Arquivo

This second film by Pasolini tells of a prostitute, Mamma Roma (Anna Magnani), in hopes of changing her lifestyle and social class - changes that will enable her to recover her self-esteem and, also, her son Ettore, an adolescent living away from home so he will not witness the life his mother leads. Her determination is first manifest at the wedding of Carmine, her ex-gigolo. Mamma Roma dreams of a bourgeois life in a new quarter of town now under construction, but her hopes come face to face with reality. Not even the local priest can believe that only the desire for change will be sufficient for her rehabilitation and to retrieve Ettore from the scum he was born into. Mamma Roma lives within a social context that renders her dreams impossible to fulfill. Reality proves itself harder, more subject to disenchantment than she might ever imagine.