Please note this is a region 2 DVD & will require a region 2 or region free DVD player in order to play At the wedding of her pimp Carmine (Franco Citti) Mamma Ro& (Anna Magnani) announces her retirement from prostitution She first returns to her poverty-stricken native village to reclaim her estranged son Ettore (Ettore Garofalo) & then moves into a newly constructed apartment complex in Rome Mamma&s tragicomic attempts to create a new life for herself meet with a variety of obstacles her struggle to pay her bills the return of Carmine into her life Ettore s listlessness & his friendship with lowlifes & vagabonds Set among Rome&s borgate a counter-culture of the city&s lower depths Mamma Roma depicts the social impact of emerging middle-class values in its ironic story of a mother&s love for her child Pier Paolo Pasolini&s iconoclastic vision renders the world of the borgate
- a world of criminals prostitutes & pimps
- with the sacred elegance of religious paintings by Renaissance masters This seeming lack of judgment towards society s reprobates made his work deeply controversial Equally subversive is the casting of Oscar winning actress Anna Magnani An Italian national treasure her brilliant performance endows her character with the mythic dimension inherent in the name Mamma Roma