Anna Magnani is particularly compelling to study in comparison to Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich and Bette Davis because of the very real and unglamorous roles which Magnani was so famous for taking on. It was interesting to learn about the ways Magnani was constructed as a woman of the people, and the role she played in reformulating Italian identity post-WWII. It is as if Magnani became the image of the ideal Italian woman, family-oriented and nurturing, but also strong willed, fiery, and capable of resistance, all traits necessary for survival in a war ravaged country. Contrasting this image with that of her contemporary, Marilyn Monroe, who was almost universally acknowledged as the ideal woman in the 1950s in the United States, reveals the radically different values and needs of the two countries at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Magnani
The way Magnani uses her star body to connect to audiences is distinctly different from the way other female film stars of the time used theirs. With Magnani there is no fantasy, a person you watch because you want to be her or live her life: she is real, a person who affirms and reflects back the harsh realities of life and emotion, but still maintains herself as a pillar of strength and dignity. The quote by Magnani about her being interested in maintaining her authenticity is especially interesting, and I think perfectly represents her as a woman of the people. She knew the audience of her countrymen was not interested in seeing more opulence and waste, but would stand behind a woman representing the people of post-WWII Italy as intelligent, hardworking, creative, and forceful.
In the paper “Popular culture, performance, persona: Anna Magnani between Rome, Open City and The Rose Tattoo” by Francesco Pitassio, the author describes Magnani’s vehicle for representation as histrionic talent. Her actions display excessive emotion because they were meant for consumption by audiences. In many of her movies, her most emotive scenes are set in a crowd, where she has a natural audience within the narrative, who Magnani is performing for. This type of emphasis on Magnani as a loud and conspicuous woman, not afraid to cause a scene, may be the natural response to the end of a time period when visibility and loudness were dangerous and possibly life-threatening. In this context Magnani’s histrionic tendencies could be considered culturally aspirational.
https://teens.palazzograssi.it/usr.php?rec=29&page=opera&lang=en
I feel that the context for the emergence of neo-realism in popular cinema is of particular importance. Reading about how the scene where Pina is shot in Rome, Open City, is a revelation. The fact that is was filmed in Rome in 1945, and that the soldiers in it were real Nazi soldiers taken from a concentration camp, is a testament to Magnani’s and Roberto Rossellini’s bravery and artistic determination. It is always interesting to study the ways in which national tragedies become embedded in the collective consciousness of a people, and how tragedy can transform into founding myths, as people and nations do their best to process and recover from a mutual (and perhaps unifying) trauma.
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-rome-open-city-review-20150220-column.html