Bellissima (1951)

Last year, I watched an excerpt from Bellissima in a documentary about Luchino Visconti from RAI. It showed a little girl crying, while men laughed at her. That seemed not interesting enough. However, recently I watched a couple of Cesare Zavattini's works and liked them, and found out that this movie was also based on his story, only this time he worked with Visconti instead of Vittorio De Sica.

Compared with Visconti's other works, Bellissima seems to be a little movie. Stella Film is looking for a little girl between 6 and 8 years old. Maddalena, a mother who gains money by injecting diabetic people and is crazy about cinema [Their house is near to an outdoor cinema. She can even tell Burt Lancaster by his voice! I actually think that at that time, Burt Lancaster's voice must have been dubbed by an Italian. She must have known all of the lines in the movie.], wants her daughter Maria to get the part. She does her best to achieve this dream. Although she has a strong personality, means no one can tell her what to do, in her anxiety, she polishes Maria with an acting lesson, a ballet practice, a new hair cut and a new gown - because other people say this and that. She spends her last lira to buy presents for the director's wife, the cameraman... but she soon knows that the man whom she gives the money to uses it to buy a new scooter for himself.

Anna Magnani as Maddalena is excellent. I like her here better than in Rome, Open City (1945). Maddalena is so real and reminds me of obsessive mothers who want their kids to be the best, get the first rank in class, etc. The little girl is also very good. She is very cute and I prefer her with long plaits. She looks innocent in the beginning of the movie, and very polished in the end with the curls and the ballet gown. Gastone Renzelli, who plays Maddalena's husband Spartaco, was not a professional actor and discovered at a slaughterhouse in Rome. There is also Walter Chiari, who was the most sought after actor in Italy at that time.

Visconti has made changes from Zavattini's story. In the original, after all Maddalena's efforts, Maria is not accepted. In this film, Maria gets the contract, but only after a humiliation and tears. Maddalena's anger has turned into a bitterness. Her little girl is not an object to laugh at. The studio cannot wipe away the humiliation with two million liras. Maddalena decides that Maria will stay at home.