The best Anna Magnani’s movies
We present our ranking of the best Anna Magnani’s movies. Do you love cinema? Or are you looking for a movie of your favorite actor to watch tonight? Surely you have some to see or that you did not know yet about Anna Magnani.
Rome, Open City
8/10
A realistic portrayal of the underground resistance in Italy in 1945. The film has strong impacting imagery with its mix of fiction and reality that strengthened Italian Neo-realism and the film industry.
Roma
7.3/10
A virtually plotless, gaudy, impressionistic portrait of Rome through the eyes of one of its most famous citizens.
Bellissima
7.7/10
Bellissima is a satire of the film industry, and centers on a mother and daughter after the latter attends an audition.
Mamma Roma
7.8/10
After years spent working as a prostitute in her Italian village, middle-aged Mamma Roma has saved enough money to buy herself a fruit stand so that she can have a respectable middle-class life and reestablish contact with the 16-year-old son she abandoned when he was an infant. But her former pimp threatens to expose her sordid past, and her troubled son seems destined to fall into a life of crime and violence.
The Bandit
6.8/10
Among others, Ernesto returns to Turin after the war from a German POW camp; his household destroyed and family deceased, he tries making an honest living.
The Fugitive Kind
7.1/10
Val Xavier, a drifter of obscure origins, arrives at a small town and gets a job in a store run by Lady Torrence. Her husband, Jabe M. Torrance, is dying of cancer. Val is pursued by Carol Cutere, the enigmatic local tramp-of-good-family.
L'amore
6.9/10
In the first episode, a heartbroken woman talks to her ex-lover on the phone. In the second, a pregnant woman believes she is carrying the child of Saint Joseph.
Made in Italy
6.8/10
A group of Italians take a flight to Sweden: among them there are the tourists, and the immigrants.
The Secret of Santa Vittoria
7.3/10
During World War II, Italian villagers hide their wine from the German army.
Volcano
6.8/10
An exiled Italian prostitute (Anna Magnani) shields her sister (Geraldine Brooks) from a deep-sea diver (Rossano Brazzi) on an island volcano.
Vittorio D.
7.3/10
A documentary about Vittorio de Sica with clips of his films and testimonials from friends and family.
We, the Women
6.5/10
Five portraits of actresses in their "common" life, seen as women rather than movie stars.
Assunta Spina
6.6/10
Assunta, a commoner of Naples, is scarred by her lover Michele for jealousy.
Teresa Venerdì
6.6/10
A comedy of errors in which the sweetly incompetent Dr. Pietro Vignali (de Sica) has been run deep into debt by his girlfriend, Loletta Prima (Magnani). After his creditors threaten to sell his belongings, he takes a job as an orphanage health inspector to pay his debts and ends up engaged to wealthy Lilli, daughter of a mattress tycoon, and chased after by the orphan Teresa Venerdí, while trying to keep his life in order.
The Rose Tattoo
6.9/10
A grieving widow embarks on a new romance when she discovers her late husband had been cheating on her.
Tennessee Williams: Orpheus of the American Stage
8.1/10
A study of Tennessee Williams's life and work as a whole, ranging from his youth in Mississippi and in St. Louis to success and acclaim, followed by the final difficult years. Includes some of the most celebrated scenes from film adaptations of Williams' work, among them extracts of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951),Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), Night of the Iguana, The (1964), and Suddenly, Last Summer (1993) (TV). Contains footage of Williams being interviewed, including conversations with David Frost, 'Edward R. Murrow (I)', and Melvyn Bragg, as well as reminiscences from people who knew and worked with him, among them Edward Albee, Gore Vidal, and his lifelong friend, Lady Maria St. Just. Features readings from Elia Kazan's Notebook by Kim Hunter.
The Golden Coach
7/10
A viceroy, a nobleman and a bullfighter court a comedy-troupe actress in 16th-century Peru.
Angelina
7.1/10
A rowdy woman is so forceful that she outdoes her husband in a loud cry against speculators who refuse poor people entrance to a block of new apartments, built after WW2. Without noticing it, she starts a people's movement, and leads a march to the capital. She returns to her village a winner, an honourable MP. Yet, she is still the same simple, fiery woman, able to get in a hair-pulling brawl with the local barmaid for the affection of her man.
Wild Is the Wind
6.6/10
A widowed Nevada rancher goes to Italy and marries the sister of his deceased wife and brings her back to the ranch, but his haunting memories of his lost love and her tendency to drift away to other men cause the two to have a tough time at keeping a marriage together.
The Awakening
6.2/10
Directed by the incredibly prolific Mario Camerini, Suor Letizia was released in English-speaking regions as When Angels Don't Fly and The Awakening. In her first film appearance since The Rose Tattoo, Anna Magnani plays a feisty nun named Sister Letizia. Believing herself above such earthly trivialities as a maternal instinct, Sr. Letizia changes her way of thinking when an abandoned child is placed in her care. Unofficially adopting the boy, the good sister eventually comes to realize that even she cannot provide the care and guidance of a biological mother. Carefully constructed to accommodate all the surefire box-office elements inherent in Camerini's earlier films, Suor Letizia was almost guaranteed to be a hit.
