Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

Lightdeossk Captivating movie !

ActuallyGlimmer The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

pretentious_handle It doesn't even have any machine guns in it. I like movies with machine guns, guns that go kaccka-kaccka-kaccka-pow! This pretentious, operatic Italian schlock makes me wish for a good, classy American film like Forrest Gump or The Shawshank Redemption or Braveheart. Roma is the virgin whore and Ettore is the eromenos Christ, that's all well and good, if you're a decadent gay like Pasolini was.On second thought, I love this movie, "Mamma mamma, I'm dying mama ... " It's transcendentally beautiful. You couldn't even make a movie like this today, it would burn up the screen, the movie theater complex, and consequently engulf the surrounding city and country side, and people would rather watch Jack Ass or The Shawshank Redemption besides. I take it to be emblematic of the decadence of our times that this didn't make IMDb's top 250.

MartinHafer I know that this is a very well respected film and there are a lot of people who loved it. However, as for me, it did little for me. Now I am NOT saying it's a bad film--I didn't particularly enjoy it. Much of this might just be because I have never understood the appeal for Anna Magnani. In the films of hers I have seen, she just seems very loud and coarse. To each his own.Mamma Roma (Magnani) is a middle-aged prostitute who has been scrimping and saving for years to afford to retire and bring her son (now 16) to come live with her. He'd apparently been raised for her by someone in the country. The problem is that despite her best intentions, it really is too late to make him into the gentleman she'd envisioned. He prefers to hang with low-lifes, steal and avoid work--proving the old saying "you can never go back". A very sad story, indeed.The best thing about the film is that it does NOT have clichés like some films about prostitutes. There is no magical happy ending and the life is tough and sad. I can applaud Pasolini for this. But life is awfully short and sometimes I wonder if my time would be better spent watching something a bit more enjoyable. This ISN'T to say I only want to see happy films--it's just that with little connection to the characters, I just never felt particularly drawn to finish the film once it began--something that is actually pretty rare for a film nut like myself.

dizozza Mr. Pasolini wrote and directed, and this movie is an unbelievably great classic!... The film opens with a riotous prequel at the wedding of a pimp to another woman with his two year old son in attendance... the boy's mother played by Ms. Magnani enters with gift piglets dressed up like guests... it's an hilarious dinner party with singing, too.... then 12 years later we go up the stairs passed the loitering kids to a seedy apartment on the outskirts of town overlooking a graveyard? (The landscape of mystic old and sterile new -- vacant lots separating housing developments -- is a view to be found in many Italian films of the 60's...)In the apartment on a high floor with a view the teenage son and mother talk and tango, then the pimp returns to knock on the door... he needs her to earn a sum for him so he begs her to return to the streets when she was just about to get her son out of there... Apparently she bought an apartment in a development within Rome where people own businesses and even give a church-going appearance of respectability, but before moving there she has to work another two weeks. Here's where you'll see a continuously moving and incomparable beautiful nighttime street walk... The shot begins at the moment she's earned enough money and she's bidding a fond addio to the street... She takes us on a night walk on the big plaza with people entering in and out of the frame during her monologue story of her marriage at 14... This is a miraculous segment that happens in one continuous shot... She describes her childhood marriage and the listeners only catch a part of it... only the movie viewer gets to hear it all... (Unfortunately, she has to go back to that plaza later in the film...more amazing night walks.) Pasolini follows her with a moving light... the dotted electric lights of rome surround her... it's immeasurable how moving this scene is, and what a cinematic accomplishment it is... the film is in real time segments... The detail are easily referential. The full view they impart to the viewer are so much greater than the film's running time... anyway the imbalance of upwardly mobile survival and adolescent development does in her son... (He's bound to a bed. The camera is positioned at a low angle for a view that runs up his body to his head.) Her neighbors and colleagues are pretty heartless to her, but when she goes running off after hearing about her son's death ... you can bet we all follow say no, don't go. WE LOVE YOU ANNA MAGNANI!

Jes Beier Strong and tragic movie with an amazing Anna Magnani as the broken-down woman who fight for a dignified life in the slum of Rome. Uncompromising social realism and no one could like Pasolini use music as a consequent commentary to the themes in the film. In his movies the music is not isolated to the specific scene, but always to the film as a hole. He does this in a way so that the viewer is being compelled into the movie and becomes an "active" participant in the action. It is characteristic for Italian movies in general, but Pasolini achieved this in the most painfully and hypnotic way. Maybe with a tendency towards the rhetorical but that does not weaken the film. It is a masterpiece!