MAMMA ROMA ***

As the Roman prostitute trying to keep herself and her son on the straight and narrow in Pasolini's second film "Mamma Roma", Anna Magnani reins in her natural instinct to erupt like a volcano and gives a performance that is almost subdued and at the age of 54 she never looked more beautiful. There isn't much in the way of plot. 'Mamma Roma' wants to give up prostitution and become respectable for the sake of her son but her pimp, (Franco Citti), forces her back on the streets just as her son, Ettore, goes from bad to worse, falling in with a local neighbourhood gang.

The real star of the picture is Tonino Delli Colli's roving camera. Stunningly shot in black and white in the nondescript suburbs of Rome this, like Pasolini's debut "Accatone", already marked him out as a great visual artist. It's a much more formally constructed film than "Accatone"and consequently it's less exciting. Still, it's a great film with none of the sentimentality of a Fellini or a De Sica, austere and beautiful, which makes the director's subsequent decline into self-indulgence and his tragic early death all the sadder.