosa falls for a handsome young sailor (Ben Cooper) and Serafina is wooed by a bumbling truck driver, Alvaro (Burt Lancaster).
This is the first film we’ve watched since taking a lengthy break from the project and we actually watched it just before we stopped - and so we watched it again. Interestingly (at least to me), my opinion has grown much kinder towards the film in the 18 months or so between viewings.
This being Tennessee Williams, subtlety is not the name of the game. Williams is lurid, overblown, near-fantastical and he never met an emotion he didn’t immediately want to increase by 1,000 per cent. Sometimes it works (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Glass Menagerie), sometimes it’s just weird (Suddenly Last Summer, The Notebook of Trigorin). Here - it kind of works.
Let’s deal with the stereotypes first. My god, Williams goes full pelt into his Italian Community Fantasy. Luckily Magnani was actually Italian otherwise this would be too problematic to bear, but every stereotype possible is rolled out - loud Italian women gossiping in groups, silent Italian men carrying out romantic affairs, a mad Italian grandmother chasing a goat (too niche?)
But luckily Williams is too good a writer to get waylaid, and once he gets into his stride, the characters emerge as interesting, evolved people. Serafina is clearly very repressed, unable to talk about sex or romance without praying at her home altar or insisting that her daughter Rosa’s very nice boyfriend reveal whether he’s a virgin or not before taking her out. Rosa is itching for life and adventure while Alvaro, a truck driver descended from the village idiot, is charming, bumbling and ultimately the key to Serafina’s stepping out of grief.
And THIS is where this film is superb. The first half, I spent wondering why Magnani had won the trophy for what is an oppressively overwrought performance. She wrings her hands (at one point falls over in such unintended slapstick genius that I made Paul rewind and watch it again while laughing hysterically) and generally mopes about. But Burt Lancaster only enters half way through and his appearance leads Serafina to drop her widow’s weeds to become a buoyant, laughing woman again. Magnani’s switch from grief to joy is utterly believable - and captivating. I found myself laughing with her as she begins to enjoy the silliness of life, and when she ultimately forgives Alvaro for being his hasty, impulsive self and takes him in to her home, I was celebrating (along with all the Italian women who loudly shout cheerfully at her door. What a cockblock).
It’s a naturalistic and subtle performance which somehow works with the florid script. Williams wrote it specifically for Magnani and it’s hard to imagine another actress managing the growth and switch of Serafina’s character as well. Magnani was apparently renowned for her naturalistic acting but I actually think her performance is a weirdly fitting blend of naturalism and pantomime. It works - and it wouldn’t for many others.
Elsewhere, there are decent performances from the daughter Rosa and Lancaster impresses with a goofy, resolutely daft performance. The film (and plot) benefits from him coming in halfway through, bringing light and happiness with him. However I’d also like to throw in a good word for Jo Van Fleet, an actress who plays the small role of Bessie - a nasty and entitled white woman who demands Serafina miss her daughter’s graduation to fix her dress, and then in a fit of rage reveals Serafina’s dead husband’s infidelity to her. It’s a nasty caricaturish piece but Van Fleet turns in a barnstorming performance, shouting and screaming with energetic fury and stabbing in the proverbial needle where she knows it will do most damage. She actually won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in this year - but for a different film, East of Eden (as well as a Tony Award the previous year starring opposite legend Lillian Gish). In a way it’s a shame as I’d have loved to explore her other work in a ‘Best of the Rest’ so here’s my little tribute to Van Fleet and her mostly forgotten but twinkling career.
Anna Magnani navigates the tempestuous challenges of a Tennessee Williams play-turned-movie with superb skill. A deserved win, supported by strong performances from the cast including Lancaster and Van Fleet.
The first half does lag a bit with all the dreary grief and sadness, but it’s a necessary lag in order for the lightness of the second half to truly hit. Perhaps a few more mad Italian grandmothers with goats would have sped it along.
Mark
10/10
I don’t think Tennessee Williams had ever actually met any Italians before writing this. I think he just looked into the future, saw the Dolmio adverts with the family of puppets, and thought “I got this one!” Admittedly he does well to depict a part of society that probably didn’t get much coverage at the time. A social group of immigrants and their children who live a life of relative poverty, keeping themselves isolated from xenophobic establishments such as the police and government in order to protect themselves. A society constructed around religion, closely-connected community, fiercely protective of their children, and with lashings of vigilantism thrown in.
But this film isn’t really about them. The Godfather, for all its faults, does a better job of examining Italian communities in America. This film is more about how loud, brash and aggressive Italians can be…..apparently. There is so much “You make-a me sick-a!”, slaps, gasps and falls to the floor (especially in the second half) that we found ourselves creased up in fits of laughter. I think sometimes you’re supposed to be, other times not so much. Either way, there’s a silliness to this film that feels a bit disrespectful to expat Italians.
I think Tennessee wrote it this way in order to construct the emotional, matriarchal figure of Serafina, a character he wrote specifically for Anna Magnani who was known for playing impoverished, downtrodden but stoic, strong, forceful women. She turned down the stage production because her English wasn’t strong enough and focused on working in the flourishing Italian cinema industry with directors such as Rossellini and Fellini. By the time The Rose Tattoo entered film production, she was ready, and she nabbed her only Oscar for it, beating Susan Hayward, Katharine Hepburn, Jennifer Jones and Eleanor Parker to the award. She was the only one out of the five to have never been nominated before, so her lively performance evidently made an impact.
Putting any stereotypes in the script aside, Magnani is great to watch. She manages to flit between emotions very quickly without feeling unnatural or clownish. She skirts dangerously close to campy melodrama but never quite crosses the line, ensuring the character feels real even if the rest of the gossipy, shouty Italian women in the background do not. It ensures that the second half of the film, which descends into typical Tennessee Williams over-writing (I lost count of how many times the word “rose” is thrown in) and insanely blatant attempts to force the title into the script in an A Passing Fancy sort of way (this is a reference to one of the greatest bits of satire from Family Guy - look it up). Most of this part of the film is her harsh, defensive exterior being broken down by the chaos that Alvaro brings into her household in a similar fashion to Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew (without the misogyny). Magnani and Lancaster make a great pairing and although it all goes on about half an hour longer than it needs to, there’s a sense of fun between them that makes the ending refreshingly uplifting compared to Williams’ usual bittersweetness.
Nonetheless it’s not a film I would watch again. But at least we got to see probably Magnani’s greatest and most quintessential role. The strength and tenacity she puts into her character may have developed from her own personal life. Her only child contracted polio at a very young age and was left disabled, causing Magnani to have to work extra hard to pay for medical and household bills, a situation that many other parents even now can identify with painfully. She maintained fame and popularity for the rest of her life and career, being considered one of the most important figures in Italian cinema, and being compared to another famously lugubrious European actress, Greta Garbo. She died at 65 from cancer in 1973 and huge crowds gathered for her funeral in Rome.
The scene in which Serafina discovers her late husband’s infidelity from two local American gossips (Jo Van Fleet and Florence Sundstrom) has a theatrical punch that I quite liked. It starts almost like a Victoria Wood comedic skit before descending into frenzied anarchy when Serafina reacts to the reveal. It’s one scene that manages to balance comedy and tragedy a bit more successfully.
Serafina’s eventual confrontation with her late husband’s lover has ended up becoming unintentionally hilarious. She storms into a seedy bar/casino and confronts the woman, who then tears open her shirt to reveal the incriminating rose tattoo. The ensuing fight has more Dynasty vibes than it should do.
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