Former sex worker Mamma Roma (Anna Magnani) is determined to start a new life with her teenage son Ettore (Ettore Garofolo), whom she had previously abandoned. But her aspirations to give him the respectable bourgeois existence she never had are threatened when her pimp (Franco Citti) comes back into the picture. Pasolini’s second feature continues his project of portraying the marginalized underclasses of the Roman "borgate." The film delves deep in exploring how social and economic miseries inexorably seep even into a mother-son relationship. Though it contains echoes of neorealism, the film's fatalistic tones and funereal religious symbolism suggest a key change, and perhaps sing the movement's requiem. Watch the trailer.

Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1962, Italy, 105 minutes. In Italian with English subtitles.

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